Brickvesting
LEGO Investing Articles
108 blog articles in this category
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There is one thing LEGO investors and resellers fear more than getting banned from Shop at Home: set re-releases. As you all know, LEGO production runs for a particular set is limited to a period between a few months to several years. Once the set hits the end of its life, investors expect never to see that set again at retail price and reap the benefits of secondary market demand and price increases. While in the vast majority of cases this is the norm, every once in a while LEGO decides it
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In a time, not so long ago, in a place, not so far away, the STAR WARS theme ruled the LEGO investment world. Iconic LEGO sets like the 10179 Millennium Falcon, 7191 X-Wing Fighter and 10030 Star Destroyer yielded fantastic returns on investment. Almost every STAR WARS set had better annual returns than the standard LEGO set and were universally thought of by LEGO collectors and investors as “can't lose” investments. But over the last several months, the LEGO STAR WARS theme has slowly started t
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Every time you are confronted with a Lego set for sale your brain makes a decision on whether or not it would be a good purchase. Sometimes people put a lot of thought into this decision, other times not and it’s an impulse buy. Usually the main question that you ask yourself internally (if buying for investment) is can I make a profit on this set? This is often quickly followed by shall I buy it now or wait for a better deal at a later time? It’s this later decision that I’d like to examin
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I think at this point, we all know about all the scams that exist out there that we must tread as Lego buyers: Drop shippers, shipping scammers on Ebay, Craigslist scammers who want you to wire them money, and even companies that are somwhat deceitful in their practices. But there are more parts to being safe as a Lego Investor/Collector that we must be aware of: CyberSpace issues. It seems silly that this amazing thing called the internet has brought us all of this joy, made this site possible
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So I wanted to write up another article about drop-shipping scams, specifically on Ebay, that looked more at the problems it causes to everyone, not just the people directly involved. I will spare you the long explanations of drop-shipping scams and how they work as they are covered in great detail in two articles shown below: Drop Shipping Lego: How to Avoid Being Scammed – By Talon http://blog.brickpicker.com/drop-shipping-lego-how-to-avoid-being-scammed/ Lego Larcency: Scams, Schemes, and Sha
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Welcome to Week 4 of the Top 10 Best Selling LEGO sets as listed by LEGO S@H. How does this Blog work? While the LEGO Shop at Home best sellers list is updated weekly, we will be updating it every Wednesday. The list includes only sets. Minifigures, keychains, Pick a Brick and other products are excluded. If not enough sets are listed on the S@H Best Sellers page, the weekly entry could be shor
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Welcome to first monthly entry of the Top 10 Selling sets as listed by LEGO S@H. As you may remember, this blog started as a weekly posting, but we figured it would be better to compile the data throughout the month and publish it all in one time. This reduces the probability of having less than 10 sets every other week. How does this Blog work? While the LEGO Shop at Home best sellers list is updated daily, we will be updating it every
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This blog follows on from my previous blogs presenting the top 20 sets in terms of secondary market price growth according to the data we have available here on Brickpicker. This update will be based on values as at the end of Mar-14. This means comparisons in the “Last Rank” column of the tables will be comparing movements from the Feb-14 positions. Again, here are some notes on the scope before I begin: I have not restricted the qualifying sets by size or age or any other dimension Inform
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We all love lists, right? Welcome to what I expect to be a new weekly blog entry for Brickpicker: Top 10 Best Sellers at LEGO Shop at Home. As most of you know, LEGO’s online site includes a feature showcasing the Top 25 selling sets, updated on a daily basis. While this list is definitely a small sample, I believe it can help us gauge what’s popular with end consumers at any given time, so that when retirement time approaches we have at least an idea of how well
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Welcome to the second entry of the Top 10 Best Selling LEGO sets as listed by LEGO S@H. Given that this is only the second entry of the series, I wanted to take the time and remind our readers about what they can expect: While the LEGO Shop at Home best sellers list is updated weekly, we will be updating it every Wednesday. The list includes only sets. Minifigures, keychains, Pick a Brick and other products are excl
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Welcome to Week 3 of the Top 10 Best Selling LEGO sets as listed by LEGO S@H. How does this Blog work? While the LEGO Shop at Home best sellers list is updated weekly, we will be updating it every Wednesday. The list includes only sets. Minifigures, keychains, Pick a Brick and other products are excluded. If not enough sets are listed on the S@H Best Sellers page, the weekly entry could be shor
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There have been many recent articles, all over the web, in local papers and on the radio. They're saying that LEGO investing is better than gold. It's sensationalist. It excites the imagination. It sounds easy. These articles point up the sets that have increased in value many times above their initial costs. Dreamers sweep store shelves expecting instant returns and easy money. Conventional wisdom says that you'll never lose money on LEGO, it will always be worth at least what you bough
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Throughout the Golden Age of Baseball, when Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays patrolled the game's outfields, baseball writers and fans used three primary statistics to explain a player's offensive prowess: runs, home runs and RBI. This had been the case for a hundred years, but in 1977 a little known statistician named Bill James produced a magazine called Bill James Baseball Abstract. In it he presented a number of new statistics that more accurately represented how baseball players created or sav
