Lego as an investment

My wife accidentally purchased two of the same box of lego for my daughter a few years ago and the unopened one sat on a shelf till this weekend when I bunged a load of stuff on facebook seling pages. Before listing, like any normal person I briefly checked what stuff was worth with a view to putting it up at 50% less than what ever ebay was selling for to get rid quick – its all junk afterall. The lego box cost us £15. I was suggesting we give it away with some other stuff…..  Ebay were selling it at £70!

WTAF?

So I looked a bit and apparently lego is a thing these days and people want to pay more than the original price because its been ‘retired’

so if its this easy, why don’t people just buy 2x of whatever the kids want and then sell the second one 2 years later when its been retired and get the lego for free?  i wish I’d known this before I spent probably £1000 on lego for my daughter…..

I’ve got a couple of sets worth 3x what I paid for them, one UCS is worth over £1k, lego if you get the right sets is worth good money.

I’ve recently got the new Falcon, to build or leave in the box….that set is retiring very soon.

You’ve all seen Toy Story yeah? It’s morally wrong not to play with toys. Before you ask, yes Lego is a toy 😄

Look at what it’s actually sold for, not what people are asking! Also remember that the eBay & PayPal fees & postage will take a chunk of that. I’m sure some people fund their Lego hobby this way but you’d have to put in a lot of time & effort I think, plus sit on the sets longer than 2 years! The other thing people do is split the sets & sell the bricks, some of the rarer figures can fetch a decent amount!

so if its this easy, why don’t people just buy 2x of whatever the kids want and then sell the second one 2 years later when its been retired and get the lego for free?

They do. My old landlord did it, but bought as many sets as he could, then sold them all as and when they retired.

Biggest issue was storage. He lived in a 4 bedroom house with a garage, and shared a bedroom with his 2 kids (at weekends…).

Plus you’ve to keep hold of stuff for 2-3+ years, and might not make all that much, for example if it was a really high production numbers set.

some of the rarer figures can fetch a decent amount!

Rarely the ones in sets apparently. The big money ones are the ones they do limited editions of, or do single day giveaways at shows etc. Google ‘Mr Gold’. only 5000 made, aforementioned landlord got 2 for £400, sold them for £800 each…

Lego should be played with !

My kids are currently playing with bits of my old lego from when I was a kid (mixed in with new stuff) and it gives me insane pleasure to see them using my old, worn, tooth-marked stuff to make their wacky, interesting creations.

However, my sister bought me an F40 (10248) for a birthday 4 years ago, and now it appears to be worth roughly 30% more than it cost in it’s “built, with instructions” condition, but crazily about 2-3x its value if it was new in box. Maybe buying one to build/play with and one to sell on later could make lego effectively “free” ?

“Look at what it’s actually sold for, not what people, are asking!

I did – £65- 70 was what they went for. RRP was 20 quid, we bought it from sainsbury for 15 quid Some people are now asking more for the set (its Lego Elves)

found a site called brick economy. very interesting. people are idiots but if there is money to be made…..hmmmm.

EDIT: Totally agree on toys need to be played with. My youngest daughter is a real lego fiend and even now at 13 loves building it. So I have had no problem with getting her the stuff whenever she wanted it it (or deserved it, which as a good kid she mostly did). She has built and rebuilt it all and I have absolutely no worries about how much it cost but if i’d known this stuff was limited edition I might have thought about buying more of it to resell.

Its basically another commodity!

 

Hmmm, I have the current UCS Milennium Falcon waiting to be built. Maybe I should put it in the loft for a few years instead.

(Only joking, that’s ridiculous. I’ll build it with my boy and have fun with it)

I have bought a couple of sets (all technic) over the last couple of years as a long term investment. Different values (£20 up to £130) but all at a discounted price, in fact bought two of the same set the other day. Also may be good presents in 10 years time for our newborn but will see what happens!

I also have a couple of sets made up for when slightly older kids come around.

I’ve got the big orange Technic Porsche 911 unopened in the loft, inside the Lego branded shipping carton. I got it half price too. I’ll keep an eye on its value.

I’ve got the slightly cheaper white 911 as an investment!

Got one of them too. Unopened…

Got one of them too. Unopened…

think you’ll find a lot of people do… that set was discounted pretty often 😀 Probably more stashed away as “investments” than ever built 😉

This thread makes me sad.

Lego has to be played with! I have many happy memories of playing with Lego, first as a child with my dad, then as an adult with my son.

I bought 2 UCS AT-STs in 2006ish when they were discounted in Argos to £45. Built one and put the other in the loft. Sold the boxed one for £300 earlier this year. If I’d bought £45 worth of gold in 2006 it would now be worth approx £200.

There’s a whole market out there, check out brickowl and bricklink, there’s a huge second hand market out there and a growing adult market. Lego sells for around £20 per kilo as a commodity.

