A happy belated New Year to all my readers, all nine of you. May this coming year bring you discounted exclusives, 80% clearance finds in out of the way stores on long retired merchandise and superb buyer feedback in 2016. I'd also like to quickly take a sentence to remind readers that the Mack's, a.k.a. The Founders, a.k.a. The Collectors, a.k.a. The Guys Who Made Me Take the Blue Pill, are still raising money for St. Paul's and it would be a darn shame not to support such a great cause. I could cite a boatload of research that supports the notion that giving money away makes the giver undeniably happier, or could chastise those that read content (including this rubbish) but don't want to give back in any way, but I'd rather give a polite reminder that time is running out to buy tickets and the sets up for grabs could easily be the centerpiece of a budding collection. At the minimum, there should be lots of great stockroom photo sharing when these sets find new homes, and hopefully some education for little Macks.

Back to business. What is BigBlueDogBricks targeting for 2016 in terms of exclusives? I'm sure everyone is waiting with bated breath to see what Ol' Blue is favoring, but I'll give a little background in case you are new to my flow. This will be my fourth year dabbling in Brickvesting (yeah, I'm starting to feel a little bro-ish using that term...might have to coin something new) and I am now confident classifying myself as a solid middle tier investor. I see lots of new members posting in various forums and can only assume you might want to hear a little advice on what kind of buying someone who was once like you is preparing to do.

Side anecdote: Just before Christmas I was contacted by a fellow in the Greater Toronto Area who wanted to buy a couple of large sets. We chatted back and forth and he correctly assumed that because I had so many listings I was doing this as more than a casual hobby (like someone 'accidentally' has hundreds of Lego sets for sale at the same time?) and he asked a few questions about Lego investing and such. Yeah, not much of an anecdote yet...Anyway, he tells me that along with his brother they are getting into Lego and think investing is cool. They opt not to buy any of my sets (although they were underpriced from ebay sales around 20-25%, and I sold a couple of the sets they were interested in within a week for more than what they thought was too steep) but he did end with an interesting question – so you're buying tons of Pet Shops and Tower Bridges now, right? I chuckled, because I think people often get drawn to Brickpicker and think the big shiny sets are the easiest way to get started. I am a prophet preaching Anything But Modulars now, though, as I believe there are quite a few better strategies to be successful that are faster and provide a greater overall return than simply picking the current oldest modular and throwing money at it. Worst. Strategy. Ever.

So, if you are relatively new or just don't have a lot of capital to invest what should you buy from the exclusives? Well, I've ordered my 2016 picks chosen from all the sets under the 'Hard to Find' label on Shop at Home (Canada), along with a quick rundown of why it deserves that ranking. I'll be back soon to talk about large (but not exclusive) sets that are on my buy list, and finish up with a smaller sets hit list. Fun!

BigBlueDogToys Anything But Modulars Buy List Order, Winter 2016, Exclusives

Ewok Village 10236

Current Amazon.com sales rank: 149 in building sets

I'm sure plenty of other investors have this at or near the top of their list. It is the oldest Star Wars large (not officially a UCS) set and, in case you don't know, Star Wars is totally a thing with people. They by and large seem to love it, if box office results indicate anything. It was listed as 'check back in February' for a few months (but was always available to buy at other retailers, at least in Canada) and is now listed as temporarily out of stock. Rumors have maybe three or four large Star Wars sets in the pipeline, so something seemingly has to give. I'm not advocating going crazy for a small to mid-sized investor (I have four from a flash sale from Walmart Canada) but it will probably be the first set I buy during the next double VIP + promo event. If you want to read a lot of Ewok love (or conversely a lot of Ewok hate) the dedicated thread is long and I can summarize: opinion seems divided, not much in the middle. I'm a lover, not a fighter, so these furballs are alright with me. Despite a good sales rank, it hasn't been around nearly as long as the modulars on my dishonorable mentions list so I'll let its current relative popularity slide.

The S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier 76042

Current Amazon.com sales rank: 344 in Building Sets

A couple of whispers from far off places (Singapore, if you don't care to read the retiring soon thread religiously) have this retiring sooner rather than later. Limit is 1 from Shop at Home. It is massive. Ewoks are running circles around it according to sales rank. So why buy? Unlikely to ever be remade, I'd say, or at least not anytime soon. Difficult for small and medium-sized investors to hoard a set this large and expensive. Marvel fatigue might be setting in a bit (perhaps more of a Superheroes malaise, really) although I think the core fan base will still buy. Hasn't been around that long, but I'd still rather use double VIP to get a couple in the spring and then reevaluate.

The Fairground Mixer 10244

Current Amazon.com sales rank: 840 in Building Sets

Overall the worst sales rank of the sets I've chosen to focus on today, which makes me happy. Almost swapped this with the Helicarrier...consider it a toss up for me. A poor seller in a crowded Lego release schedule seems very likely to get the axe sooner rather than later. I have a couple now but would actually be quite happy to aim for double digits here. I think it is a unique kind of set and is priced well for Canada! I was happy to grab Maersk EEEs when they were sitting with the retiring soon label for months and others were buying (presumably) modulars. I've sold some of those EEEs while those that invested in other large sets are potentially still sitting on them, and I've got cash profits to put into another hidden gem. It will be interesting to see if a third carnival type set gets released this summer, or if the Friends rollercoaster (heavily rumored) and other fairground sets are released in its stead. This summer the set will turn two, it isn't a great seller at the moment and doesn't get a ton of chatter on Brickpicker. I am going to throw a little money down on this one. Or a lot.

The Simpsons House 71006

Current Amazon.com sales rank: 229 in Building Sets

I loved this set a couple months ago, and still love it now. Solid seller, not as flashy in sales numbers as a few other very large sets. Read more here: 

Sandcrawler 75059

Current Amazon.com sales rank: 285

Second oldest Star Wars UCS-type set after Ewok Village. Reasoning is largely the same as Ewok Village, as I think this won't make it to 2017, comes from a hugely popular line and looks ballin'. I nod to EV first as I am afraid the Ewoks might not make it until Q4 (a.k.a. Retirement season) but I'm willing to gamble the Sandcrawler will. Also use some Helicarrier reasoning here: massive set, big price tag and big box keeps a lot of smaller and even mid-sized investors from going too deep on it (at least most of them).

There you have it – this is a shopping list of what I'd like to nab during the spring double VIP. I'm not going to panic and grab them earlier as I am reasonably confident the sets on this list will not suddenly become unavailable permanently in February, and every percent discount or promo makes me more competitive in a crowded marketplace. I'm not going to order more than one or two of each, and not in quick succession or anything crazy that would merit a ban hammer, but will spread them over a week or two as I've done every promo period in the last couple years.

Honorable Mentions

Volkswagen T1 – Sales rank 385. Sales number indicates perhaps (finally) a little buyer fatigue? It has been out for seemingly forever and the new box design in 2015 virtually guaranteed (at least to me) that there would still be more time in 2016 to get more (not that I need more). I'll reevaluate in a few months. Those hoping The Lego Group wouldn't want three large car models on the shelves at the same time must be gutted.

Mini Cooper – Sales rank 495. Slower than the T1, so an argument could be made that it might be retired ahead of the T1, which will become the new Death Star a.k.a. Live Star.

Sydney Opera House – Sales rank 412. Tower Bridge is 183. Significant difference? As far as I know, the Opera House doesn't have a new box design, while the Tower Bridge does. I'd wager this goes in 2016 and the Tower Bridge stays. Just a hunch. That being said, I personally don't like the Opera House as much as a few of the others on this list, and I don't have enough money to go 5-10 deep on every set. I can't see myself wanting/getting more than 4-5 of these. It has also been discounted in other markets which has generally been linked to sets that are on the way out. If my sales stay strong this might get some love in the next few months.

Dishonorable Mentions

Pet Shop – Sales rank 89. 89! That is gross. I think modulars look like easy money and lots of folks are drawn in by them, but if it keeps selling this well I'm not convinced it will even retire this fall. If you are starting out, no problem grabbing one or two, but I think it is insane to tie up too much capital here. Plenty of other sets out there that should/could retire sooner and give a cash return faster.

Palace Cinema – Sales rank 145. Also gross! If the Pet Shop didn't retire, then the Cinema HAS TO, right? AMITRITE? Perhaps not. Given sales numbers, why shouldn't the Lego Group have five modulars available at the same time? As long as investors keep stocking them away, I suspect they'll retire slowly.

The difficulty for me is that in a perfect world, I would have piles and piles of each set, especially exclusives but that isn't realistic. I require stock turnover and sales to drive new investment, and my success (or failure) to move stock dictates approximately what I can spend. The spring double VIP event will be a good time to add a few large sets that I hope/expect/pray will retire at some point in 2016. When each set starts doing the in and out of stock dance, I'll probably squeeze some funds together to buy some from another large retailer, but I like to get at least a couple of each targeted set from Shop at Home in the mid to late cycle of its life. If you think I should be buying more Pet Shops, sound off in the comments section!

Veegs (BigBlueDogBricks)

No quiet "moo moo" noises being heard regarding the 70810 MetalBeard's Sea Cow set.  It's quite impressive when any set increases over 40% from MSRP ($249.99) within only 2 months of "availability" *.  

Currently, MISB prices are $350 on average (bricklink, amazon, ebay, brickpicker)
* note: availability varied by region and retailer.

While most Lego collectors and investments were buying sets such as The Tumbler, Death Star, Pet Shop and UCS X-wing in the closing months of 2015, 70810 was quietly going in and out of stock before disappearing.   Not everyone was ignoring this set or quite by surprise of it's recent performance.  Check-out the forum topic for this set (link below).

So now that it's "retired", why the 40% jump in value in 2 months?  "Supply vs. Demand" in my opinion.

• It appears Lego didn't produce as many 70810s as other Exclusive sets based on reported box tape seal codes.
• Maybe the set lost it's initial appeal.  The Lego Movie debuted 2 years ago. Many of its features become available in cheaper sets such as 70816 Benny's Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! and Emmit's 70818 Double-Decker Couch.  There was also a larger version of Metalbeard available (70807 The Movie MetalBeard's Duel)
• The $250 cost was deemed too expensive.

We may never know why this set was ignored by many at retail.   One thing was certain, the majority of online 70810 reviews were  positive. 

Regarding the long-term aspects, only time will tell if demand continues to make this set rapidly appreciate.  The upcoming Lego The Movie sequel will most help as well as if Metalbeard appears in other Lego movies (Ninjago, Batman, etc...).

For more information about this set, please visit the following brickpicker.com page and the original Designer Video.

http://www.brickpicker.com/bpms/set.cfm?set=70810-1

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:

1. While the LEGO Shop at Home best sellers list is updated weekly, we will be updating it every Wednesday.
2. The list includes only sets. Minifigures, keychains, Pick a Brick and other products are excluded.
3. I will comment only on those sets that are new to the list, or that for whatever reason may stand out on a particular week. For example, if a set has been on the list for 10 weeks in a row, then it may warrant a comment or two.
4. I am keeping an Excel spreadsheet with each set that appears on the list, its weekly placing (if any) and the total number of weeks that it has been on the list. I will try to publish it for the first time in one of the next few entries.
5. For now, this is a US based best sellers list. I am still trying to figure out how to do other regions.

Pretty simple!

Now that we got that out of the way, let's take a look at this week's Top 10.

Top 10 Best Selling Sets (LEGO S@H)

#1: 40201 Valentines Cupid Dog - Previous Week: #3 - Buy Now! 

#2: 10251 Brick Bank - Previous Week: #1 - Buy Now!

#3: 75827 Firehouse Headquarters - Previous Week: #2 - Buy Now!

#4: 75105 Millennium Falcon - Previous Week: #4 - Buy Now!
 

#5: 75132 First Order Battle Pack - Previous Week: N/A - Buy Now!

On the previous week's entry, some people were surprised there were not battle packs in the Top 10. The First Order Battle Pack changes that this week and places in the Top 5! Battle packs in general are pretty popular, as they allow builders to acquire a decent number of figures at a decent price. This one in particular is perfect for building up your First Order Army.

#6: 75099 Rey's Speeder - Previous Week: N/A - Buy Now!

Another newcomer. This little set is not, in my opinion, one of the most interesting builds of the Force Awakens first wave, but it definitely is a cost effective way to acquire Rey and one of the first ships we got to see in the movie.

#7: 75102 Poe's X-Wing - Previous Week: #7 - Buy Now!
 

#8: Doctor Who - Previous Week: #9 - Buy Now!
 

#9: 21028 New York City - Previous Week: #6 - Buy Now!
 

#10: 75060 Slave 1 - Previous Week: N/A - Buy Now!

First UCS set on the list! It is always good to see such expensive sets on the Best Sellers list. Slave 1 has had a pretty big following since the Original Trilogy was released, so it will be interesting to see how often we see it placing in the Top 10.

As always, feel free to leave your views and suggestions in the comments section below!

Thanks for reading.

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 a set sold through it’s lifetime. 

I will also be excluding (basically skipping) those entries on S&H that are not sets. For example, if a baseplate is currently sitting in place number 5, I will replace it with the set currently in place number 6.

As far as the schedule and format is concerned, this entry will be posted weekly, as daily seems as overkill to me. Also, unlike most of my other articles, I will try to keep it short and keep my comments about each set to a couple sentences (Maybe none if a set has been on the list every week). Other than that, I will shoot for Wednesday night releases of the updated entry.

Hope you enjoy them!

Top 10 Best Selling Sets (LEGO S@H)

#1: 10251 Brick Bank - Buy Now!
No surprise at the top. The Brick Bank is the newest modular and was introduced at the beginning of the year, so we can expect a rush of buyers as collectors and AFOLs look to expand their modular streets.

#2: 75827 Ghostbusters HQ - Buy Now!
Another of the long awaited new releases, the Ghostbusters HQ has involved in some controversy since it was announced. It will be interesting to see the reaction of buyers once reviews start coming in.

#3: 40201 Valentine’s Cupid Dog - Buy Now!
Much like the Bat and Snowman released by the end of 2015, this little set is one of the seasonal sets LEGO releases to match specific holidays. With Valentine’s Day a little more than a month away, it will be good to pay attention and see if there is any potential for this set in the short term.

#4: 75105 Millenium Falcon - Buy Now!
With Star Wars fever still in the air, this set was bound to be somewhere in the Top 5. As always, the most iconic Star War ship proves to be extremely popular, though this very same factor will probably mean a longer than average shelf life.

#5: 75117 Kylo Ren - Buy Now!
The new buildable figures introduced by LEGO seem to be popular with LEGO fans. I am not particularly into them, but it is no surprise that the star villain of the new trilogy occupies one of the higher spots. Even though his character may have disappointed some people…

#6: 21028 New York City - Buy Now!
The highlight of the new “Skylines” line in the Architecture theme. I actually really like these little sets, and with the proven performance of the theme in general, you can be sure this one will be sought after once it retires (Yes, I know it’s way too early to even think about that!)

#7: 75102 Poe’s X-Wing - Buy Now!
Extremely popular and great looking ship from The Force Awakens that has proven to be a somewhat successful flip for some.

#8: 75139 Battle on Takodana - Buy Now!
Another new release based off one of the best scenes in TFA, in my opinion. Part of its popularity may also be due to the fact that it is a cheaper alternative to acquire the Kylo Ren minifigure.

#9: 21304 Doctor Who - Buy Now!
Doctor Who fans can finally get their hands on the latest IDEAS set released, and by the looks of it that is precisely what they have been doing. The set is very well done, and its core fan base large and passionate enough that I think has the potential to be a top performer once retired.

#10: 75114 First Order Stormtrooper - Buy Now!
Finally, we close the list with another buildable figure, the FO Stormtrooper. I am somewhat surprised that this one managed to edge out the cool looking Captain Phasma, but I guess it just has more mainstream appeal.

So that’s it for this week! Feel free to leave your comments below, I am also pushing to make these articles more interactive and engaging for all!

Note: Be on the lookout for a new thread in the forum with an announcement about my future plans for the Brickpicker blog. I have some interesting ideas and will be including the community more and more in future entries. I will also update you on what types of articles I will be focusing on, and when you can expect them!

Thanks for reading.

Good news for Lego Ideas completionists and set 21301 fans, the Birds set is being heavily discounted by Lego store and shop at home web sites.  The latest US-based sale seems to be working as shop at home is now sold-out and inventory is drying up at their physical mall stores.  This is also a good sign this set is near retirement.

I like this set's investment potential compared to most sets since Birds doesn't seem to be heavily hoarded by resellers and the production run seems limited like others in the Ideals theme.  While 21301 is not a flashy set, it's a fun build and looks great displayed.  The newly discounted price of $35.98 is also an attractive deal for a high quality set such as this.  

My recommendation is two thumbs up for both investors and builders.  It also doesn't hurt that past retired CUUSOO / Ideas set have at least doubled in value from retail price.  There is also the possibility that future similar sets are released that have a new set of birds or small creatures that would make it a "series," thus more valuable and collectible.  We can only hope...

Here is the list of current, former, and upcoming polybags in the LEGO world.  If you've found a polybag that's not on this list, or have any update to give us, please note it in the comments below.  This information is put together from a number of different sources on the Internet, including real world reports.  Availability in your area may vary.  This information is US-based.