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As mentioned in other blogs and some of my forum posts, I have begun a Lego business online using an Ebay Store. A large part of my business is from parting out sets; The practice of of selling the minifigures and certain desirable parts of a set (like a vehicle or building) separately to make money on the set. This is a very common (but time consuming) practice for many different people ranging from businesses to people like me. On the outside, it seems like a fairly understandable, and even he
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A disclaimer before we start: I have thoroughly enjoyed the previews for The Lego Movie. I giggled at times and was generally pretty excited at the prospect of seeing it in theaters. I've also been checking out the sets from the movie and reading/watching reviews of the builds. Overall, I think they are kinda eccentric and zany, like my uncle Jim after a lot of 'eggnog' at Christmas, dancing to Santa Baby with my wife's scarf. Fun, fun, fun! Sadly, fun alone does not profits make; does fun and p
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LEGO, officially known as The LEGO Group, is currently the #1 toy maker in the world. But did you know at one time, it was on its knees and at the edge of bankruptcy? This article speaks of the Danish toy maker and how they pulled just the right strings to make this remarkable and educational toy a success in a declining toy market. It's the story about the "Eye of the Lego Tiger" and how a company went from one extreme to the other and back again. Past Days of Glory Once upon a time bef
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There have been a lot of changes since LEGO almost went bankrupt in the early 2000s: licensed sets became the norm, better designs started coming into production andLEGO became the world’s largest toy manufacturer. All this changes and subsequent success created a new breed of investing: buying sets and holding after their retirement date. For years, this alternative market went unnoticed, propping up the prices of popular sets such as the 10179 Millenium Falcon. As expected, however, highe
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Will box damage reduce the value of my sets when it is time to sell them? We have all asked ourselves this question at some point, and it is actually seen on the forums relatively often, so I think it is time to evaluate a little more in depth how much does box condition really matter for the LEGO investor once it is time to get rid of some of those sets we have stored in our closets (or whole rooms, if you are lucky). There are very different types of damage to consider, ranging from the typi
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Anybody who buys LEGO sets and bricks daydreams about a future in which one does not need to go to the store to obtain them. There will be no need to waste a half an hour or more in time and several dollars in gas from the drive going to their destination, not to mention wear and tear on the vehicle. Not only that, but the time wasted being in the store and having to wait in long lines will be saved. In addition, there is a possibility that after all the wasted time, gas and effort, the retailer
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As a casual LEGO collector, I always keep an eye out for sets that are worth investing in. Obviously, the intention and goal of LEGO investing is ultimately to make a profit. Therefore, it is crucial for the casual investor to maximize their investment dollar which is usually achieved only after a set is retired, or in LEGO parlance, reached its end of life (EOL). It is no secret that the single biggest factor in LEGO investing and set appreciation is EOL. In simplest terms, no EOL, no profit. F
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There have been several articles in the site about pretty much every single aspect of LEGO Investing: from how to store your sets to some of the "Hazzards", as Quacs explained in his blog article However, there are some other factors we all need to consider when we decide to enter this particular way of investment: the costs. I know it sounds pretty obvious, but I strongly believe that a lot of people even in this same forum, are not thoroughly consider all the costs they are incurring at the d
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As a child, comics were a part of my daily life. I loved everything about them. I often escaped into the shadows with The Bat, learned with the other Mutants at the school for the gifted. I even tried to digest how a pair of glasses disguised an extraordinary man of steel into an everyday Joe. Comic Books will always have a special place in my heart. Now, fast forward I’m a grown man, a father, a husband, a LEGO fan. Do I read comics? No. That time has long since passed. Though comic books are n
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You called in sick to work, hang out in the room closest to the front door, you turn down the volume on the TV. What are you waiting for? You are waiting for that package to arrive one of the three big carriers, USPS(United States Postal Service), UPS(United Parcel Service) or FEDEX(Federal Express). What is in that package? The LEGO set that you ordered a few days ago. You have tracked it online at least 50 times since you placed the order so you know where it came from, where it has been and m
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While I was writing a review for the 10174 AT-ST UCS set I came across a phenomenon that had me intrigued. It was quite evident that the set had experienced a recent surge in secondary market price growth. After finishing that review I have been researching other sets that seem to share this second wind renaissance. Firstly I’m going to repeat a bit of the information from the 10174 review to set the scene before moving onto a few other prominent examples of second wind growth. 10174 AT-ST Lo
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With so many total sets available and #chaos in full effect as predicted by J-Mack, I thought it would be useful for new(er) members to the site and to Lego investing on the whole to take a look at how a short or shorter than expected run can greatly impact the value of a set. Without further adieu... The Mine 4204 June 1st, 2012 – Nov. 29th 2014 CAGR: 0.05% I loved 4204 The Mine. It had a lot
