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Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

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Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#531

Post by DannyBee »

mcv wrote: post #468
prophesi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corporate is also claiming that they don't allow stores to take on consignment deals, contrary to their franchise agreement explicitly allowing franchise owners to take on consignment deals.

Corporate is lying a lot, and is pretty clearly guilty of theft at the very least. The bigger problems I see here are: 1. You can't really sure large corporations like Bricks & Minifigs. They've got deeper pockets and can drag it out until you go bankrupt. There's no good legal recourse for this, meaning larger corporations can basically do whatever they want and ignore the law, as long as they only hurt people small…

#1 is a bluff. It would be really hard to drag it out and judges hate that. You are much more likely to end up paying the costs of the little guy as sanctions than bankrupting them or whatever.

This is also straightforward enough and enough evidence exists that it would be hard to drag it out.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#532

Post by sgerenser »

tikhonj wrote: post #404
nine_k wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just some shelf space Unless the store owns its building and has too little inventory to cover the shelves, the cost of not filling the shelves with the right goods is quite serious. In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".

This is definitely not uniform. I worked on inventory management at Target, and stores had quite a lot of shelf space—to the point where we'd hold large amounts of cheap, non-perishable stuff like cat litter because, well, we had the space for it. Stores also wanted to look full. We actually had parameters in our inventory management logic to increase inventory just for presentation reasons. If inventory is expensive…

Bricks and Minifigs stores are like 2000 square feet, much different than a Target. Their overhead per square foot is almost certainly far higher than Target.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#533

Post by sgerenser »

whall6 wrote: post #384
barake wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was sealed sets, still NIB, not individual pieces. No one would bother selling $200k of loose bricks on consignment.

Let me rephrase: “blue Lego set”

Somewhere in one of the long videos, they mentioned that there were unique stickers on each of his items that he was selling on consignment. They had to have known which items were his.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#534

Post by thaumasiotes »

nine_k wrote: post #361
michaelt wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Selling on consignment can be an absolutely great deal for shops, under the right conditions. If I'm a lego trader and I buy your set for $900 hoping to sell it later for $1000, in the meantime that's $900 I can't invest in anything else. And maybe I guessed the set's value wrong and I end up unloading it for $800, taking a loss. On the other hand, if I agree to sell that same set on consignment? Zero capital outlay,…

> just some shelf space Unless the store owns its building and has too little inventory to cover the shelves, the cost of not filling the shelves with the right goods is quite serious. In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".

> In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".

However, in this particular case, the legos were initially displayed as a customer attraction, and then kept in storage. Presumably there's still some inventory cost in storage, but the shelves are clear.

>> The collection will be on display in the store's party room from 10am till 6pm on Saturday, November 11th, and 11am till 6pm on Sunday. The collection will be available for sale immediately, so the best time for pictures will be Saturday morning. The collection will not be stored on-site after hours for security reasons, and after Sunday the sets will be available for purchase but stored elsewhere.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#535

Post by sgerenser »

mcv wrote: post #478
Electricniko wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like corporate took away ownership and gave it to a new franchisee.

The original franchisee claims to have lost their life savings in that move. I have no idea how exactly that happened. Their story really sounds like something from Russia back when western investors had their company simply taken from them by someone well-connected.

It sounds like the original franchisee doesn’t want to admit that they were losing a lot of money already. Only someone really desperate would take on a $200K lego collection and only collect a 10% consignment fee. It would also explain the corporate “takeover” if they were already behind on paying their franchise fees or whatever they might have owed to corporate.

That being said, it’s not illegal to be a bad business person, and none of that excuses the subsequent behavior by BAM corporate or the new franchise owner.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#536

Post by thaumasiotes »

sgerenser wrote: post #530
nine_k wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> just some shelf space Unless the store owns its building and has too little inventory to cover the shelves, the cost of not filling the shelves with the right goods is quite serious. In a low-margin business like retail, "just some shelf space" reads almost like "just some gold bars".

My wife owns a retail business where some part of their sales is consignment. Taking anything in with only a 10% consignment fee would be laughable, there’s no way that’s a money making deal when you account for all the overhead of a small retail store. My suspicion is the original store owner made a bad consignment deal to sell the Star Wars stuff with only a 10% commission and the new owner didn’t want to live up t…

The videos identify the consignment fee as 35%, not 10%.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#537

Post by terabytest »

wombat-man wrote: post #521
thevinter wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the guy tried to resolve the legal dispute with lawyers and has been quoted multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.

I haven't dealt with anything like this, so maybe this is naive, but wouldn't you also sue for legal fees as apart of the damages?

Where do you get the money from while the lawsuit is ongoing?

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#538

Post by Suzuran »

vintermann wrote: post #415
toofy wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, it’s plain as day they say blatantly they’ll take on the consignment. the reckless ben youtube videos are pretty clearly laid out with contracts, video evidence, etc.. the crazy part to me is how blatant the executives of bricks and minifigs are in saying go ahead and try to sue us, we’ll drag this out until you’re broke from lawyers fees. we’re a lawyer rich corp and you’re not. they don’t even try to hide it.…

Sign of the times. It's not enough to be rich and powerful, the goal is to be able to gloat about your impunity. Little Epsteins.

That has always been the goal. There is, has, and always will be a powerful caste system to ensure that they are gods and we are trash. "Stay in your lane" / "Know your place" / etc. have been watchwords for thousands of years.

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#539

Post by jccalhoun »

wredcoll wrote: post #355
jccalhoun wrote: post #157

It seems like the guy who put them on consignment is getting screwed but it doesn't seem like this Reckless Ben is helping things by doing weird stunts https://kotaku.com/youtuber-starts-a-cult-and-is-raided-by-p...

People always say this in these situations. What do you think would be helping things? Passively sitting in the house waiting for the CEOs to change their minds? Writing polite letters to the local newspaper? Like, whats your theory here?

a lawyer

Re: Bricks and Minifigs Stole a Man's $200k Lego Collection

#540

Post by sgerenser »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #536
sgerenser wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife owns a retail business where some part of their sales is consignment. Taking anything in with only a 10% consignment fee would be laughable, there’s no way that’s a money making deal when you account for all the overhead of a small retail store. My suspicion is the original store owner made a bad consignment deal to sell the Star Wars stuff with only a 10% commission and the new owner didn’t want to live up t…

The videos identify the consignment fee as 35%, not 10%.

I head them say 35% at some point later in the videos, but they definitely said 10% first, so I’m not sure which is correct.
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