Polybags Currently Available

Polybags Coming Soon

Polybags That Have Not Been Sighted

Polybags No Longer Available

Aha! You likely supposed this thread was going to be about the much-derided but wildly successful (for investors) Delorean Ideas set. You couldn't be more wrong, even if you were wiping out polybag stocks across entire retail shelves. Granted, the example given might fall more under 'moral' wrongs, and doesn't fit this example well, but here we are. We might as well get used to tenuously related metaphors and similes, as I just used my best one above and it goes downhill from here.

Wait – I was trying to get to something important there, before you derailed my train of thought with your insistence that you could be more wrong and in so many more appropriate ways. Concerns noted. If you'll allow me, I'd like to introduce yet another potentially recurring feature: Time travel back in time and tell my younger Veegs-self what I've learned about life, love and plastic bricks.

In this post I'd like to talk about exclusives, in particular modulars and Ultimate Collector Series Star Wars sets. When I first started investing Fire Brigades were widely available with a limit of 99 at Shop at Home and the thought of being banned for buying too much of an addictive and profitable toy wasn't even a twinkle in eye of the CEO of Banhammers at TLG. My younger self bought Fire Brigades. I also bought some UCS Obi-Wan's Jedi Starfighters at MSRP. (I later got some 50% off from ToysRUs Canada, which was a much wiser investment). I adored the, sometimes hefted them to appreciate their size and weight, but mostly they just sat there. I didn't have enough to start selling them off for small gains (if I had double digits, perhaps I would have let a couple go at every price bump over MSRP) because I'm stubborn and because the forums preach patience and dumping retiring/retired sets to invest in currently available sets which I would then have to hold even longer seemed unpalatable.

This is in no way hating on UCS sets or modulars in any way. My issue was, as a new investor, I got caught up in some EOL hype (well, I use the term hype loosely, as the forums were a little quieter back then) and put more than half of my capital in these two sets. True story, I still have one of each. So what was the problem? It turned out that EOL chatter wasn't on point (more seasoned now, I grin every time someone posts about surefire news of retirements from Lego employees or gut feelings or because the set number got burned into their toast that morning) and my capital sat around for quite some time. That is definitely part of whole 'investing' thing, and I get that, but as new investors now should they really be plowing their cash into the Pet Store? I'm here to talk about why that is perhaps not the optimal way to scale up their – or your - enterprise, unless you have a heck of a lot more capital than I did starting out (a few thousand Canadian dollars which could nab you a Chima Speedorz at MSRP on a good day). If that is the case, just do the Emazers and buy double digits of every set over $100 and chill.

What I did have success with was buying the biggest set of a couple themes close to retirement and managed to turn those around very quickly (Black Pearls, Queen Anne, Public Transport, etc). I also was able to grab a few of the $20-25 sets (I still love you, Friends Butterfly Beauty Salon!) that looked promising and turned those around, too. Not only that, but I spent quite a bit of time trolling stores looking for clearance sets and Polly. She is a bit plastic-y for some, but when she has a low buy-in it is hard not to make some money off her. It helped me get to Powerseller status on ebay, taught me a heck of a lot about regularly listing, packing and shipping sets as well as getting regular deposits into my paypal account, which really motivated me to keep on keeping on.

Bottom line, if I could go back in time I probably would have advised a younger (handsomer, obviously) me to get just one Fire Brigade for the personal stash but put more money/time/effort into sets that could be turned around in 12-18 months, max. I'd also tell him to research polybags a little more, because finding some of the more profitable ones requires luck, true, but also sometimes a little perseverance. I'd also tell him to embrace the style of a QFLL (Quick Flipping Low Life for those new to Brickpicker) on these polybags and buy the good ones en masse. If you get flamed for it from non-investing civilians, consider it a badge of honor....okay, fine, leave a couple on the shelf if it helps you sleep better, but try to find a way to get selling sooner rather than later. Having sold well over a hundred Zombie Coffin Cars, I can honestly tell you I wish I had someone purchased ten thousand of them, or more. I'm that confident they would eventually all find buyers.

So where does that leave you, confused reader? If you are new to Brickpicker you will read a lot of threads and witness a lot a people boasting about buying xx amount of set xx, and how much they are loving it (without knowing what 'it' is, sometimes). Ignore those posters and do some research to make some educated guesses (nothing is certain, but educated guesses seem better than throwing darts at the Shop at Home theme screen and buying based on that method). I don't want to come out and tell anyone what to invest in, but I do think a beginner is better served without tying up capital in huge (hoarded?) sets and getting inventory that can move a little faster, on average. Perhaps, like, 88 mph?

Reading some of the threads on the forum, members sometimes bring up the amount of vendors that are selling a particular LEGO item. This made me think about coming up with a way to see how many people are selling an item and then what the sales rank of that item is.  This can be a good indicator for you aggressive sellers out there to see a void that might need to be filled.  If you see a low number of vendors with a lower numbered sales rank (lower than 100), this could be a great opportunity to unload some of those sets.  If you see a  high number sales rank with a high number of vendors, you might want to either hold on for a while and see what happens or just unload them at the best price you can.  Make sure you look at what the status of the set is before making any decision.  Is it retired? New?  On discount for extended periods of time.  All of this will play a factor in what your decision may be.  If you ever have questions, feel free to write one of the more experienced members in the forum, a mod or Ed/Me to ask for advice and see what their thoughts are on the set.

If you find the information presented below of value to you, we can make this a weekly update or a full time report on the site to see what sets are moving and where vendors are starting to migrate to.  This information is available on the site, but I am trying to put it together in one easy to read place.  If you have suggestions on what might make it more useful, let me know here. The are the Top 500 LEGO items ordered by lowest sales rank.

So, what is BigBlueDogBricks (Brick Classifieds Store) up to, you ask? Swimming in sales is the answer, and since those sales have resulted in money, I'm swimming in cash flow. Granted it is mostly just numbers in my Paypal account, so the swimming is more metaphorical than anything else, but I'm definitely in a Micheal Phelps kinda place. So, with money coming in from sales and inventory moving pretty much as projected I have some spare capital to reinvest. I believe the time has come for me to start getting to my magic number for 71006 The Simpson's House.

Pros:
The Simpsons! It is pretty self-explanatory. Regardless of your opinion on the show, the decline of the show, the funniness or lack of laughs you get from it, etc., it is pretty clear that The Simpsons are an indelible part of American (Canadian) pop culture in a way that not too many other phenomena are. I also play The Simpsons: Tapped Out and, based on the length and (because it is still working on my phone) success of the game, as well as their regular Sunday timeslot, the Simpsons are still at least somewhat relevant to some people in this day and age. Ratings are still around 5 million per episode according to my expert wikipedia research, and deadline.com has them ranked 35^th last year in all shows in the 18-49 demographic, with the listing containing about 200 shows total. I actually think that is pretty solid for a show that has been around as long as the Simpsons and tells me there are probably enough folks like me out there that like both Lego and the Simpsons enough to want to build a brickfield, uh, Springfield.

First in line: The line was followed (obviously) by the 71016 Kwik-E-Mart. The Simpson's House preceded it. Enough said/written to get me on board. That isn't all, though, as rumors (unless someone has something more credible than the rumors that can be read by googling 'Lego Simpsons set 2016 – that is pretty much all the effort/research I put into this article) indicate that another set is slated for a probable June release in the form of the Android's Dungeon. If this comes to pass it might be a sign that the first in the series is on its last legs. I find it difficult to imagine three Simpsons modular style sets available at once. That being said, it is possible that TLG simply slaps another 'check back in XX' label and waits to see how much demand there is for X number of additional production runs. Since everything is #CHAOS, it is hard to accurately assess how the first in the line will fade away, but I do know I'd rather get some now rather than scramble later.

Gingerbread House! Insert Homer drool! Check out the sold listings for the Holiday Train. As of this writing (Nov. 19, 2015) the last half dozen have sold for around $35 CAD + shipping.

Click here to view recent sold listings of the Holiday Train (#40138)

That is absolutely amazing for a free set, especially for folks who have trouble getting discounts on exclusives, don't live near a Lego brand store or who are like me and see this as the best 'discount' they'll probably ever get on some sets. I suspect that the Gingerbread House is going to do similarly well, if not better, and almost certainly not worse. I hope. And think. That means I have a chance to get a sizeable discount on sets that are hard to get under MSRP in Canada, and it is hard to say 'no' to gingerbread. Or Gingerbread men; they practically beg you to put them in your mouth and crush them with your mandibles.

Currency Exchange: The state of the Canadian dollar makes the price difference between US and CAN MSRP very palatable for us Canucks. I won't pretend to know what the currency situation will look like when I actually want to sell these sets, but I certainly am happier with recent pricing for Canadians (as opposed to paying, say $50 more per modular when the two currencies were essentially trading at par).

Cons
Not many in the numbers I'm hoping to hit. If I can acquire a half dozen with double VIP plus a sweet limited edition Christmas set, I think it will be about the cheapest I can get it – at least in Canada. This buy in, coupled with the strength of the US dollar compared to the CAN dollar, really reduces my feeling of risk and the potential payout is pretty solid. I suppose if your goal is to get fifty or sixty of these, emazers-style, you need to tie up a heck of a lot more capital, space and potentially time, but for a small to medium-sized investor, ensuring as many exclusives as possible were purchased with a maximum discount or with the best freebies gives peace of mind. At least to me.

Limit 1 – For those without friends and family, or not close to a Lego brand store, this limit might get you a dance with the ban hammer. Tread carefully! I don't use my friends and family buyers very often, but I truly believe that the gingerbread house is tantalizing enough to get me to go through the effort of organizing some purchases. Despite the potential ban hammer with a limit 1 set if you get a little buying-happy, this limit also makes it more difficult for others to grab these five at a time, and even if you have contacts to buy sets on your behalf, their account will be limited as well anyway. This will likely discourage more casual investors or new(er) investors from hoarding a stockpile, which will hopefully reduce competition when this set does retire. BigBlue obviously thinks the effort is worth it!

Another obvious con is potential EOL – will it hit the two year mark in 2016 and keep going strong or will it be more of a Sea Cow style run? As a smaller investor, I'm willing to gamble it retires at some point in 2016, but even if it doesn't, I have a diverse enough portfolio that sitting on a few of these won't wreak economic hardship on me or mine. I'm lucky to be in a good place where I can carefully plan as opposed to playing the F5 game (not that I'm not into finger-jamming fun – just ask any of my, um, 'friends') and I'm also lucky enough to be able to sit on six of these or so without needing them to retire in the next twelve months at some point. Now is a great time to buy in if you have the capital, space and want to diversify your portfolio.

So, you have found Brickpicker and probably have already bought a number of sets that you plan on selling at some point in the future. Or, maybe you are a somewhat seasoned investor that has accumulated a large number of sets and are just now starting to sell your first few items. Either way, I wanted to give you a by no means comprehensive list of best practices for listing your items for sale. Whether you list on BP’s Brick Classifieds, eBay or some other site, I think these basic first steps will help increase your sales and reduce the risk of potential issues. 

1 - General Tips 

Before getting into more details, I wanted to provide some general tips when listing LEGO in any platform. Following them will help you avoid some of the most common problems sellers encounter when selling online, and might also help you get more exposure to potential buyers. 

• DO avoid using “Good till’ Cancelled” listings. Using 30 day fixed price formats allows me to easily see which listings may need a price reduction; if I have had to relist more than once, then I usually do some quick research about current prices. Furthermore, I have read that eBay’s search engine tends to favor listings that are not “Good till’ Cancelled”.
• DO avoid Auctions. While this format has its uses (want to get rid of something quick or such), most of the time it can cause you to leave money on the table. Do some research, list fixed and get what you expect from your items!
• DO check before publishing your listings all the information is correct.
• DON’T list open box sets as New. While most of the time you should not have a problem when doing this, some buyers will receive a set with an open box, bags sealed, and still open Not as Described cases or a return request.
• DON’T list parted out sets as New. Pretty much the same reasoning as the point above. 

One last, but slightly controversial, suggestion for those using eBay: 

If you have reached the standards to become Top Rated, but are reluctant to because of the requirement to offer returns, understand that every single seller on eBay is already obligated to take returns. If you won’t take a set back, buyers have the option to simply open a SNAD case, which might count against you, and return the item just the same.

The 20% benefit in Final Value Fees is very much worth it! 

2 - Title

As a seller, we need to make sure that the title of your listing has as much relevant information as possible. As you can imagine, having the key words in the title will make your item more visible when buyers start looking for sets using a particular site’s search engine. 

Obviously, the most important things to include in the title are the brand (LEGO), the theme and the set number and name. While you could argue that most end buyers don’t have the set numbers memorized, some re-sellers and investors do, and this provides a faster way for them to find your listings as well.

Besides these key identifiers, let’s take a look at some other pieces of information that might save you time and help you avoid issues with your buyers. 

New Sets
You might think that if you are selling a new set then things should be pretty straightforward when listing, and I would agree. Unfortunately, there is a portion of buyers that simply don’t research or review the items they are purchasing as much as someone like you and me would. For this reason, I suggest you follow the Dos and Don’ts below. 

• DO NOT include condition qualifiers in your title that are subjective in nature. While it may be tempting to include the acronym MISB (Mint in Sealed Box) in your title, or description, this opens the door for buyer dissatisfaction and potential Not as Described cases. Box condition IS subjective. 
• DO include NIB (New in Box) if you are set in having one of these nice acronyms in your title. While I don’t do it myself, this one is a lot more straightforward and less subjective than some of the others. 
• DO include the phrase “Damaged Box” if your set shows more than average shelf-wear. This is a judgment call, but as a seasoned LEGO buyer you should have an idea of how much damage is too much. This will reduce the chances of a buyer buying without reading the description and then opening a SNAD case. 

Used Sets
As you can imagine, listing used sets requires a little more detail. While you still want to include the basic information (brand, theme, name and number), you also want to make sure you indicate whether the set is complete or incomplete. To me, this is the most important piece of information to have in a used set listing title. 

Also, make sure to indicate if the set includes the box and the instruction manuals. Once again, this saves the buyer time, as well as potential headaches for you. 

• DO mention if your listing is “Open box, sealed contents”. Some people care very little about the box or the fact that it is open. Indicating that the contents are sealed will lead most buyers to believe, as they should, that a set is new; just not what Paypal and eBay consider to be New.
• DO mention if a set is parted out. Make sure to be very clear about what component of the set you are selling.
• DO include if the set includes a new sticker sheet or set of instructions. Some buyers are really attracted to sets that have a “newer” feel; being able to apply stickers is a big one in my book. 

3 - Description

The description space is where you will make sure that you cover as many details as you need about your listing. 

• DO make sure to repeat the information from the title once again. As redundant as this sounds, it is very important that you reduce the chance of buyers assuming or misinterpreting information. Dealing with returns or other buyer issues will waste your time and keep you from making as much money as you should be!
• DO include details about your return policy and Unpaid Item Case timeline. I usually just let buyers know that I will give them 4 days to pay, unless they contact me about it, and will require that the items be returned to me in the same condition as they were originally sent.
• DO include a shipping policy. Let buyers know how you will be shipping the items, so they know you won’t just be slapping a label on a set and sending it away (please, don’t do this). Also, make sure to indicate if you will be requiring signature upon delivery (and you should for items over $750, or its foreign equivalent).
• DO take the time to find or make your own template. While this is not a deal breaker, it makes your listings look a little more professional than most.
• DON’T mention that the set is MISB (I know this is the second time I mention this). I usually have a little note that reads, “Box shows shelf-wear” on my listings; helps reduce expectations and makes me look better if the box arrives MINT. 

4 - Images

Obviously, another extremely important portion of any listing is a proper picture. While uploading photos to any site is pretty simple, I still wanted to leave you with some basic advice you can follow. 

• DO include your own picture. I for one had deviated from this a little as I found myself with less time to sell than I would have liked, but have started to do it again as I believe it does make a difference, especially for used sets and damaged boxes.
• DO print a sign with your username and place it in front of the item. This can help assure buyers you actually have the item and also, to a lesser extent, help create your brand.

Buying LEGO sets is extremely fun, but I believe selling is just as much! Hopefully this article has provided some basic advice you can follow while you start your journey into the very unique world of LEGO investing.

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to a (maybe?) regular update on what I'm currently investing in. While some would prefer to read through threads to listen to various members' opinions about what they are buying – or not buying, as the case may be, I think some folks would rather save some time and get the real scoop on what Big Blue Dog Bricks (BBDBricks) is up to. In this case, putting my money where my mouth is and telling readers what I bought this week, and why.

Big Blue Dog Bricks: What I'm Investing In Now: Guardians of the Galaxy Edition!

I'm a small to medium-sized investor, height wise, weight wise and probably also in terms of total investment. I've sold around 30k or so (before fees, shipping, taxes, etc) in the last three years, so not big time but not exactly green around the investment ears. I started small, with about 1k in the first several months and built from there, so I imagine this post might appeal to those either at a similar level of investment or who want to move from having a closet full of Lego to a basement full of Lego without being a hoarder. (For clarification, the Macks are hoarders, in that they don't sell their sets, while I regularly shift inventory to make room for more inventory)

What I bought this week: Guardians of the Galaxy Sets!