The trick with buying to invest is knowing which sets, popular sets with low production runs, not always the sets you’d expect.

It’s the adult market that has allowed Lego to grow.

If I’d bought £45 worth of gold in 2006 it would now be worth approx £200.

And if you’d bought £45 worth of shares in Apple in 2006…. easy to play that game 🙂

You’ll shit when you realise how much Star Wars toys bring.

This is what £ 11.5k of Lego looks like.

That is cool, but I wonder how you will enjoy it. I would swop it for a bike and then take 6 months and ride over the Alps or something that will fill me full of memories for when Im too old to ride.

Still, your pile of plastic bricks is probably earning more than my savings account.

“You’ll shit when you realise how much Star Wars toys bring”

Not really.

Obviously you would need to have been living on Tatooine to not know that some Star Wars figures bring big bucks. But these are a) rare (jawa with vinyl cape etc) and b) 40 years old.

Same goes for old barbie stuff, dinky toys etc etc

The big difference is that you could have a barbie/action man from 1970 and its now worth hundreds and a barbie/action man from 2010 which is worth nothing.

But with lego it seems that pretty much all box sets that are retired are worth at least twice original price after a couple of years – stuff from 2014 can be worth 3 x rrp.

Its not really a gamble is it

I get the impression that these days there’s so many people doing it that there’s really much less money to be made- and probably a lot of the people doing the “investing” will be excited when they sell a set for £50 profit and will happily ignore all the other sets in the attic that have depreciated…

(I have a wee ebay thing selling used/collectable/recon toys, not lego as it’s such a saturated market… But the thing is, I look at other people selling stuff and often, they’re doing it at a loss- there’s just no way they’re making money after the ebay fees and postage. But I’m sure when the £3 hits their paypal it’s exciting, and then when the £2.45 to hermes and the ebay and paypal fees come off they’re not really thinking about it any more because they’ve MADE £3)

doomanic
Full Member

This thread makes me sad.

Lego has to be played with!

On the one hand I kind of agree but on the other, people buying to invest means lego sell more stuff- the kits in someone’s attic doesn’t mean that some poor kid can’t get any lego. It just helps secure their business and lets them make more cool things so, where’s the harm? It’s not like a painting in a vault or something.

These stupid collectors push up the prices for actual kids…

What’s the going rate for a small child these days?

“These stupid collectors push up the prices for actual kids…”

No they don’t.

Argos still sells lego for 19.95 a box or whatever. Kids don’t care if they can’t have a 3 year old minecraft lego set, in fact they probably wouldn’t want it anyway as its yesterdays news for them. They want the latest lego speedster etc

Plus, the collectors tend to go for the more complex technic/UCS stuff, which doesn’t have much ‘swoosh-ability’ required for playing with.

Lego are getting better at reissuing stuff that gets popular, they’d rather sell new sets for less than someone’s attic rarity.

The Chinese clones have got in on the act too, anything rare and expensive you can buy from them at a fraction of the price if you just enjoy the build rather than fretting about how much it might be worth in a decade.

“These stupid collectors push up the prices for actual kids…”

No they don’t.

They push up the prices of used sets. Or someone does. It’s either collectors or rich people with precious kids:

Lego pirate ship

Lego Elves dragon that my kids like. But can’t afford.

Lego do limited runs of sets, these are being bought, held onto and sold later at ridiculous prices.

Plus, the collectors tend to go for the more complex technic/UCS stuff, which doesn’t have much ‘swoosh-ability’ required for playing with.

Not necessarily, see above.

That is cool, but wonder how you will enjoy it.

I spent 2 months building this without instructions.

I keep on trying to persuade my dad to rebuild some of my old 1988? Technic kits as a lockdown investment project….

My mum has sold some of my old Lego. She managed to get 99.5 % of an 80s train set together that went for £100. Random bits of castle wall etc sell for reasonable money also which I was surprised at.

I’ve got the slightly cheaper white 911 as an investment!

I bought that and thoroughly enjoyed building it. No idea what it’s worth now mind, I suspect not much.

I got in to buying and selling Lego at the start of lockdown, buying and selling for the last 6m focusing mainly on Star Wars stuff. I’ve made about £1400 and have a collection of about 250 Star Wars Mini figures worth about £1000.

Biggest issue I found was some figures were selling for over £150, the Lego released a new kit with that character. The original isn’t worth half that now.

Even some of the free gifts you get when spending >£100 on the Lego site go for £30-£40.

I was kicking myself earlier this year when I noticed that the Apoolo 11 Saturn V had been retired, and was instantly selling on eBay for approx £70 markup.
I noticed last week that it’s been re-released; I wonder whether Lego saw the brisk trade in second hand models and thought they’d have some of the action too.
I’m ordering it this week.
I thought about the Falcon UCS set, but it’s £650! For Lego!

[wanders off, muttering…]