It is time, sheeple, to follow my advice and grab a few complete sets of this line before the ship sails off into the EOL night. As an investment vehicle this small theme within the larger Marvel line has quite a few things going for it right now and not too many negatives.

Pros:

Pretty solid movie: I double checked the box office haul just now and, if Wikipedia is to be trusted, made $774 million dollars worldwide, which is perhaps a little more than 'solid'. As a casual superheroes fan Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG) wasn't well known to me and I imagine others were also not as familiar with GotG storylines, villains and heroes as well. Despite not being as ubiquitous as Batman, Superman, Spiderman et al, the movie managed to do pretty darn well. If people will spend money to go the cinema, it stands to reason they might want licensed toys as well. Of course, that alone isn't enough of a pro on its own, so let's also consider some other positives.

18 month mark:
The Milano Spaceship Rescue and Starblaster Showdown have already moved to Sold Out on Shop at Home. They may or may not come back, but as of this writing that is where these two sets stand. The Knowhere Escape Mission is still available, but it seems unlikely it will not succumb to its fate sooner rather than later. This week I grabbed six Milano sets from Wal-mart.ca, 50% off. I laughed when I saw the sticker on the outside of the original Lego shipping boxes – Do Not Put on Shelf Before June 1, 2014. Clearly, initial demand didn't require Wal-mart to open these bad boys up, or they perhaps got stuck behind other boxes and patiently sat in a warehouse somewhere for the last year and a half. At any rate, they are mine, now, and I love them (especially at 50% off) . Even though these might not be available at the official Lego website, it should be possible to get creative and add these sets to your stash over the next couple months from other retailers. 18 months is a standard (well, I don't know if this word applies to any Lego sets anymore) cycle and I'm glad they seemingly aren't extending production for a full two years (or more) which would make the opportunity window potentially much smaller before new sets hit with the sequel. Now is a great time to buy, as your hold time will be significantly less than many who hit up clearance sales last fall or this winter/spring/summer.

Definite sequel coming:
Always good news – wait, almost always? My worries with slightly less well known licensed lines is that they will drift more towards Lone Ranger or Prince of Persia type returns. It is easy to forget that LR still had a large box office return even though critics didn't especially love it (or even like it). Box office alone doesn't an investment make. A sequel slated for 2017 means GotG will certainly be back in front of the consumer in perhaps another 18 months. This could be a double-edged sword if the new (probable) Lego sets are too similar to those out now, or worse, a straight up remake of, say, the Milano. That being said, if the current sets get the retired tag there should be a window to sell, and a savvy Brickpicker should have leaks about the upcoming sets long before the general public does, and can act accordingly. Although I am buying these sets, I'm certainly not going 20-30 complete sets deep. I think it might be hard to move that many at a decent return and the window is too short to go all in, at least for BigBlue.

Easily collectible:
Unlike a lot of other lines, there are only three sets. I think this is advantageous for a few reasons. Number one, easy to invest in. I've spent the last couple of weeks searching out deals to get complete sets for future selling. Number two, easy for buyers to get all three at once without breaking the bank. It appeals to a lot more collectors. I personally hate starting to collect (for myself or my family) in a theme with a crazy amount of sets as I am a bit neurotic and like to have ALL OF THEM. Having an uncompleted theme of all the Hobbit or Lord of the Rings sets makes my brain uneasy. I think the phenomena is common, or at least I tell myself that to make myself feel better. This is a neat and tidy package of three, relatively easy to list and ship together. Having one offs, even if you got them at a great discount, might be harder to move even if priced well. As a collector, I hate paying for shipping more than once, so if I want sets I seek out lots. I can't imagine the majority of future buyers wanting to shell out over MSRP + shipping for one of the three sets, when listings for the whole line are also available. Obviously, those buying gifts or completing partially collected sets would be interested in single set sales, but my gut says most serious buyers post-EOL are going to be collectors looking for all three. Prove me right, Marvel collectors!

Cons:
There are cons, and not the convicts terrorizing the Lego City sets. Although I'm pretty confident the sequel will do well at the box office, even if it isn't as good or nearly as good as the original, the threat of a remade Milano scares me. Chinese counterfeiters scare me too, but I still think the target market I'm selling to is interested in the sets and genuine Lego products. Another major con is I think these have a definite ceiling in terms of growth. I've been able to source my complete sets at around 40% off MSRP or better (for all three) with some careful planning and buying, so I think my risk level is quite low. That being said, I don't expect double MSRP by next Christmas and would be quite content with perhaps 20% over MSRP sales. Anything more would be a bonus, and I'm only looking to move around 5-10 lots, definitely not more. These are a nice tangential investment for me, and might be a good call for a small to medium-sized investor who is looking for a short(ish) hold with a decent return, provided they are carefully sourced with maximal discounts. I'm certainly not advocating lining your stockroom with these sets, especially at or near MSRP, but I think there will be a window to make a decent return.

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, higher returns attracted new investors, inherently changing the way the secondary market behaved.

  In this new era, with many more participants and higher price pressure, it is extremely easy for newer investors to get burnt out, make mistakes or even completely forget about their LEGO investing hobby (or business). For this reason, I decided to write this short article with some investment tips and strategies that can help the newer participants enjoy and make money from their favorite toy brand.

Golden Rule: Set your long term goals

   LEGO investing is a lot like more traditional financial planning. If you don’t take the time to set some objectives, there will be no way to completely gauge success or even to properly develop an investment strategy. For that reason, the first step will be to figure out what exactly you are trying to achieve:

Do you see LEGO investing as a key part of your investment portfolio or more as a side business/hobby for extra cash?

To me, this is the most important question. Someone willing to seriously put some money into LEGO for the long term will need to consider a vastly larger number of factors than someone who is just willing to put in a small percentage of their funds. Insurance, proper storage and fund allocation take a more important role in the case of the former.

In the case you see this more as an online business, a good inventory tracking system, shipping supplies and time will be the main 

considerations.

   Once you have determined you long-term strategy, it is important to figure out which types of sets you will be investing in.

   To me, focusing on large LEGO exclusives is the “safer” way to lock in a pretty decent return in the long term. While the capital investment and storage space required to invest in these sets is significantly higher/larger than the average, most of them have also produced some of the most consistent and positive returns in the investment market.

  It is easy to see why. We are talking about iconicand highly detailed sets, from both licensed and unlicensed themes, that the adult collector with a higher disposable income is very attracted to. That’s definitely the most attractive target market when investing in LEGO sets.

  Furthermore, the higher price point and space requirements limit the amount of sets that can be hoarded by the average investor, thus reducing supply in the long term. While some people may be able to spend several thousand dollars and dedicate a whole room to store those dozens of Death Stars, most people struggle with at least one of those two key considerations.

   This is not to say investing in smaller sets or even figures makes no sense. We all know that sometimes sets like the X-Wing 9493 produce outstanding percentage returns for one reason or another, so it is completely understandable for investor to consider these for investment. Also, non-exclusives get the advantage when it comes to acquiring them at significant discounts given LEGO’s policy of not allowing discounts on exclusives.

   The problem with these sets, in my opinion, is that it is so much harder to pick winners and avoid purchasing the duds. Does Home One ring a bell?

 Setting up an strategy

   After deciding which blend of sets you will be pursuing, it is time to set up a buying strategy. I think it is extremely helpful to figure out how many copies of a particular set you would like to have before retirement, and making periodic purchases to make sure you meet that goal.

   As an example, you could decide that you will purchase one Palace Cinema each month to make sure you get to your desired goal of 10 before retirement. Making sure you stick to your strategy will make it easier for you to achieve your minimum goal and avoid having to scramble to get multiple quantities when the set starts disappearing from the market.

  How many times have you read someone mentioning that they would like to have a couple more of a particular set when it is already too late? Don’t make that mistake yourself! If by the time a set starts showing signs of retirement you already have your minimum quantity, then whatever you are able to acquire after that will be just an extra source of happiness instead of stress.

   Of course, your strategy can be flexible enough to make sure that you are taking advantage of potential deals or discounts. For example, LEGO will be offering double VIP points in early October and it might make sense to hold this month’s purchases until then. Having said that, I recommend making this kind of behavior an exception rather than the norm; It just does not make sense to completely miss out of a set that ends up appreciating more than 50% because you waited a couple weeks to save 10%.

Core-Satellite Approach

   Just like in the stock market, you can insert a little variety into your investing life by following the core-satellite approach.

   For example, let’s assume you have an investing budget of $1000 per month. You could divide this into a core fund of $800 that you will allocate to long term, safer investments (exclusives, Ideas sets or whatever you really want to add to your portfolio and keep for the long haul), while keeping the remaining $200 for riskier bets. You think Raptor Escape will be a Zombies 2.0? You can throw your money into some of those; want to try and flip some Wall-E sets before they are available? That works too!

   By dividing your investments in this manner you pretty much guarantee you’ll invest the $800 every month, while still having some money to test your set-picking prowess.

  This leads nicely into my last point. Personally, I believe that investing in LEGO should be not only profitable, but fun as well. It is easy to get inpatient or even bored when all you are doing is hoarding sets and not making any money out of it. While this is an essential part of any investment, I find that people should always try to keep things interesting and fun by trying to flip sets, sell minifigures or even re-selling used sets. Any of these activities will generate some extra income and make you feel a little more excited, therefore avoiding falling into a routine that can get boring over time.

   Obviously, these tips will not work for everyone. Find what works for you, think about your goals and stick to an strategy and you will be in the path of having a pretty healthy alternative income stream in the long run.

   Hope you enjoyed this article, thanks for reading! 

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 is time to bring a previously released set back into the primary market. Re-releases are usually improved versions of the previous set including new building techniques, pieces and exclusive minifigures.

While the re-birth of previously retired sets can bring happiness to collectors that previously missed out, the opposite is usually true when it comes to investors. The possibility of buying a newer version for retail diminishes the need for collectors to pay higher secondary market prices, resulting in a decrease in demand and the expected price decrease. Investors dump the old set quickly in order to secure a small profit or to cut their losses; market reaches equilibrium.

Up until fairly recently, re-releases had been limited to smaller or mid-range play sets like Jabba’s Sail Barge. The impact of the newer version is easily observed in the graph below:

While this kind of issue annoyed re-sellers, it was what came after that really started worrying them: the re-release of an Ultimate Collector’s Series set; the 10240 X-Wing.

Somewhat different from the original model, this was LEGO’s first attempt to re-releasing one of the largest and most expensive sets in the secondary market. This issue has hurt the original version, 7191, significantly over the last couple of years; a 2 year and 1 year Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of  -4.27 and -25.34 percent respectively according to the latest Brickpicker data.           

Despite the negative impact of the newer release, the original UCS X-Wing is still up over              500 percent of its original retail price. The serious collector is more than likely the source of demand for this set at the moment, which coupled with the relative scarcity has provided a price floor for 7191.

After the re-release of a UCS set, LEGO had opened the door to similar actions in the future. A lot of investors commented that this would be the beginning of the end of LEGO investing the way we knew it, and decided to make adjustments to their long-term investment strategy.

 Enter the Winter Village holiday theme, one of the most admired and popular production lines in LEGO’s arsenal.

So far, LEGO has consistently released one new set per year on this line, while keeping no more than 2 on the shelves in any particular holiday season. Consequently, LEGO retires one Winter Village themed set per year, making it one of the most easily predictable retirements out there.

 As investors, you can quickly understand why something like this would be appealing: shorter production runs limited to a few months of each year, somewhat concrete retirement dates and huge popularity with collectors are factors we all would like to see more when investing in LEGO.

 Not surprisingly, the performance of the Winter Village theme has been quite stellar, as you can easily tell from the charts below:

Those are not only some really nice looking sets, but also pretty good investment returns.

Now, the real issue: LEGO recently announced the new release for this year’s holiday season, the Winter Village Toy Shop (2.0).  From the pictures, you can see that in this case the company took re-releases to a whole new level by only slightly changing the previous model. Basically, we ended up with the same exact set as 2009 with very minimal cosmetic alterations, in addition to suggesting to move the Christmas tree to the complete opposite side of the display.

If you are a frequent visitor to the site’s forums, you will remember the uproar this release caused with investors and collectors alike. On one hand, it hurt investors that still held the previous version, while on the other it hugely disappointed collectors that expected to be able to add a new structure to their Winter Village town.

What immediately followed the announcement was not really hard to predict: dozens of new listings for 10199 popped up on eBay and other selling venues from sellers trying to realize their gains. The priced dropped very quickly, as sellers undercut each other hoping to get rid of the inventory way before the newer Toy Shop hit the shelves in a couple weeks.

Why would LEGO do this with so many different potential buildings that still can be added to the Winter Village town? I can think of a few potential reasons:

1. The Winter Village Toy Shop is perhaps the most popular set of the entire WV line. The sales numbers on eBay seem to indicate that the Toy Shop sells the best in the entire line, with the Winter Village Bakery being a close second.
2. LEGO determined that demand for a Toy Shop release increased with the release of last year’s Santa’s Workshop. Collectors that purchased the set last year may now be more likely to purchase a place for all of those freshly made toys to be sold.
3. Being the older of the WV sets, the company determined it to be cost effective to bring it back with a few modifications and focus their efforts on other popular lines. Think Episode VII sets coming in the next few months.

We probably will never know the actual reasons executives at TLG decided to go with a re-release instead of a completely new concept, but the reasons above make some sense to me.

Now, does this mark the beginning of the end of the Winter Village line excellent secondary market performance? I honestly don’t believe so. Rarely we will find another theme that is so easily predictable as far as production runs and retirement dates, and even if LEGO re-released every single set every 4 years, by that time most of the post EOL price appreciation would have taken place anyway.

The key with this line will be, in my opinion, to hold the sets for a shorter time period, say 2 years, and sell to realize the gains. Why run the risk of this happening again when we already have proof that LEGO is willing to bring the older sets back?

Thanks for reading.

Introduction to Asia:

In recent years, The LEGO Group has seen its sales of our favorite toy brick rise greatly, especially in Asia. Here, the local LEGO Scene is abuzz with activity, with annual sales seeing a 35% increase across Asia in 2013. With the recent opening of Legoland Malaysia just over a year ago, with another Legoland slated for Japan in 2017, its not surprising that the brick is becoming so popular.

I am aware that many of you have questions about what the LEGO Scene in Asia is like. As such, this will be the first in a series of Articles detailing almost every aspect of the Asian Market, from Lego Polybags to the LEGO “Mecca” that is Hong Kong.

An Overview:

In light of recent events with the opening of the first Legoland in Asia and The LEGO Movie, the local LEGO Market is growing day by day. Local LEGO User Groups (LUGs) conduct mass orders frequently, while resellers scramble to procure newly released LEGO exclusives for the hungry Asian market.

Asian LEGO Prices have always been higher than those in the United States and much of Europe. The local MSRP is roughly double that of the US and EU. Prices here are pretty close to that of the UK, Australia and New Zealand, but while all these regions have Official LEGO Stores, Asia has close to none.

As such, LEGO Exclusives and Polybags such as the 40078 Hot dog Stand which was given away for free with purchases, sells for well over SGD$25 or USD$20 on the local eBay. One can only imagine how much other exclusive sets and polybags sell for.

40078 Hot Dog Stand 
Very Hard to Find in Asia

As a LEGO Collector myself, it is quite a challenge getting all the sets I want at prices that I can afford. With such high MSRP at local retailers and toy stores, and the absence of LEGO Exclusive sets, it is no wonder that resellers are thriving on the price difference. A good example of this would be In’s Point in Hong Kong, a small building with many shops dedicated to selling LEGO Sets that are retired, Hard to Find and LEGO Exclusives.

General Trends:

I can’t say much about which themes or sets are more popular in Asia, as it is generally the same as the UK, US, EU etc. However, the sets that perform the best seem to be the LEGO Store Exclusives such as the Ultimate Collector Series of Star Wars and Batman Sets, CREATOR Models such as the T1 Camper Van and MINI Cooper, Seasonal Exclusives and of course, LEGO Ideas or CUUSOO.

As you can see, there is a very large price difference between the USA prices of LEGO, and that of Singapore, Hong Kong and the rest of Asia. This trend also exists in regular sets and Retailer Exclusives. For example, 21109 Exo-Suit retailed on the secondary market for well over USD $80 in Singapore, despite having a US RRP of only USD $35.

It is worth noting that straight off the mark, there is already a significant price difference in the retail prices of sets in Asia and the USA, presenting significant opportunities for Turboflipping sets to overseas buyers, capitalizing on the price difference. It is interesting to see how the growth rate and appreciation value of sets in Asia is actually less than that in the United States. This may be due to many collectors or investors buying from overseas, and lowering prices by selling for less than the Asian Retail amount. Hence, resulting in the "negative appreciation" of certain sets.

As in all markets, retired sets increase in value as well, which is good for the LEGO Investor. A recent listing for 9492 TIE Fighter sold for more than USD $120, despite being fairly recent and having a US RRP of USD $55.

So there is indeed money to be made in the Asian Market, with Exclusive sets fetching really high prices.

For those who wish to make money, Turboflipping and Capitalizing on new releases and Retail Price differences is the way to go. As for investment, I would suggest stocking up on the Original Trilogy Sets such as the Death Star and Red-Five while they are still available. It is worth to note that like the rest of the world, it is the OT Vehicles that register the highest profits.

Asia Exclusives

An advantage that Asia has over the rest of the world however, is in the release dates of its sets, and various Asian “Exclusive” sets. Asia typically has early releases of LEGO sets, with the January wave being released in early December, and August Wave released in June. This makes exporting sets from Asia to the USA or UK particularly profitable.

Sometimes, Asia also gets ahold of certain sets that are unavailable to the rest of the world. For example, the LEGO CUUSOO Shinkai 6500 Submarine was exclusively released to Japan, and now sells for over USD $600, while the LEGO Architecture Marina Bay Sands was exclusive to Singapore (my country!) and is worth around USD $400 or so.

Recently, LEGO partnered with Shell to release a second wave of the Shell-Ferrari LEGO Polybags to accompany the Annual Formula 1 Night Race in Singapore. This is similar to the 2012 Wave of polybags, except this time it is exclusive to Singapore only. As expected, this made the prices of the original Shell-Ferrari Polybags increase by quite a bit, to around USD $100 for a set of 7 (1 of Each).

2012 Shell Polybags
Exclusive to Singapore and Asia

2012 Shell Polybags
Exclusive to Singapore and Asia

In Conclusion:

There is money to be made in the Asian market for LEGO, and the growing market and popularity of our favorite brick is only going to increase profits and prices. For those of you who are investors, you might want to consider contacting your friends or relatives in Asia to help you get ahold of some of these nice Asian Exclusives. For those of you who are resellers, it wouldn’t hurt to add International Shipping to your listings to get a nice 50% to 100% profit on new exclusives.

This is my first ever Brickpicker article, and it is only the “Introduction” to LEGO in Asia. I’m thinking of making this the 1st of a 3-part series talking about Asia in general, so do tell me what else you would like to see or what I can improve on by leaving a comment!

Also, if you have any other questions, do feel free to send me a private message so I can address them directly.

Cheers!

The Green Image

Over the past several years, The LEGO Group has made an effort to be a "green" multinational company.  Investing in large wind turbines was one way they illustrated this desire to become an ecologically friendly company.  Another way was reducing their carbon use and abuse.  One way to do this was to shrink their LEGO box size.  As the company stated in this memo...

LEGO -  The builders of tomorrow expect that we do everything we can to mitigate (reduce the amount of future climate change) our business’ impact on the environment. We acknowledge that our operations have an impact on the environment in areas like climate change, resource use and waste. Yet, it is undisputedly our ambition to protect children’s right to live in a healthy environment, both now and in the future.

According to what our friends at the LEGO Company are putting on their website, they have seriously plans to reduce their ecological footprint.

It has been proven that the accelerated rate of CO2 pollution has a negative impact on the earth’s atmosphere. The continuing industrialization of the modern world is one of the key-factors to this pollution. Whether the pollution is really a hazard to Earth’s atmosphere, I will not go into in-depth.  I do applaud companies like The LEGO Group for trying to go for CO2-neutrality. The people at LEGO have calculated that approximately 15% of the entire Group’s CO2 impact is associated with packing. It seems a logical step that one of TLG’s plans to tackle this problem was to decrease the size of their set boxes.

Slim Boxes

The first line of 'slim' boxes was released in 2013 and by 2015; the entire line available in shops should be replaced. It would bring down the usage of cardboard by up to 4000 tons annually and it will reduce the CO2 impact by around 10% of the packaging process. Smaller boxes would also benefit the retailers as they can put more boxes on their shelves.  Shipping costs will be decreased too so it seems to be a win-win for all. Let’s take a look at some of those slim boxes. I assume that all boxes brought out in 2014 are of the newer ‘slim’ kind and all boxes prior to 2013 are those of the ‘fat’ kind. In order to establish if the boxes have actually become slimmer, my criteria are the volume of the box, the amount of pieces and also very important, the weight of those boxes.

Example 1: Modular Building Series

As first example, I’ll take the Modular Building Series 10224-1 Town Hall has the largest piece count and 10243-1 Parisian Restaurant, the second largest. I also added 10211-1 Grand Emporium. The conclusion here would be that indeed the box size has been decreased. As a note here, I add that there are plenty smaller pieces in the 10243-1 than in the 10224-1 and 101211. That explains the numbers you find when comparing the piece count and weight to the other sets mentioned. It is looking good here. If I take the average volume for 10224-1 and 10211-1, I calculate 29.8dm³. That would make the 10243-1 a whopping 25% smaller.

Example 2: CITY Trains

Another very popular series of sets over the years have been the LEGO City Trains. I left 3677-1 Red Cargo train out of the comparison to spread the production dates. All sets have a similar piece count and all have Power Functions that comes with them. Here the difference is smaller than the MBS example above. We can even see the box size of 60052-1 growing with 2% compared to the 7939-1. Of course, there are 49 pieces more in the latest set so that needs to be taken into account for the City Trains example.

Example 3: DC Comics

One of the more popular series with all the attention from the motion pictures are the DC and Marvell Comics series. I took 3 sets with comparable piece count from the DC Comics line up. While having a larger piece count, the box of 6864-1 does seem to be smaller than the one of 76013-1. The difference is a striking 14% even in the disadvantage of the latter one. Compared to the oldest set of the three with the smallest , the 76013-1 is a comforting 22% smaller.

Example 4: STAR WARS Battle Pack

I assume these are one of the best-selling sets for LEGO apart from any City set. The weight for all battle packs are the same but the piece count for 8014-1 does differ somewhat from the other 2. The best comparison for box size would be the 2 latest editions. So what we see here is that the box of the 2014 set is 12% larger than 7913-1, the set from 2011. I personally think this example is a very important one due to the similar weight, piece count and included booklets.

Example 5: STAR WARS set (Large)

For this example, I thought long and hard of which set to use and the one that came to mind was the AT-AT. Various versions of this behemoth have been brought out over the years and the piece count of all sets is about the same. The 8129-1 version of AT-AT was left out due to the ridiculously oversized box and the non-comparable piece count. The box size of the 2014 model has made great progress compared to the older versions. 75054-1 has 18% less volume than 10178-1 and 54%(!) less than the 4483-1 model. We should note here that the 10178-1 does have Power Functions and those parts do weigh extra and take more room than ordinary pieces.

Example 6: City Police

I was looking for a set to compare from the City theme (apart from the trains) and the one that is most easily comparable is the police station so below you can find the most recent Police HQ sets that have been available. The piece count does fluctuate more strongly than earlier examples. Here the box size of the 2014 model is 9% smaller than the box 7498-1 AND has 71 pieces more. In comparison to the 7744-1, the difference is even bigger at almost 13% but here we have to note that 60047-1 has 99 pieces less than 7744-1.

Analysis

In order to establish how much exactly the boxes have gotten slimmer compared to the fat ones, I decided to take the average of boxes pre-2013 and compare them to the average of the 2014 released boxes. This gave me the following table.

So the first thing we can see is that the piece count for the sets is more or less equal. Then when we take a look at the actual size, it is noticeable that the boxes have actually shrunk 15% so we can say that LEGO's objective has been reached so far...

But...

Not quite. Because there are a few other numbers that need to be looked at. The average weight of a set has gone down 11% or 206 grams. So is this because of the cardboard that LEGO has saved on packaging the set? If we look at a standard box of a medium set like e.g. 75052-1 Mos Isley Cantina we see that the entire box weighs 198 grams (thanks Huskers1236). The box itself has a volume of 9,1 dm³. Per dm³ that means its mass would be around 21,75 grams. If we multiply this by 2.69 we get to 58.5 grams that the boxes should be lighter due to the saved cardboard.

But what happened to the extra 147.5 grams?

During the years, The LEGO Group have refined their construction methods of building bricks to try to squeeze as much bricks as they can out of the ABS-pellets. It is hard to calculate how much exactly the production process contributes of the 2014 sets to be lighter. There is however a more interesting fact that we can see in the tables and that is the pieces/dm³. This went up 16% and that could mean 2 things. Either the machines filling the bags are getting more logical and drop the bricks in a more orderly fashion in the bags, or the pieces used in the newer sets are smaller than the pre-2013 sets. I noticed something when I was sorting the pieces for  10243-1 Parisian Restaurant. There were plenty of small pieces in the set. Now, this is not a bad thing, it means more detail, but most people look at a box and say:

"Wow 2600 pieces. This thing must be huge"

While in fact, the Parisian Restaurant was everything BUT huge. It has the biggest piece count, received a heavier price tag and although it does have very nice detail, I simply felt a bit left in the cold after building the other 'larger' MBS with fewer pieces. Smaller pieces are also cheaper to produce and coincidentally, they take up less space in a box.

Conclusion

I personally find the LEGO claim of reducing box size a bit misleading. Sure, the boxes have shrunk averaged taken and that is a good thing, for the environment, retailers, consumers. However, the sets also did get smaller in my opinion. This is not that noticeable at first sight since the piece count stays about the same, but if you look at the average weight, you just know something is not right.

LEGO boxes have decreased in size  an average of 15%

But they didn't do it by some revolutionary new engineering strategy in packaging. It's a bit sad really to see a company that cares so much about the environment using a 'cunning plan' like this that is more about marketing and perception to fool people.

In the end, it will be the consumer, as always, paying more for these smaller boxes and sets.

That is how I see it after researching this topic. LEGO looking everywhere to maximize profits. Seeing there could be money in making the average LEGO piece in a set smaller and then coming up with a story that it is good for the environment.

After reading an earlier thread, I want to make a thread chronicling my own transition from LEGO “investor” to LEGO “seller.”  I have received a ton of great advice on this site and have learned a few things along the way.  I started the buying side of this in November 2012 and have completed my first several sales (November 2014).  I want to point out some of the things that I learned here and did right and some things I didn't know and did wrong.  Some of this information may be very basic for many of the advanced LEGO investors on the site, but some of the information might be able to help some of the novices out there nonetheless.

BACKGROUND:

A lot of the posts on the Brickpicker site, particularly those from the seller's side, seem to be from larger scale reseller types who have really been successful in creating a small business of LEGO buying and reselling.  While those posts are often helpful, I first off want to say, that's not me and it is not my goal.  I have a secure full-time middle class job which I enjoy.  This is more of a hobby in which I can make a little money from, rather than a true investment that I'm going to send my kids to college with or pay for a retirement  home when I get older.  Those life priorities I have paid for by conventional means.  My goal is to pay for LEGO sets that I buy for myself and my future kids with profits that I earn from selling other sets...and maybe earn a little extra cash on the side.  The time I spend doing this is recreational to me and I won't be breaking down my hourly wage from how much I make from it.  That being said, this has been much more fun than reading my 401k statements every quarter and I think I have the potential to do much better job if it was a competition.  My ROI(Return on Investment) goal is to (on average) double my money on the sets I sell.  I knew I would not spend more than $10k on this investment between the sets I want to keep and the sets I want to sell.  The cash I used was sitting in the bank and was not my emergency savings.  I only say that because I see people going into debt to buy LEGO sets on the site and that is a horrible idea.  I also am not a "flipper," nor a "parter outer."  My strategy from the get go was to hold and sell after EOL(End Of Line).

BUYING LESSON #1 (WHAT TO BUY):  CHOOSE WISELY...DO NOT BUY TWO OF THE SAME THING JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT ONE TO BUILD AND ONE TO RESELL.  THE SET MIGHT BE A BAD INVESTMENT.

As a child in the late 80's through the late 90's I played mostly with City Sets, though also played with a few Space, Kingdoms, Pirates, Western sets.  I don't recall any licensed sets back then.  Like Will Ferrell in The LEGO Movie, I had a whole city on a table (as a kid). After coming out of the "dark ages," one of the things that concerned me was that sets I would want to build later on would be EOL and would cost me a fortune.  So many of my initial sets purchased were bought so I did not have to pay a ransom for them later on.  Many of sets I bought two of...one for me and one for an “investment.”  I'm pretty sure it has been suggested on here that you can't go wrong on buying sets you like and want to play with.  Well if you are like me and like playing with City and other “generic” sets, that's a bad idea.  I'm going to probably hit my goal on many of these City sets I have, but it will take a while and the ROI will be weak.  I wouldn't say I was addicted to buying (liked the linked thread above), but in the beginning, I certainly did go on a buying frenzy on the outset.  I would have been better off separating “play” set buys from “investment” set buys.  Sometimes they are the same, but many times they are not.

BUYING LESSON #2 (EOL): DON'T BUY NEW RELEASES AND TRY TO BUY AS CLOSE TO EOL AS POSSIBLE.

My first major buys: An Ultimate Collector's Series Imperial Shuttle and a 10188 Death Star.  The Imperial Shuttle went EOL and has doubled in price and the Death Star wouldn't even make up the selling fees if I sold it today.  EOL, or in other words...when a set retires, means everything to my investing strategy.  Buying towards the end of EOL is critical.  In the beginning I bought several newly released sets and it's going to take me a long time to make money on them compared to the Imperial Shuttle which I bought right before EOL.  Obviously, buying towards the end of EOL is a crap shoot, but I could have done more research and at least not bought new releases.  In the future I will probably make many of my buys after the products have been out a couple of years.  In some cases this may be too late or too early, but it should be better than buying new releases or stuff after one year.

BUYING LESSON #3 (SPACE):  SPACE COSTS MONEY, LACK OF SPACE CAN LIMIT SIZE OF INVESTMENT INVENTORY, FORCING TOUGH CHOICES.

I have a decent sized home and had a bedroom mostly used for storage.  The closest was the kind with the two sliding doors, maybe 4 feet deep by 8 feet wide.  I filled it with about $8k in LEGO sets in 6 months.  Thankfully it is in a cool dark area and had shelving.  If I was paying for space, that would kill any profit I would be making as a small investor.  My space was available and free and I think that is what keeps this type of “investment” profitable.  If everyone had an empty closet lying around, there would be so much more competition.  That being said, when my closet started getting full, I slowed my buying down and really started getting more focused on buying the sets I could make the most money off of.  The lack of space made me a smarter buyer.  My Brickfolio is at about $9K in purchases and I didn't feel the need to go all the way to my $10K initial goal.

BUYING LESSON #4 (SET SIZE):  MEDIUM TO LARGE SIZED SETS ARE THE BEST FOR MY STRATEGY.

For various reasons, I bought a lot of small sets ($20-$40).  As I progressed into the selling phase, I see why this is an issue.  They don't make as much money and take more of your time.  That being said, I'm also not a fan of the really big sets.  They make me nervous as a small time seller.  If I put all my money in a $400 SSD and get robbed by someone on Ebay, I'm done.  I also don't think sets with that much value will increase as much percentage wise as a $100 set.  Also with a large set you take up a lot of space and capital with fewer sets (see my Death star).  The amount of people able to pay $300 for a set, vs $1200, is huge in my honest opinion.  My goal in the future is to focus on investment sets in the initial $80-$200 range.  That maximizes my time, storage space, and if I get burned, the sting won't be so bad.

BUYING LESSON #5 (SALES VS MSRP):  FOCUS ON QUALITY SETS, NOT ITEMS ON SALE.

So I always love looking at all the sales info on here and have geared many of my buys to LEGO sets that are on sale.  My particular area is a densely populated area of Southern California, so my best sale items are online (no clearance racks here).  Most of my purchases have been discounted buys from Amazon.  These sales have slowed over the last year, but in the beginning they were plentiful.  But this led more to my buying even more City sets or other sets that are not going to have a high ROI.  I waited a long time for the Haunted House to have some kind of discount.  I got one for $10 under MSRP on Amazon at one point and decided to wait for a better sale to get more.  Well it's EOL and I only have one.  Huge mistake.  I should have ponied up MSRP for a couple more.  I would have been better off on focusing on what sets were going to have a high ROI, not what sets I could get the best discount on.

BUYING LESSON #6 (WHAT TO BUY):  BUY COOL SETS THAT ARE UNIQUE.

Do not buy sets that will be re-released (most City).  The safe bets are Modulars, licensed sets, UCS sets, Creator Houses, Trains and adult themed stuff.  Try and go for sets that are neat and more unique. There is money to be made in every theme, but if you are trying to maximize your profits and time, do your research.

THE TRANSITION:

So over the last year I have slowed down on the buying.  I figured I would start the selling phase next Christmas, but thanks to the new Jurassic Park Movie, I had to unload my Dino Theme this year.  I had 10 Dino sets that needed to be sold before they are re-released.  I am lucky in that in this particular situation of re-releases that I had a large advanced notice the Jurassic Park theme was coming out with the movie next year and the last Dino sets have been EOL over a year.

SELLING LESSON #1 (POSTING FOR SALE): PAY CLOSE ATTENTION WHEN POSTING ITEMS ON EBAY...USE GOOD PHOTOS...MAKE THE POSTING CLEAN.

Your sets are not unique snowflakes.  There are multiples of sets for sale of basically anything that has been released in the last few years. I use eBay's Buy It Now and would consider myself a novice in using it.  I would rather avoid the risk of an auction at this point and can sit on some sets for a while.  While there are other ways to sell, this seems the most logical for me as a small time seller.  I have never sold anything on eBay before, though I have been buying for years.  There have been numerous threads on the fees, so I won't go into that.  I don't post until I can make my net profit goal on sets and I figure fees into that.  I would not describe eBay as hard to use, but it can be annoying.  If you are posting numerous sets, it seems the settings reset to random things each time you try to make a new post (auction or BIN, shipping, payment types, posting time frames, etc).  I had to be very careful and edit some things later on.  One of my other part-time hobbies is photography.  For less than five bucks I set up a light box for product photography.  I already had the flashes and other stuff. I you don't have photo equipment you can still buy some cheap white posters and do this with a small camera.  I see a lot of crummy cell phone pics on eBay and as a buyer, I would shy away from those.  I posted over a few days before Black Friday.  Next year I will post earlier for the holidays.  I am not using a script and have a very short listing, but in the future I might move to a script.  However, I see a lot of messy, cluttered, and ugly listings out there.  Some of the posts dealing with eBay have put a healthy fear into me, so I do not accept returns and do not ship internationally.

SELLING LESSON #2 (GETTING PAID): UPGRADE TO A PAYPAL BUSINESS ACCOUNT BEFORE YOU START...USE THE “IMMEDITATE PAYMENT REQUIRED” FEATURE.

Now when people say moving from investor to seller is not fun, they forget about the best part...getting paid.  Watching the money drop into your Paypal account...and tripling your money after a year and a half, is pretty awesome.  But there are issues.  Deciding on what to price a set takes some time and research.  I have my collection in my Brickfolio and that helps, but every set is in different condition so all those variables have to be accounted for.  Between used sets, parted out sets and people posting sets for ridiculous amounts way above the norm, I decided to price my sets towards mid range to make it easier. My first sale was a Buy It Now and the seller never paid.  No email saying my kid did it, nothing.  Not a major issue except it takes my product off sale for almost a week.  Another listing a buyer took a couple of days to pay.  During my research I discovered you can set your items to “Immediate Payment Required” for Buy It Now  sales.  I never saw this option when setting up my eBay listings.  Further research showed it was under the advanced item listing AND I needed to have an active PayPal Business account for it to even be offered.  I will be using “Immediate Payment Required” from now on. My next problem was PayPal.  I have used it for a while to buy stuff, but never received money from it.  After my first sale, I got an email from PayPal saying they would not accept the credit card to a “personal account,”  which is what I had.  Apparently this is not true anymore, but PayPal still sends out the email.  I tried to research the difference between PayPal personal and business they don't say much and the fees are supposed to be the same.  I eventually upgraded to a business account on PayPal.  Also note there is a three week delay when you actually get the money.

SELLING LESSON #3 (SHIPPING AND HANDELING): KEEP THE PACKING MATERIALS YOU GET...HAVE THE MATERIALS READY TO GO BEFORE YOU POST...GET A SCALE.

This is where things get a little more challenging for me and makes me nervous.  I chose to charge separate for S&H on eBay.  I chose the “standard shipping” option and made up my own fixed rate.  I pretty much guessed at the rates for my first group of sales.  Most of the guesses were close, except for the boxes.  KEEP YOUR BOXES.  I can not stress this enough.  I had boxes saved, but not ones for the larger sets.  So as soon as I made my first sale I wandered on over to Office Max for shipping supplies.  They had four box sizes. That was it.  Target was worse. I had to go to a UPS store for large shipping boxes and I paid $5 for each of the boxes for my larger sets.  Way too much.  Had I saved my boxes I would be $10 richer now.  I have also located a shipping store in my area now that will be better in price and selection for future sales.  I should have had the packing materials ready to go before I posted the items.  I bought a box re-sizer mention on these forums for my next batch to cut down on size and hopefully cost.  Additionally, I didn't have a postal scale, so I used the bathroom scale and rounded up the weight on the box to be sure it was OK.  I would rather do that then stand in line at the post office, but have since ordered a postal scale for less than $40.  I used the eBay USPS shipping function to make, pay for, and print shipping labels.  I liked this feature.  Still being scared of getting burned, I bought insurance and signature confirmation and then took photos of the items in the packing material.  I used mostly bubble wrap bought on sale to package my sales.

CONCLUSION:

In the end with my first batch of sales and after expenses, I more than doubled my investment money (On the Dino theme).  So I'm on track.  Had I done some of these things above, I could have done much better, but I consider this a success and this didn't feel like real or hard work.  Hopefully, some of you learn from my mistakes and maybe some of the more seasoned LEGO investor/resellers have some advice to offer on things I noted above.  I would consider myself still novice and have a lot to learn.  I realize everyone might do things a little differently and I am certainly open to suggestions.  Good luck with your LEGO investments.

Opinion Article This article was built upon the experiences of steelmelt. This does not mean that all new, novice or even experienced LEGO investors should follow the practices talked about here. You may agree with some and disagree with others. As an example, personally I don't wait for sets to be almost EOL before buying. I don't want be surprised if some set has a short run and doesn't really show the signs. Then you are sitting there and telling yourself "I knew I should have grabbed that set earlier" That is just me, but others do like to hold onto their money as long as possible and I totally understand that.

It will be interesting in hearing some of the feedback from both novice and experienced investors.

-Jeff

One of the most exciting times for a LEGO investor results from visiting LEGO S@H (LEGO's online storefront), looking for a particular set and suddenly realize there is a tag with the following message: "Retired Product"; Expectation and hope suddenly becomes joy.

If you are reading this article, odds are you are already familiar with the concept of EOL (End Of Line), but just in case I think it would be appropriate to summarize what it means. LEGO produces different sets along the year, and each design has a planned life cycle that only the company Execs. are aware of. Once this cycle is completed, the set goes out of production to make room for a new design, usually meaning that to acquire the already retired set a prospective buyer will need to go to the secondary market (Us!). As with anything, this decrease in supply will, hopefully, translate into an increase in set value and help the investor get a decent return of his/her investment.    

What is the problem, then? If we know that sets retire after a couple years of being in production why do we even worry about exactly when this will happen?; Well, that's the million dollar question, LEGO is now known for being very secretive AND not really consistent when it comes time to retire a particular set. This means that while an specific modular might retire 2 years after introduced, the next may last 3 or 4 years before it is pulled out of the shelves.

Having no concrete knowledge of when a set is retiring transforms into a dilemma for almost every single investor. With limited funds and an objective of maximizing profits and turnover, purchasing sets that are as close to retirement as possible becomes the most efficient way to be successful. Of course, this means that, occasionally , some investors will completely miss out on a popular set that retired before they expected OR will be left holding onto sets that will not retire for 2 or 3 more years! Tying their money, and space, for such a long period of time is definitely not the best way to make their business as efficient as possible.

But, how can we as investors have any clue about when a particular set is to be retired? Well, there is really no clear cut answer. Even though there are some clues and events that may indicate a set is nearing retirement, there is usually an understandable controversy surrounding every single one of the "leading indicators". My point is that, while I tried to collect and summarize some of the possible signs suggesting retirement, none of these should really be taking as the one and only guide when developing an investing strategy. My objective is only to list them and give mostly new investors an idea of some of the things we talk about more deeply in the forums.

LEADING INDICATORS:

1- Retiring Soon Tag

Clearly, one of the most telling events in a set's life is when LEGO S@H assigns the tag "Retiring Soon". Even though it may seem that this event pretty much guarantees a sooner than later retirement, the process is definitely not as straightforward. One of the things that may happen is a set with the tag lingering on the shelves and online storefront for months after the tag has been assigned. This could be a way for LEGO to "Clearance" a set without actually lowering the price, basically pushing potential buyers to make a purchase before the set goes away forever. Another thing to consider is that most of the products that retire never even get the tag assigned to them at all. Think of the Haunted House model that according to the majority of the investors is as close to official retirement as it is going to get. The set never had the Retiring Soon tag, it basically went from being In Stock, to Backorder and finally to Sold Out. This is a more common transition, especially with the larger exclusives.

2- Sudden, and deep, discount in official LEGO outlets

As above, this is another sign that most of the sets do not ever show. However, opposite to the Retiring Soon tag, once a set experiences a deep discount from LEGO stores and S@H (think 30% or more), it is almost a certainty that it will be retired within the next couple of weeks. As you can imagine, once a set is discounted in this manner it goes to Sold Out status in a matter of days if not hours. [img url="http://community.brickpicker.com/uploads/2014/10/Untitled1.png" cks="responsive"]   The image above shows sets with both the Retiring Soon tag and the "Sale Price" discount.

3- LEGO Limits

This is one of the most controversial items on the list, and for good reason. As most of the members in the forums know, LEGO is known by limiting the amount of a same set you can purchase, especially the hard to find exclusives. Most of the time, the limits start at 5 per household and seem to be lowered as a set is nearing retirement, usually to 2 or 1. Having said that, there really is no clear evidence indicating that this pattern actually correlates to going EOL, and several sets a year completely deviate from this perceived pattern.

4- Time on the Shelves

Again, a very difficult sign to interpret. It seems that in years past LEGO was a little more predictable when it came to figuring out how long a particular set would be available for. Estimates and comments seem to place the average availability of a set at around 2 years, but as most of you know LEGO seems to have been extending the life of popular sets for 4 or more years!. However, with some exceptions *cough, DS*, once a set has been available for 3 or more years and is sharing shelf space with newer and similar models (think Modulars), it is pretty safe to assume that retirement will come sooner rather than later, making it OK to start stocking up.

5- Production Run Codes

For an introduction to Production codes, please go HERE This somewhat recent discovery can also be considered helpful to help determine potential EOL. If we as investors see a set available in 2015 that has been showing some of the other signs of retirement, and discover that the production codes indicate current inventory came from several months ago, it could lead us to believe that LEGO has stopped production of the set and is simply waiting for the last batch to be completely sold out. As with any of the other indicators, tread carefully when using production codes.

6- Retired Product Tag

Finally, the Holy Grail of LEGO investing. Once a set is assigned this tag on LEGO S@H, its death is official. This is the tag that generates more joy and excitement among the community members and, other than being able to find the set at other retailers (notably TRU & B&N), it means that any opportunity to acquire this set is pretty much gone.

Finally!

In the end, the point is that there is no sure way to determine if a set is nearing its retirement. The best we can all do is take a look at all of these signs in aggregate and share our opinions in the forums hoping for that beautiful day when the Retired Product tag shows up in LEGO S@H. Thanks for reading.  

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.

"Success ultimately depends on three factors: a company's financial backbone, willingness to succeed, and patience,"  said the businessmen from LEGO

Past

Days of Glory

Once upon a time before 1992, Ole "Man" Kirk Kristiansen bought a plastic molding device and created... a brick.  This brick was special as it had the ability to stick to another brick without any glue involved!  Instead, it had an interlockable mechanism.  And so the story of what binds all the people on this forum begins. All it takes is an original idea.  Well... an original or a stolen one.  Tracking down the actual birth of the modern brick is rather difficult.

I would say that the current LEGO brick is an invention perfected by many companies and of which The LEGO Group came out strongest in the end.  I will not bore the reader more with any information as it is not relevant for the rest of the article.

Some Facts:

• In 1944 Automated Binding Bricks are born.     
• In 1963 the material became ABS.
•  In  1978 the minifig saw the light.
• In 1979 Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen became the president of TLG.
• Various subthemes are launched.
• In 1994 the Company grows to 8.880 employees

It were golden years for The LEGO Group and their 'Brick'.

Days of Defeat

The decay had started.  For many years, LEGO had prospered but it was about to come to and end soon.  From 1992 onto 2004, things didn't go exactly as planned.  Black Wednesday at its finest. The main causes for this were:

• Shrinking customer base in the European and American region.
• Home entertainment revolution.
• Bad response to the market change
• Weak dollar, strong US competition for building bricks market.
• LEGOland Parks were not profitable.
• Portfolio became no longer manageable.
• Strong cheap Chinese competition.

Two consecutive losses in 2003-2004 caused the company to be on the edge of bankruptcy.  In 2004, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen resigned and appointed JØrgen Vig Knudstorp as CEO.

Present

From 2005 to the current day, TLG has changed dramatically and attempted to bring back what they had lost the 12 difficult years before.  The economy was getting on its feet again and after a lot of hard and/or costly decisions, it got to the point where it is now.

 

Back to the Core

The company philosophy changed and it was decided to focus more on the core activities.  It is why the LEGOland theme parks were sold to a theme park organizer.  At a certain time, they were making nothing and everything.

Desperate times ask for desperate measures

There was a drastic cut on costs by outsourcing distribution and production.  Distribution moved to Central-Europe, Production plants were added in Mexico and the Czech Republic and took over some  of Billund's production. A plant in the US closed, another in Switzerland.  Some distribution centers here and there. Quite some people's jobs got outsourced to other 'cheaper' countries.  It was one of the darkest moments in LEGO history. However, financially, it was a very successful (and necessary) move.  The factories keep on expanding due to the heavy demand.  In Mexico, during the month of June, the expansion of the factory was a fact and more than 1.000 new jobs can be created.  An extra factory has been inaugurated in March in Hungary. So bad news for some, good news for others.

Batman to the rescue!

The licensed theme sets are a large success with the huge amounts of movies coming out.  However, TLG do not count those as being one of their core products so it is possible that after they gained enough ground with the public, the licensed themes will be built off.  The reason is simple, licensed themes only work when a film comes out.  Because of this, the revenue on these items becomes very erratic.  And erratically selling products are something any company would try to avoid. TLG also rebooted the Duplo theme which also proved to be a very successful move.  In fact they have tried to break open the consumer market and trying hard to gain over the favor of selected target audiences. There are 29 different active themes on the moment of writing and the main themes are:

• LEGO Duplo
• LEGO City
• LEGO Technic
• LEGO Star Wars (Licensed)
• LEGO Friends

If you look at the current lineup for themes, you will find a theme for babies, toddlers, young boys,  young girls and AFOLS.  It is amazing to see that with 1 product, so many people can be reached.

Barbie who?

The company has moved up in the ranks and as of writing, it occupies first place with revenue sales 30 million dollars over Mattel after it had hopped over Hasbro in 2012.  Of course Mattel will still release a bunch of their products late in the year so there is a possibility Mattel will strike back.  But it seems unlikely that they will ever be able to stop the TLG behemoth from taking over the lead eventually.  If you look at the numbers, it is very impressing.  Over the last 6 years, TLG managed to triple their revenue. Of course the release of The LEGO Movie helped them reach this goal.  Globally the movie has been a great success.  Perhaps an idea  for Mattel to do a movie feat. Barbie and Ken… But let me tell you that Barbie is not KO yet.  Certain companies work better under pressure of not being the undisputed # 1 anymore. Other companies fail to react consequently or react as a headless chicken.

The Future?

There is still a lot of potential for TLG to expand.  If you look at the demographic situation, there are 2 billion Chinese people and over 1 billion people in India that can become potential customers. The situation in 2011 was as following graph displays.  Of course, now in 2014, things have changed already for eg. China, but it does show LEGO's business plan for expansion during the next couple of years.

Here we can see the Russian market that has matured more, the Brazilian and Mexican market that are on their way to maturity and the Chinese market in their child shoes.  India is currently not even in the womb yet.

Russia

Since 2007 until the beginning of this year, revenue for Russia has tenfolded.  It did however take quite some time for it to come this far.  LEGO started already in 1985 with its Russian story.  Back then, Russia was still part of the Soviet Union. TLG found its place and started to make its connections with retailers and distributors.  It is when the Soviet Union fell and the middle class became larger, that the little LEGO bricks were taken in the heart of the Russians.  Since then, the market has very much matured and gave room for other endeavours like China.

Americas

Bringing a factory to Mexico was a very smart move of TLG.  It brought capacity to supply the largest LEGO market and boosted the sales for LEGO in South America.  It was their primary focus for enlarging their customer base.  The North American market is still growing and with the logistics part simplified, the revenue in North-America increases.  South-America benefits from this too, albeit in lesser degree since LEGO still is relatively expensive.

China

TLG is at this moment investing strongly in the Chinese market.  I think this one will be the most significant market for LEGO in the near future.  Dare I say more important than the US and EU combined? A factory is planned to be operational in 2017 (Jiaxing – Zhejiang Province) bundled with a distribution center in Shanghai.  This investment is a necessity for TLC to make as their product is really too expensive – sometimes even double the price - in comparison with the US and EU prices.  The huge distribution costs played a very important role in this. However, even with the factory not in place yet, TLG managed to have an increase of sales of around 50% in the first half of the year so it offers some good perspective for the future. It is not the first time that TLG tried to get its foot in to crack open the Chinese door.  Before the changing of the millennium, they made an attempt, but it was unsuccessful due to their diversified business model and expensive toys.  Cheap knock-offs were produced and the Chinese shoppers at that moment did not hesitate to go for the lower-quality copy.  With the coming of the factory, the prices of LEGO will drop and this will also have its effect on the LEGO-counterfeit. The choice of investing in China rather than India is an obvious one.  TLG’s product speaks to the philosophy of Chinese parents more than a Barbie doll.   Creativity is of high importance to them so they don’t have to compete with Mattel.  Building bricks are just bound to continue being successful in China if the price is right and the marketing well executed.

India

India seems a Mattel stronghold.  In 2013 Funskool Toys was the largest toy producer with Mattel following as second with 20%.  Hasbro is good for 9% and the TLG share in India is 4%.  So this is an opportunity still for the company.  However, there seems to see more profit in China at this moment. As soon as TLG feels comfortable in China, I am sure India will be the next target.  The question however remains if LEGO bricks can ever top the success of Barbie there.  If LEGO keeps on pumping out Friends sets, I’m sure they have a chance to succeed.

So what will be TLG's next move?

The future seems bright for TLG.  It has been a difficult journey but they managed to find a succesful formula to bring their products.  Hard sacrifices were made by outsourcing a large part of their activities.  This combined with the 'there's a theme for everyone' lineup helps them become the biggest toy maker in the world.  For how long this will last is of course the most important question.   What goes up...

“We have been investing and we will continue to invest significant resources in further globalizing the company, which is a precondition for our future ability to not only create great LEGO experiences for children all over the world, but also our ability to build a culturally diverse organization where we can attract and develop global talent. Ultimately this is what will ensure the future success of the LEGO Group” - Jørgen Vig Knudstorp.

Resources:
http://lego.wikia.com/wiki/Automatic_Binding_Brick http://euromonitor.typepad.com/files/sampledeck-corporate-strategies-in-emerging-toy-markets.pdf http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/02/daily-chart-8 http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/859023.shtml http://aboutus.lego.com/en-us/news-room/2014/september/interim-result-2014 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/13442193/ns/business-us_business/t/lego-lay-end-us-production http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/why-lego-succeeded-while-jysk-failed-in-russia/490394.html  

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
• Information is based on US prices only
• Not all sets across all themes are included as I have little interest in Bionicle/Hero Factory for example so have only gathered data on a few of those sets.  (I just didn’t have the willpower to gather all the data for them really).  Most of the rest are covered though.
• I tried to look at as many sets as possible, but there is a chance a few may have been missed, if you spot some that should/could be included please let me know

One Month Growth (change in Market Price from last month)

An entirely new set of entrants again as we have become used to given volatility in prices when only looking at a change from 1 month to the next.  None of the movers from Feb-13 have popped up again here.  Interestingly for those who follow the 9465 Zombies phenomenon it just missed out on the top 20 coming in at 21^st with 21.76% monthly growth in what could be a second wind?

It will be interesting to see if any of these sets can maintain some of this growth longer term.  Which leads us nicely onto our next time period:  

Six Month Growth (change in Market Price from September 2013 )

Another list with quite a few new entrants.  Plenty of recently retired sets enjoying that initial post EOL price bump.  8092 Luke’s Landspeeder has seen excellent consistent growth since it went EOL about 6 months ago.  9490 and 6866 improve up the leaderboard with continued strong growth.  9447 jumps straight in at number 6 as a result of topping the 1 month chart.  

One Year Growth (change in Market Price from March 2013)

Black Phantom slips down 3 from last months top spot which is taken over by Butterfly Beauty Shop on the back of a further 22.6% growth in the month (made 19^th on the 1 month table).  Who said Prince of Persia is a poor theme for investment? Well 7571 enters the chart with a great year of growth behind it to dispel that myth, or is it just the exception to the rule?

Plenty of other great sets on this list that you’d have done well to buy at market price one year ago.  

Two Year Growth (change in Market Price from March 2012)

Now into the two year time frame we begin to remove some of the short term fluctuations that can occur with some of the narrower time periods.

Fire Lord and Level Crossing switch spots at the top after Level Crossing gained another 17.2% in the month.  Dino Defense rockets up to number 3 after a superb 38.8% monthly increase (3^rd on the monthly chart).

We can now start to see some of the performers in the shorter time periods that were presented in previous articles begin to push their way through onto the 2 year growth table, like the Rocka XL, Butterfly Beauty Shop, and Black Phantom.  

Retail Growth (change in Market Price from Retail MSRP)

Now for the full measure of growth from the retail value of the set.  Obviously a set with a $0 listed retail price like all the promo giveaways etc are excluded as we can’t divide by zero, so that has weeded out a few of the small polybags or very very old sets for which we have no retail data.  But the list is still dominated by cheap sets that have increased by large multiples.

Not much to report here with a mostly static table.  6846 jumps in at the bottom but has little or no volumes to speak of. The 1626 Angel takes top spot with a crazy 20,477% growth over retail thanks to 1 recent sale of $250 and another 2 years ago of $280 all from a set that cost $1.30 when released back in 1989.

Perhaps the first “real” contender is 10190 Market Street, such an impressive result for a set in just 6 years.  Much better than another set from the same year that people often point to as the pinnacle of Lego investing…  

Conclusions

These top 20 tables lists all the absolute best investment decisions you could have made if you had perfect future knowledge.  There is a large portion of under the radar sets and “sleeper” hits.  We sometimes become a little circular in discussing the popular sets for investing (Modulars, UCS, etc) and lose sight of the fact that many of the best investments to be had right now are probably some of the least discussed sets.  It does mean there are plenty more topics ripe for discussion on the forums and in blogs.      

Have you ever wandered around the LEGO Shop website and come across the Seasonal theme? Glanced through the page quickly and admire the seasonal accuracy of the small sets? This small collection of LEGO sets not only offer great holiday memorabilia, but also superb investments!

Seasonal sets are sets released during certain times of the year, ie. Winter, in relation to different holidays or events, ie. Christmas. These sets are often only available for a few months, and generally once they are sold out, they are gone, save a select few sets (for example LEGO Winter Village sets, which tend to reappear annually).

HISTORY

The theme was first released back in 1977, with the solo debut of the 246 Santa and Sleigh set. It was nearly a decade before LEGO produced another Seasonal set, and only in the last one-and-a-half decades that the celebratory sets have been more regularly (1997-present). Information from Brickipedia.com When the theme first started, the sets were small, with fewer than 100 pieces in most cases. Eventually the theme evolved to include larger sets, including the Winter Village sets we know so well. These sets have already been included in an article by adewar titled LEGO Winter Village Sets: Hot Holiday Profits or Bitterly Cold Returns? so they will not be included in this article because adewar did such a great job on the article and his analysis of the sets.

INVESTMENT BACKGROUND

If one were to look under the list of Tools & Data BrickPicker kindly offers, you would come across the CAGR by LEGO Theme webpage which compares the Compound Annual Growth Rate of different LEGO themes - over 90 in all. (click here for a list of articles which discuss CAGR). CAGR is a great way to get an overall, general picture of how a particular LEGO set or theme has performed and the percentage return over time. Ranked at an impressive #2 best Compound Annual Growth Rate, just behind LEGO Minecraft, it is obvious that this theme is no joke. What makes this theme so much less popular to investors, if it performs so obviously well? There are a variety of factors that tend to weigh in on this.

Like said previously, LEGO Seasonal sets don't last long. In 2013, the average availability of currently retired and non-promotional Seasonal set in LEGO's US online website was 100.5 days, or about 3 months. Much less than that of a normal set which can range from 1 year to 3 years of shelf life normally. When is the last time you saw a major BrickPicker topic about LEGO Seasonal sets? It is quite obvious from the low number of threads that these sets are under the BrickPicker radar. Even glancing on eBay, there are fewer listings for LEGO Seasonal sets than most other sets, even though both might be un-retired and widely available to all LEGO consumers. So, not only do LEGO Seasonal sets have short shelf life, they have less attention focused on them than a normal LEGO set, ie. Chima Cragger's Command Ship or Monster Fighters Vampyre Hearse.

A GLANCE AT THE SETS

Below is a table with a short biography of each Seasonal set that was released non-promotionally between 2010 and 2013. Does not include sets in the Winter Village Series or any ornaments.

For your convenience, I've done a little number crunching for you. The highest CAGR per Season/Holiday from 2009-2013 that had more than one set per category was Winter/Valentine's Day, followed by Spring/Easter and Fall/Thanksgiving (complete rankings found at the very end of the article). When I first saw this ranking I was surprised that Winter/Christmas was not in the bunch. After looking at the overall numbers, there were 7 Winter/Christmas sets compared with 2-4 sets for the other 3 categories, which means that the other categories are less saturated with Seasonal sets than the Winter/Christmas category. In addition, Winter/Christmas sets are very repetitive, with numerous Christmas tree and Santa's Sleigh sets. Rather than doing an analysis of all the Seasonal sets, I put together analysis' of the two most recent 2014 Seasonal sets: the recently retired 40085-1: LEGO Teddy Bear and the 40086-1: LEGO Easter Bunny set which is still available at the LEGO Shop.

40085-1: LEGO Teddy Bear

127 pieces - $9.99

Winter/Valentine's Day set

LEGO S@H Product Description:

Demonstrate your love with the big-hearted Valentine bear! Show your heartfelt passion for the one you love with the LEGO® Valentine bear! With little ears that wiggle and movable arms and legs, this super-cute teddy makes a charming present. And display your feelings by detaching the big, red heart and giving it to your valentine. Features movable ears, arms and legs, and a detachable big red heart

• Wiggle the cute bear’s ears
• Move the arms and adjust the legs
• Give the bear’s heart to your loved one!
• Fire your imagination with the fun cartoon on the box
• A perfect Valentine’s Day gift for LEGO® lovers!
• Stands over 3” (9cm) tall

The LEGO 40085-1: Teddy Bear is the largest Winter/Valentine's Day set to be released, as well as the first to offer more than a build of a heart, or a heart-box. I think it was a great choice by LEGO to go with a bear, and the set looks fairly accurate. As you can see from the build, there are a lot of SNOT bricks (Studs-Not-On-Top), and overall I think it is a great little LEGO set for the piece count. Expectantly, this set has done well, especially after only a month of retirement (hint: part of the season/holiday with the highest CAGR and, well, a LEGO Seasonal set). So far, this little set has increased by 57.76%, and will hit $25 no problem. Jeff Mack did make a post, encouraging members to buy this set, so take it from the pros... These sets are going to do really well later on! Please note that unlike other smaller LEGO Seasonal sets, this set does not come in polybag packaging. Rather, it is a boxed set.

40086-1: LEGO Easter Bunny

106 pieces - $9.99

Spring/Easter set

LEGO S@H Product Description:

Get into the festive spirit with the Easter bunny!

Enjoy festive fun with the LEGO® Easter bunny! Adjust the flapping ears for a variety of cheeky expressions. Move the arms and legs and pick up the huge carrot. This cute little bunny is bound to bring festive cheer this Easter.

• Features movable ears, arms and legs and a big orange carrot
• Pose the bunny’s ears to create cute expressions
• Move the arms and legs
• Grab the giant carrot
• Fire your imagination with the fun cartoon on the box
• A perfect Easter gift for LEGO® fans
• Stands over 4” (11cm) tall

The 40086-1: LEGO Easter Bunny is visually very similar to the 40085 Teddy Bear. Once again, this set is very accurate for the piece count, and is very poseable with moving arms and ears. Investment-wise, I think this set wouldn't perform as well as the Teddy Bear primarily because we've gotten other LEGO bunnies before, whereas the Teddy Bear is extremely unique. Nevertheless, I expect this set to at least double in value in two year's time, which is still an extremely good return. Please note that unlike other LEGO Seasonal sets, this set does not come in polybag packaging. Rather, it is a boxed set.

READ HERE OF YOU SKIPPED OVER ANY OR ALL OF THE WORDS ABOVE!!

As a reader myself, I know that a lot of times, our eyes simply skip over large blocks of text and try to find the "important" part, which often times can be more interesting though not necessarily more important (I strongly reccommend you read the above paragraphs)! As a result, I've kindly provided a summary of the main pros and cons of investing in LEGO Seasonal sets.

Pros of LEGO Seasonal Sets:

• With retail prices usually around $4.99 to $9.99, and usually marked down after the season ends, these sets are VERY affordable.
• Solid returns, with the average set bringing in 45.06% per year, according to BrickPicker's numbers.
• Easy to store, since many of the sets are polybags, they can be thrown into a plastic tub, smooshed, pressed, jostled, and still come out in great condition. Others are small boxed sets, which don't take up a large amount of room, great for the storage-challenged investor.
• Exclusive to LEGO S@H, and they have limited shelf life, helping to boost their secondary market price. Remember: generally the shorter the shelf life, the more "potential investment energy" sets have!

Cons of LEGO Seasonal Sets:

• Though the percentage returns are extremely high, the amount of effort that goes into selling these is much higher.
• Not a huge quantity of these sets are bought and sold, so getting rid of a high number of a single set could be problematic.

Thanks for reading my article on LEGO Seasonal sets! Overall, I highly recommend buying and investing in LEGO Seasonal sets, especially for the novice investor. These LEGO sets don't require much initial investment, and therefore aren't extremely high risk. Though the selling might take longer than other large, expensive sets to sell, the overall Return of Investment (ROI) can be much more than that of largers sets! Don't hesitate to leave your thoughts below, and I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have!!

Average CAGR per Season/Holiday - 2009-2013 (* - only one set in respective category)

Summer/Summer - 126.65%*

Winter/Valentine's Day - 86.19%

Fall/Fall - 62.70%*

Spring/Easter - 59.04%

Fall/Thanksgiving - 43.10%

Fall/Halloween - 40.31%

Winter/Christmas - 38.22%

Spring/Spring - 24.53%*

Sources: Brickipedia.com, Brickset.com, BrickPicker.com, LEGO S@H. **Article header image created using Adobe Photoshop CS3.**

There has been a lot of success in the world of LEGO investing, but there have also been many losses.  In a previous article, I wrote about successful sets, but to be successful, we must know how to avoid failures.

There are many things that can make a set flop, like an unpopular theme, bad minifigures, poor design, etc.  We must know the good from the bad, learn from the past, and carefully evaluate all advice given to us in able to succeed in LEGO investing.  

Unsuccessful Themes of the Past

With a disappointing CAGR of -7.90%, Prince of Persia is one of the biggest failures in history.  The unsuccessful movie and the big "Disney" logo on the boxes do not help this theme at all.

As you can see, you can still buy most of the sets from this theme below retail.  Unlike Pirates of the Caribbean, there is not one successful set in Prince of Persia.

What went wrong?

I have to admit that I really liked the Prince of Persia theme from a collector's standpoint.  The sets and minifigures were both designed very well, and the surplus of tan pieces made for great part packs.  Unfortunately, the good design was not enough to make this theme a winner.

Prince of Persia received a 5/10 from most critics and left many fans disappointed.  The idea of creating a movie from a video game itself was a random idea that did not turn out well.  The movie was the downfall of these sets.

World Racers was an un-licensed theme that performed slightly better than Prince of Persia.  The background story did not make sense and the idea of racing around the world while throwing explosives at each other was... weird.  There were lots of vehicles, but not much variety.  There was not much AFOL or TFOL appeal in this theme.  World Racers was targeted toward kids 7-12, and it tends to be the TFOLs and AFOLs that fuel the secondary market.

If you look closely at this theme, you will notice a similarity to Prince of Persia.  Only the smallest set has a positive CAGR.

What went wrong?

This was a kid's theme.  There was not much variety, as all the sets were vehicles that were either green or red.  I believe that these two reasons are why these sets failed.  There is nothing wrong with a kid's theme, but when it does not have much effort put into it, the results can be disastrous.

I do not want to get too off-topic by talking about a theme completely different from the others, but I would like to touch on the LEGO Games theme before we move on.

If you would look at the overall CAGR of this theme, you would find that it is 3.37%.  I was very surprised when I saw this because I knew that there were not many sets in this theme with a positive CAGR.  I will explain the positive CAGR later.

The one reason that the Games theme failed is because it does not stay true to the LEGO system.  People buy LEGO to build, not to play board games.  Even though the idea of a Games theme was creative and had a lot of potential, it never really took off because they had the wrong audience.

The reason for the positive CAGR of the theme is because it was such a failure.  I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but it will make sense when I explain it.

LEGO launched this theme with much enthusiasm and advertising.  Some of the most well-known sets include Minotaurous and Creationary.  LEGO had planned to make some more board games with licenses.  One was Star Wars: The Battle of Hoth, which was only available in the UK.  Two others, The Battle of Helm's Deep and Batman.  The last two never made it to the shelves.  LEGO decided to cancel the sets due to the lack of success the LEGO Games theme had experienced.  As to how some got into the hands of resellers, I do not know, but you should be able to find a small amount on eBay with prices ranging from $150 to $300 and CAGRs at 100 to 200 percent.  If it had not been for these sets, the Games theme would be right next to Prince of Persia and World Racers.

I know that there were many more themes that failed (e.g. Toy Story, Atlantis, etc.)  As with my previous article, the goal here is not to list every single set that failed in LEGO history.  The goal is to list enough data that you can know which sets will fail and which sets will succeed.

Analyzing the Data

After researching these themes, there are a few conclusions that can be made.

A set or theme can be a failure if...

#1.  ...the movie the theme is based on is unpopular

#2.  ...the theme is targeted toward kids and does not have much AFOL or TFOL appeal

#3.  ...the design is poor

#4.  ...the theme does not stay true to the LEGO system

The list goes on and on, but the main ones that affect a set the most is reason #1 and #2.  #1 was clearly the reason that Prince of Persia failed, while #2 is the reason that themes like Toy Story and Cars failed.  Reason #3 is why we find bad sets in a great theme, and reason #4 is why Clikits (for those of you who do not know what "Clikits" is, it was basically a jewelry theme.) and Games failed.  This should give you enough information to discern the good from the bad.

Possible Failures of the Future

Predicting failures is much harder than predicting success.  When looking for failures, you have to look at how popular the movie is that it came from, the minifigures in the set, and how big sales have been in the set or theme's lifetime.  When Toy Story retired, I can remember massive discounts.  Even at huge discounts, it was hard to get rid of the sets.  POTC is one theme that I would consider a failure, but that does not mean that there were a few successes in the theme.  No matter how unpopular the movie or theme is, people like ships and trains.  Everyone can remember the Queen Anne's Revenge and the Black Pearl.  Despite the huge discounts on these sets and the failures in the rest of the theme, these two sets were a huge success after the theme retired.

#1. Galaxy Squad

This is a very controversial theme.  Some people think that these are the best LEGO sets ever made, and others think that they are lame.  I think that they are neat, but I would not invest too much money in them.  The previous Space Police and Alien Conquest themes failed.  I think that TLG put more effort in these two themes than Galaxy Squad.  What makes this theme different?  Is there any difference?  I would say yes.  The Galaxy Squad sets have great designs.  If there is anything that will save this theme from failure, it is that.  I am not saying that these are terrible investments, just that there are better themes to put your money on.

#2. Lone Ranger

Most of the Lone Ranger sets are well designed, but the Disney logo on the box makes the sets unstable investments.  There are many examples of sets that were well designed with exceptional minifigures that failed with the Disney logo on the box.  POTC, Prince of Persia, and Toy Story come to mind.  Like I said before, why invest in possible failures when there are so many better options out there?

I think that Lone Ranger will be similar to POTC.  I believe that the train will be a winner.  This is just my opinion from what I have researched.  You may or may not have success using my opinion, because it is just a human opinion.

Summing it Up

As you can see, there are not nearly as many investmenfailures as there are successes, but when failures come, we must be able to identify them and steer clear from the bad and the ugly.

This article attempts to describe Craigslist experience of buying bulk Lego lots and provide some lessons learned from newbie perspective so others can benefit from experience and hopefully not make same mistakes that I've made..

I've been fan of Lego since childhood, never really entered a dark age there was always a set or two or three around the house most of them were technic.  I seriously considered Lego investing 3 or 4 months ago and turned to Craigslist bulk buys to offset the burden of long term investment.  Below are my observations of the process, lessons learned and some real life examples of to date purchases.

Observations:

Targeting lots of sets is the easiest way to start- Buying Lego pounds and trying to resell them is a very difficult proposition, there are tremendous number of power plus sellers on E-bay that are doing Lego pound selling full time or nearly full time, competing with their prices, rankings in search results or supply sources poses a significant challenge to a newbie who is just starting out.  When you target Craigslist lots that have identifiable sets in them you at least know what you are getting and also know upfront the demand rate for those sets.

Determining Your Price Limit -Lot of set is quite a bit more expensive then paying per pound with prices in a hundreds of dollars you need to make sure that you can recoup this initial investment before money exchanges hands. Unless I get a distinct feeling from the seller that he is a builder going into dark age or he is a pack rat that never misplaces anything I usually shoot for a purchase price of the lot to be 50% of the market price of the sets in it or 20% percent off asking price whichever is lower.  This leaves me with a lot of wiggle room in terms of money I can spend on rehab and a healthy profit in the end, or so I hope.

Being a Fan of Lego is an absolute must-If you don't enjoy building, the whole affair will quickly become an exercise in frustration.  If you don't treat time spent rehabilitating sets ordering missing parts from Bricklink and then building those sets to photograph them for listings and then break them down piece by piece to verify completeness, as your personal fun time you will quickly realize that you are losing ton of money because you are making less than 2 dollars an hour.  If on the other hand you treat this endeavor as getting paid for something you are willing to do for free the process is quite enjoyable.  In my case I have a son who is a Lego addict and will build anything you throw at him as long as he gets a day or two to play with it and a better half who is willing to do a lot of dirty work like sorting and packing as long as she gets to build some of the Modulars with me.  In my case it became a good family past time that everyone enjoys.

Restraining an evil AFOL -As you will see in the examples below it is essential you restrain your evil AFOL side and quit while you are still ahead.  That means you have to remember at all times that the set you are building is not for keeps and once you reach a certain dollar point of missing bricks it's time to call it quits and stop hitting order button on bricklink.

Keeping Records

It is also important to cost each set in a lot purchased according to its relative market value weight this ensures that you don't overspend or underspend when rehabbing those sets.  Needless to say that you need to be very meticulous in recording cost of each brick, plus shipping, that you ordered for every set you are rehabbing.  Once you start selling newly restored sets you need to keep an eye on your profit margin per set as well as your overall lot profit margin.  It is tempting to make an overall profit margin of 30% on a lot but if it means leaving items sitting for year on Ebay waiting for their buyers, time value of money concept kicks in.  In those cases a lower profit margin in a shorter time frame is preferable to a higher profit margin over a much longer period.

Managing your expectations

Even when dealing with the upstanding citizens you cannot make a purchase expecting that everything will be as described. Bricks could be cracked small little pieces could be missing, some sets might be beyond rehab.  You have to be ready to spend more money on top of the purchase price before you can make money with any CL purchase you make.

Patience

You cannot be pressuring yourself into trying turnaround those lots for sale ASAP.  It takes time.  Bricklink is a great resource but it's wanted list feature is totally outdated.  Trying to get the best possible price for missing bricks for 40 sets in your lot is the most tedious and time consuming part of the whole process.  Allow yourself to get frustrated and you will quickly give up.  CL flipping will not make you 100's of thousands of dollars overnight but it will help you subsidize your long term investments as well as scratch that itch to build stuff if you are AFOL.  

Now let's look at some examples. 

The profit shown is net before taxes.  That is I accounted for E-bay/Paypal fees, postage costs, packing materials, bricklinked bricks and of course the initial purchase price of the lot. First lot I purchased was a 5 gallon bucket full of individually bagged smaller to medium sets Atlantis, Sponge Bob, Cars, Toy Story, and probably two dozen of Series 2-4 minifigs. Total cost for that lot $100. Purchase date mi December. As you can see there were 47 identifiable set/minifigs in that lot.  To date I turned in a healthy  30%  profit and I expect the remaining sets to bring my profit margin to 41%.  This was a case of a pack rat and is atypical from what I've seen with my other purchases.

Lot2-Was purchased around Christmas time and included mostly complete Star wars sets including 7676, my favorite.   Of course now that 75021 re-make is on the shelves the profit on this lot is uncertain, but I essentially broke even on it so I am not too concerned.  Here is how this one faired. Purchase price of that lot was $100.

  The first two lots  made me fancy myself an expert in Craigslist buying and then I purchased Lot 3. With this lot  I decided that it would be a good idea to play Russian roulette with a semi-automatic handgun and then when the gun functioned as intended I decided that I want to do it few more times.  A shorter version of it could be an Evil AFOL awakes.  Dealing with upstanding citizens buying first two lots made me believe in general goodness of human kind, lot 3 had proven me wrong.  Craigslist ad described a lot of 8 99% complete  sets including 7659, all minifigs and manuals.  My first clue that something was off should have been a really hurried kid that seemed very anxious to be on his way, but AFOL was salivating over Slave I in the open box so money exchanged hands. When I got home none of the minifigs were present, 7659 was not there and surprise the sets were not 99% complete they were about 75% complete mark.  Evil AFOL was at full swing hitting order button on bricklink ordering minifigs at  13 bucks a pop.  Below is the result of that fiasco.  Needless to say that when the responsible female population of the house found out, it got really loud I think the nicest thing I heard was something about looking for wife number 3, my eardrums were rupturing so I cannot be sure.  Purchase price of this lot was $190 and it was purchased around Christmas time as well. Bulk of the expenses came from minifigs, had I bought just missing bricks I would've broken even.  

  While recovering my hearing on the couch late at night I figured that it is time to get back on Craigslist and got my next lot. This one was the most fun  of them all It had  40 mostly complete sets from the 80's and early 90's, some of them I remember from my childhood.  5978, 6073, 6076 were just the few.  Purchase price was $500.   And the numbers for it are below.  This one and the promise of not building Parisian restaurant by myself put me back in good graces with the Mrs.  

The last lot I purchased was for 7 Harry Potter Sets and two star wars sets.  When I started sorting thru them, I quickly came to realization that this lot had 12 Harry Potter sets, all of them with minifigs, but no manuals.  This one put me back on track.  Here how this one turned out.

And here's the overall performance of my purchases to date.  As you can see if you keep yourself in check you can expect 20% or more in net profit  in a relatively reasonable period of time.

I was strolling through my local Walmart and saw two Cloud Cuckoo Palaces.  Aware that this set was becoming hard to find, I decided to purchase one to part out.  I knew that parting out a set is something that many Brickpickers would like to know more about; therefore, I decided to write an article based on my personal experience. This article is for members who would like to have more knowledge on this subject. Without further ado, let's get started!

Part I: Know Your Set

Before you buy a set to part out, you must know the set you are purchasing.  I bought this set knowing that I would probably be able to sell the minifigures for about $30 to $35 dollars.  After that, I still had the rest of the set to sell.  If the rest of the set sells for $10 to $15 dollars, then I would make $20 to $30 dollars.  I consider that a successful endeavor.

Part II: Should I Break the Seals?

I spent quite a bit of time wondering if I should break the seals of this set.  I did some research on eBay and found out that the sealed set was selling for $30 to $40 dollars.  I figured that it would be good to get more experience in parting a set out, so I decided to break the seals.  For people looking for convenience, parting out might not be for you.  One thing that I was surprised by was the amount of time that it took to part this set out.

Part III: Shipping Costs/Creating Your Lots

This part does not take a whole lot of work, but with just a little bit of planning you can cut your overall shipping cost by a decent amount and make more money at the same time.  Even though the shipping cost will only be a few dollars, it is good to keep thinking about ways to save money.

The shipping cost is approximately one dollar for each padded envelope, and each envelope costs about fifty cents.  The rest of the set can go in a small box and the cost will be approximately $2.50.  I combined the cost of the envelope and the shipping cost to simplify the table.

The total expenses are $8.50. This one way to part the set out, and it is an effective way to accomplish the process - but is there a better way?

The total expenses are $8.50.  This one way to part the set out, and it is an effective way to accomplish the process - but is there a better way?

I would say that this is a better way.  By combining Emmet and Wyldstyle, we can subtract $1.50 from our expenses, bringing the estimated shipping cost down to $7.00 dollars.

You may have noticed that I added the snail to the Unikitty lot.  The snail is not nearly as popular as Unikitty, but when combined, the snail can make the lot sell a bit faster.

Part IV: Taking Pictures and Lighting

This part is optional.  Some people use official images in their eBay listings, but I like to show buyers exactly what they are buying.  The main problem with taking pictures is lighting.

I like to use an Ott-Lite that looks similar to this.  It gives a white light instead of a yellow light that most ceiling lights tend to give.  The second thing that I use when taking pictures is paper.  It can reflect light very well and can also soften it if you wrap it around the light.  Do not get paper near the light if it tends to get hot, as this could start a fire.

If possible, do not let light directly hit the object you are trying to photograph.  My favorite method to light a picture is to open the Ott-Lite just enough to turn it on and then slide a piece of paper in between the light and the bottom support to reflect the light indirectly onto the object I am lighting.

This way, there is not a nasty glare that hinders buyers from seeing the object you are photographing.  After you get your lighting system rigged up, you can place your minifigure on another sheet of paper and take a picture.  This is the result I got:

This is one of the simplest ways to light a minifigure.  It does cast a shadow at the bottom, but buyers can still see what they are buying, and that is the most important part.

Part V: Selling Your Items on eBay/Pricing Your Lots

After you have taken your pictures, you can just load them onto your listing.  I chose to use a padded envelope to ship the small things and a small box to ship the rest of the set.  I decided to list with free shipping.

Because I was familiar with this set, I had an idea of what the lots had been selling for, but it is always good to double check by looking up the sold listings on eBay.  After I researched trending prices, I decided on my prices, which you can see in the table below.

All this minus the $20 dollar retail price equals $25.38 profit!  That is approximately 127% profit!  I would say that this has been a success.  *Note* If you do use eBay to sell your items, they will automatically take away 10% of your profits.  I did not calculate that on my table.

Part VI: Packaging the Lots

Before I put my items in the padded envelope, I placed them in plastic bags to give the minifigures an extra layer of cushion to prevent scratching.  Here are a few of the minifigures in plastic bags:

After I dealt with the minifigures, I taped up the original bags with clear packaging tape so that the pieces would not fall out.  Now everything is ready to be shipped.

Summing it Up

I hope that you have found this article helpful and useful in your own investing experience.  Please leave a comment on what you thought about this article.  Your feedback is appreciated!  Once I finish selling all my lots, I will leave an update in the comments sharing the rest of my experience.  Thanks for reading!

Tracking your Lego investments is one of the most important topics that are discussed on the BrickPicker forums.  Since I see quite a few questions popping up on the forums about how to keep track of your Lego investments, I figured I’ll write a blog article about it and maybe some of you will find it helpful.

Terminology

First we need to get our terminology straight as it will help us to pick out appropriate tools for the job.  There are few ways you can treat your Lego business.

1. Long term investment-You buy complete brand new sets hold them for a period of more than one year and sell them at a premium after those sets are discontinued.
2. Short terms investment- You buy new sets now on sale and at discount and hold them for a period of less than one year and sell them during holiday rush at a premium.  I would lump arbitrage investment here as well, where you buy sets in US for cheap and sell them on eBay international to take advantage of currency rate and pricing differentials.
3. Flipping Used Sets- You buy used sets, usually in lots, rehab them to completion put them together, (The fun part if you are an AFOL and/or have Little Legomaniacs around the house), take pictures and sell them on eBay.
4. Parting out, PAB, Lego pounds-Well... the title says it all.

Now the question is what can we use to keep financial record of our business?  We need to examine each individual point and see where it falls and what is important to us.

Long Term investment -What is important?  Our cost basis, our annualized return on investment, record of lots purchased and timing of those lot purchases.  It is quite likely that we will be purchasing same items over the course of year or two for different prices before we sell it so our calculations need to account for that blending as well as holding periods.

Short Term investment and flipping used sets - We can treat it one of two ways as a short term investment or as a retail business that carries inventory. For the purpose of this paragraph let’s treat it as a short term investment.  Annualized rate of return is no longer important we are holding it for less than a year.  We basically can resort to simple cost and profit calculation. Revenue-Cost=Profit.

Parting out, PAB, Lego pounds - In my humble opinion if you are heavily involved in this type of investment you are better off treating it as a retail business with inventory. So what is the difference?  In investment scenario you are concerned with cost basis and sale price. In a business scenario to be successful you need to be concerned with properly matching revenue and expenses.  Let me illustrate the difference.  I am simplifying some things from GAAP and tax accounting but the illustration will hold true.

Short term investment

Business Accounting-double sided bookkeeping

So if you are heavily involved in parting out and bulk bricks you might as well treat your flipping as a retail business model.  If you don’t do a lot of parting out then treating flipping as short term investment is easier.

Choosing appropriate tools for the task

Now we are ready to discuss the tools and I will go backwards on the list.   If you choose a retail model I strongly recommend investing into QuickBooks pro.  It natively supports inventory, double sided accounting, general ledgers profit and loss reports and much, much more.  At $250 retail and there are many coupons floating around, it is very affordable and keeps you sane.  Also comes tax time it can provide you with more opportunities for deductions. As a side note if you make significant amount of money from this activity and live in US. I suggest establishing LLC or Corp and a separate business checking account.  Cost for registering Corp. or LLC is nominal, it does not require an attorney can be done online and it protects you legally.  In the most basic sense Corp and you are two separate legal entities and you are generally not personally liable for misdeeds of the corp.  There are of course exceptions to this rule but they involve fraud, negligence and certain poorly executed contractual obligations. You don’t have to quit your day job to register LLC or Corp.

Short Term Investing - Excel and some intermediate formulas is all you need.  Let’s start with layout.  For my template I chose a logical left to right vs mathematical format.  I buy the set if it is used I rehab it and incur cost along the way I sell it and incur selling costs (eBay, PayPal commissions.)  For the sake of my blood pressure I chose not to track packing costs separately I do incorporate them in my sale’s price  or I inflate shipping a little bit to cover my supplies.  Trying to keep them separate in excel will very quickly turn into running your business as a business with inventory and I can live with slightly inflated performance view of my investments.  We also need at least two tabs on the spreadsheet one for tracking details one for summary reporting. Once you’re done with your headers go ahead and click this   button on your excel Home Tab toolbar.  This will add named ranges to your spreadsheet and will allow you to extend your ranges by Tabbing into the next row.  I’m assuming you are using 2007 and up excel version. First 6 columns are self-explanatory.  Purchase Price per 1 set is actually a weighted average formula so I must digress to explain what weighted average is and why I choose to use it.  

Digression begins:

I buy a used lot of six sets for a $100.  

  If I use simple average method to determine cost per each set it comes out to be $16.6 each.  Now let’s say I need to spend $3  on bricklink  to rehab 8016 I look at the market price of 12.73 and say to myself that I’m already in a hole for this set and I’ll just throw it in a trash and I’ll be wrong and lose profit in the process.    My cost per set should be allocated based on that set’s market value weight in my purchased lot.  Here’s how we do it.

1.  Determine Set’s percent contribution/weight to market value of the lot (Set Market value/Total market value of the lot)
2. Allocate Purchase cost to the set.  (Lot total cost X Set Weight from step one)

Based on that my 8036 cost is now only (17.47/248.47) X 100= $7.03.  Spending $3 to rehab it still leaves me with a healthy profit. 

Digression ends

Back to purchase price per 1 set formula it looks like this rewritten with column headers vs cell references. ((Set Market price*Quantity)/SUMPRODUCT((Entire column where my lot numbers are="Lot 1")*(Set market price entire column)*(Lot Cost entire column)))*(Lot cost cell/Quantity cell). Sumproduct formula explanation is in order.  In its very basic form sumproduct multiplies ranges of columns and delivers sum of multiplications.

Sumproduct of these four cells is 13  2*2+3*3.  

I use it here to test conditions.  SUMPRODUCT((Entire column where my lot numbers are="Lot 1") will either return 1 or 0 for each row because it’s either my lot 1 or not from there the rest of the formula will either be 0 or the value since 0 multiplied by any value is 0.  With this formula all you have to do is populate your total lot cost for every row in that lot and adjust the formula slightly for each lot to have excel automatically calculate weighted average price per set in a lot.

Total purchase price per quantity =Quantity*Purchase price per 1 set

Lot number -we need to populate for every row to have the sumproduct formula work for us.  Simple copy paste does the trick.

Lot cost -we need that to have our weighted average price per set formula to work

Set Market price - comes straight from BP Maybe premium members will be allowed to connect via ODBC to it.  Hint Hint.

Bricklink cost=Cost to rehab the set.

Sale price- Well… your sales price

Qty sold is your qty sold

Gross Revenue- IFERROR(Sale price*Qty Sold,0)+Shipping charged-Shipping Paid. I put error handling in here because I use Sale price column to write in status of my sets i.e. Listed, waiting for parts etc.  With this iferror formula it will return zero if I don’t have a valid sales price in that row.  I also have shipping spread added to my gross revenue because I’m still experimenting with pricing to cover my packaging costs.

Shipping charged and Paid were already explained.

EBay insertion fee- you can use that to keep track of those.

eBay FV fee -IFERROR(0.1*(Sale Price*Qty sold+Shipping Charged),0) again error handling here and your standard 10 percent eBay commission on sales+shipping.

PayPal Fee - FERROR(0.029*(Sale Price*Qty Sold+shipping charged)+0.3*Q,0) very straightforward  PayPal fee of 2.9% + 30cents per transaction. Shipping in both eBay FV formulas and PayPal Fee formulas are user populated.  I am assuming that shipping could be different for any two items sold from the same lot and you can use simple arithmetic to add to the shipping.

Net Revenue- IFERROR(Sales Price*Quantity+Shipping Charged-Shipping Paid-eBay Insertion Fee-eBay FV fee-PayPal Fee,0).  I incorporated this column to have a little fun with analytics when it is time for me to think about opening eBay store.

Total Cost- SUM(Total purchase price for qty,Bricklink cost, EBay FV fee, PayPal Fee)

Profit is your total gross revenue-Total cost. Profit Margin or more accurately net profit margin is IFERROR(Profit/(Purchase price for qty+Bricklink cost),0).   With all this out of the way  here’s a screen shot of the populated details

Entirely useless and confusing for analysis.  That’s why we need a summary tab and a pivot table in it. To create a pivot table  go to your insert tab and click pivot table button

You will see popup like the one below, Click on the button on the right and select the range where your detail data is.  And just follow the prompts from there.

You will end up with a blank pivot table and list of available fields

At this point you can start to experiment by dragging fields from the top right section of the minipivot into the different areas of the bottom right section. The populated pivot table  in the screenshot summarizes my performance per lot purchased. I can get as detailed or as high level as I want and have multiple pivots side by side for quick dash boarding analysis with just a few clicks. Ok we are done with short term investment tracking.  

Long Term investing

Using Excel for long term investment tracking becomes an exercise in advanced excel and quite frankly is not worth the effort.  Most of us already have personal accounting software like Quicken Premiere that supports investment tracking natively.

Go to your tools menu and then select add account option.  You will see this screen.  

Click on Brokerage under Investing and retirement. Once the next screen comes up click Advanced setup link at the bottom of the screen.

Select  I want to enter my transactions manually on the screen that appears and click next.

Name your account and click next

Next screen you can skip or enter information on it if you have startup cash that you are allocating towards your purchases

I suggest you skip this screen and start fresh.

Select No on this screen

Done! Click Finish

  Now find your newly created account it should be in investing section of the left sidebar and click on it. We have a clean slate time to enter some transactions

  Double click on the first line and you’ll see the popup below. Change Enter Transaction drop down list to Buy-Shares Bought And populate your information.  You also have an option here to select your cash account or credit card as source of funds for this purchase. 

And then hit enter/new button

My ticker is my set number. Hit Next

  Quicken will protest and we’ll have to tell it to shut up and hit next

Here you can actually assign asset class to your Lego portfolio.

Fire brigade belongs to Large Cap in my opinion, Dolphin cruiser would probably be Mid Cap. And hit Done

.  

Rinse and repeat until you’re done with your transactions.  Of course you can type this info in directly into ledger screen if you wish.

Pretty soon your ledger screen will look busy.

Click on holdings button

Now right click on your investment  and select price history from submenu, click on New and enter new price.  I suggest doing it once a month to have a good historical representation.

And That is all folks!!!.    

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 examine more.

One of the main things discussed here on the Brickpicker forums is “deals”.  Discounts on sets at all the major and minor retail outlets are poured over in detail.  And rightly so, the effect of a discount on the initial purchase price of a set can have a significant impact for the investment return down the road.  Probably secondary to that topic is EOL (End of Line) or expected EOL dates.  When is the set going to retire from retail availability?  This is often when the secondary market price begins its largest period of appreciation.  What I struggle with at times and I’m sure many others are the same is combining the two.  Is the discount right now large enough to justify holding the set for X amount of time before it goes EOL, or is my investment capital better put to use elsewhere?  Sometimes it’s discussed or thought about but it’s not very often examined in any scientific or quantifiable way.

What I’d like to do in this article is come up with a formula that will guide decision making on whether it’s best to buy now or use your money for something else and perhaps buy later.  There are a myriad of factors or variables that potentially come into play when making this decision, but there are 4 main ones that I’m going to focus on.  These 4 variables should form the crux of any buying decision and if you can quantify them you’ll go a long way to simplifying part of the equation.  The other variables can come into play afterwards, of which I’ll list some later and of course there are a few cautions along the way which I hope to point out as well.  Bear in mind I’m only really attempting to try and map out the logic process that already does or should happen in your head when faced with a decision to buy and put some numbers into those process components.

Also, this decision making process is really only needed for investments purchased with a view to holding medium to long term, at least until after the set has gone EOL.  It is not for flipping or parting out which usually require different purchasing strategies.

Let’s look at the 4 variables in detail and examine the things that will or may factor in to determining your individual values for them before uniting them into a combined formula.

Price

This is the easiest one to answer and the number should be known exactly.  It’s the price of the set in question, after any discounts that may be on offer.  Things to consider:

• Considering Lego VIP points earned (usually 5%) as a discount off the current set
• any promotional giveaways at their estimated value as another discount is also good accounting practice (but not essential)
• Don’t forget to add on any sales tax if applicable
• Add on the cost of shipping to you if buying online and it’s not shipped for free
• If the purchase has quantity discounts/offers such as BOGO (Buy One Get One) 50% off etc then take the sum of the purchase and divide by the quantity of sets to get an average for each one

Your Average Annual Rate of Return %

This one is a lot trickier and comes with many factors to consider which I’ll list below.  For simplicity think of it as – What annual percentage return do you think you could get from using that money you are about to spend by putting it into a different set or even a different investment class (many people invest in things other than Lego).  It is essentially your opportunity cost.  Many experienced investors will know what their average annual ROI (Return on Investment) is across their entire portfolio if it is well tracked and documented (e.g. you made 40% profit last year – great use that).  Others may not and after checking in on the forums with peoples thoughts on what an average might be it appears that opinions vary widely.  Nevertheless you should spend some time to think on your own situation to come up with this percentage, there are many factors to mull over which include:

• Selling and Listing fees – you have to cash out sometime and taking expected fees off any paper based profits will give you a more realistic cash out figure
• Selling platform and market – related to the fees above, but also where you choose to sell can affect the price you get.  Ebay, Bricklink, Craigslist, The local village market etc.  Plus do you sell local, national, or international?  It all adds in to determining your profitability.
• Postage & packaging - Some people factor them in to their selling price, others charge them on top to buyers.  Either way it impacts your profits
• Damages & losses – Lost or damaged shipments to buyers (when buying yourself you are often covered by the retailer).  Do your kids/dog rip into boxes etc.  All adds in as an expense
• Gas & mileage – Do you drive out of your way to hunt for deals?  Do you need to drive to the post office to ship sales?  Add that cost in if you can or think it’s material
• Time – now this one is individual preference.  Some serious investors like to cost in their time spent researching, deal hunting, buying, listing, selling, and shipping, at an hourly rate.  Others don’t as they are doing it as a hobby and don’t see it as ‘a job’.

There is a good article detailing these and other expenses here.

Now you should have some idea of a reasonable annual rate of return that you could get by investing in other sets.  Maybe you think you can make 20% on the stock market, go ahead and use that.  It’s your choice dependent on your circumstances.

Expected EOL date

Now here’s the real tough one!  It is very rare that the future EOL date of the set you are looking at is 100% known.  It is almost always necessary to make your best educated estimate here.  There is plenty of talk, rumours, speculation, and occasional hard fact, about EOL dates on the forums.  There is good reason for that as when a set disappears from retail availability it usually starts to experience price growth on the secondary market, and that’s what we are here for!

So obviously you are not going to know the exact date, but there are some factors that you could consider to come up with your best guess:

• The time the set has been out - things like Ewok Village or Tower of Orthanc have just been released and you can reasonably expect them to be around for a good while longer.  The average of 2 years retail is a decent yardstick for most average sets, but larger SW and modulars have pushed well past that.  That leads into;
• The theme a set is from - Some themes have a reliable track record of EOL turnover.  City sets for example.  Is the set from a "one off" theme like Monster Fighters etc?  How long have others within the theme stuck around for?  Does the theme refresh itself with new release waves replacing older ones at regular intervals?
• Retail stock levels - is the set getting hard to find on store shelves.  Talked to the manager about ordering more and they can't get any?  This adds to the picture.
• Rumors and aggregate opinions of store employees - Yes Lego or other store employee information is usually meaningless and baseless when taken at an individual level.  However, did the information come from a store drone or from a manager - even then it's still not bankable.  But start to hear the exact same story from 5 or 10 different sources and you can put greater strength in the information being accurate.  That leads into;
• Information from the forums - people spend a lot of time talking EOL dates here.  Again, isolated information needs to be examined as to its source (is the member reputable and well known for having a proven track record of insight etc?).  People discuss the above factors and more and often come up with a loose consensus of when a set may EOL.  Take that information and apply your own logic to it and come up with your own gut feelings - then share it back on the forums like others do to help refine it.

OK, now you should have some estimate of an EOL date.  What you need to do is take the time difference between today (the day you are looking at buying) and that EOL date, in years.  E.g. if today is 1 Jan and I think the set will go EOL around the end of June, so that is 0.5 years.  This EOL timeframe is important as it give us the window in which it should still be possible to pick up the set from a retailer. 

If you want to be a bit more accurate than just taking an approximate value in years the formula for calculating it is:  EOL date minus todays date to give a value in days then divide that by 365 to give a value in years.

Expected Price before EOL

The 4^th thing we need relates a little to the EOL date above.  We need to have a gauge on what a future retail price opportunity may be on or just prior to the set going EOL.  This lets us factor in possibly holding off on the purchase now in order to pick it up later.  Worst case scenario you can use the full retail price (MSRP).  If you have access to a Lego retail store or have a Lego Shop at Home (Lego’s online store) retail price for your region that is the same as the one at the retailer you are deciding on, then you can take an automatic 5% discount if you belong to their VIP programme.

There are also plenty of sets that have frequent discounts.  Or you may be in a locality where stores often have Lego clearance sales when sets get close to or go EOL.  In that case insert a discount price that you are confident of being able to secure near the EOL date.  

Combining the Variables into a Formula

Ok so you should have values for the variables we need.  Here is a summary

• Price (P) in $ - the final price of the set you are considering
• Average Annual Rate of Return (AARR) as a % - your opportunity cost return that you could get by investing elsewhere
• Expected EOL Timeframe (EOLT) in years – the amount of time in years between todays date and the date you estimate the set will go EOL
• Expected Price before EOL (EOLP) – the price you expect to be able to still get the set for just before EOL

Now we need to introduce a little math.  Using the abbreviations above, insert your values into this formula to find the amount of money you will be better off by or worse off by if you purchase the set:

Value = EOLP - ((P x AARR x EOLT) + P)

If you’re ‘not a math person’ and that seems a bit scary here is a step by step run through of how to calculate it:

1. Take the price of the set and multiply by you Average Annual Rate of Return (e.g. if 30% then 0.3)
2. Take that result and multiply by your expected amount of years until EOL date (this result is your opportunity cost)
3. Take that and add the set price to it (this is the amount of money you could have at the EOL date if you don’t by the set and invest it elsewhere)
4. Take the estimated price of the set at EOL (after any discounts e.g. 5% or even MSRP) and minus the result from step 3

The result you are left with will be either a positive or negative dollar value.  If it is positive then this is the value you would be better off by if you purchase the set – so you should probably buy it.  If it is negative it represents the amount you will be worse off by if you purchase the set as you could make more money by investing elsewhere and then buying the set later – so you should probably hold off.

The result is obviously only as accurate as the info you use to feed into it.  As we talked about above the variables themselves can have a lot of estimation involved in them.  For this reason I would like to suggest building in a tolerance margin for the outcome.  I feel a tolerance margin of plus or minus 5% is reasonable to consider as a start point.   If you feel your variables are quite accurate you can narrow the tolerance margin and if on the other hand you think you’ve made some pretty wild guesses or it’s just too hard to know you can increase them.

Take the Value you have calculated and divide it by EOLP.  Then multiply by 100 to give a percentage result.  If the result falls between -5% and +5% then it is in the tolerance band and the decision is too close to call.  If it is over +5% then you should buy it, if below -5% then consider investing elsewhere.

If you are an Excel user I have created a simple spreadsheet that you can plug the variables into that does all the calculations for you.  If you would like a copy please ask in the comments below or send me a forum PM, here is a screenshot:

(note for the majority of you that will be from the US, the date format is d/m/y – as it should be )

You can input all your variables, changes the tolerance bands and there is a price calculator to the side for quickly figuring out prices after discounts.  Feel free to play with it, change it, and adapt it to your needs if you have the will and technical capability.  

Caveats and Other Variables to Consider When Buying

As mentioned previously there are a number of factors that come into play when making a buying decision.  The tool I have developed really only simplifies a few of the major ones.  Once you come up with a result from it, you should then consider these other factors as well that will likely influence your decision.  Here is a list of a few of these other variables:

• Capital restrictions – do you have the available funds to make the purchase?  As funds get tighter you’ll need to likewise tighten your buying decisions to make only the very best purchases, or come up with more capital possibly decreasing your AARR if you borrow
• Storage restrictions – can you fit more sets in your house?  Can you use storage from friends/family.  Or are you large scale enough to pay for a storage facility, again impacting your AARR
• Your risk appetite – Are you a conservative or risk taking investor?
• Diversification – do you put more or less weight on buying this set because you want it in your portfolio to increase your diversification?
• Investor Scale – Small to medium investors can probably get away with only buying their sets close to EOL.  But large scale investors need to spread their purchases over longer periods both for logistical reasons as well as trying to avoid possible buying limit restrictions.
• Time restrictions – The ‘cost’ of time was discussed above, but there is also the fact that time is a limited resource.  As you grow your investment portfolio there is only so much time you can spare to hunt deals and have available to sell your inventory to cash out.  Otherwise you’re going to have to hire someone or have a sympathetic partner!
• Stock shortages or limited time deals – is the deal so good or supply so low that the set may disappear if you don’t act fast?

Those factors combined with the multitude of things that also go into the 4 variables we have attempted to use all mean that buying decisions can never be an exact science.  Hopefully though we have gone someway into simplifying part of the decision or at the very least mapped out the process for that decision making.  Even if you don’t use the formula I hope you have taken something from it to enhance your own process. 

As for when to sell, that’s a whole other discussion and probably has more variables involved than buying decisions!  Everyone has different strategies that work for their individual circumstances and there are a few good articles and forum discussions on the topic as well.

In conclusion, I’d like to invite constructive criticism and discussion on the topic in the comments below.  Feel free to pick holes, tear apart, mull over, or send effusive gifts.  This is by no means a finished product and by sharing our knowledge and thoughts we can all improve our investment capabilities.