Brickvesting
LEGO Investing Articles
108 blog articles in this category
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It's well known by now, but I started a Lego business a while back in August and have been, like most of you, working to make it the best that it can be. I work in an industry where efficiency is not only the key, but it is expected to grow and thrive with every new iteration of a product or service. Without progress we have nothing, right? Well, I bring this same mindset to my business everyday. Anytime I do something, no matter if I have done it 100 times, I say "how could I have done this bet
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A disclaimer before we start: I have thoroughly enjoyed the previews for The Lego Movie. I giggled at times and was generally pretty excited at the prospect of seeing it in theaters. I've also been checking out the sets from the movie and reading/watching reviews of the builds. Overall, I think they are kinda eccentric and zany, like my uncle Jim after a lot of 'eggnog' at Christmas, dancing to Santa Baby with my wife's scarf. Fun, fun, fun! Sadly, fun alone does not profits make; does fun and p
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Original Idea by rcdb1984 "Turboflipping is an original term coined by rcdb1984" Whether you are new to the LEGO investing game or a seasoned pro, there is one thing that will always remain constant: a desire for fast and "easy" profits. As you probably know, however, most of the time to earn significant amounts of money you will need to hold your investments for a relatively long period of time depending on your target return, but there are some instances where you can take advantage of mark
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As mentioned in other blogs and some of my forum posts, I have begun a Lego business online using an Ebay Store. A large part of my business is from parting out sets; The practice of of selling the minifigures and certain desirable parts of a set (like a vehicle or building) separately to make money on the set. This is a very common (but time consuming) practice for many different people ranging from businesses to people like me. On the outside, it seems like a fairly understandable, and even he
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So, you have been buying LEGO sets non stop over the past few months, maybe even years, and you have noticed your Brickfolio has increased in value by 10,000% (exaggerating just a bit here). Or maybe you are a short term investor looking to make some "quick" money to fund your own collection or long term investing choices. It can be sort of difficult to decide how to start selling some of your inventory, as well as where to get the most cost effective materials so that you end up with more money
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I think at this point, we all know about all the scams that exist out there that we must tread as Lego buyers: Drop shippers, shipping scammers on Ebay, Craigslist scammers who want you to wire them money, and even companies that are somwhat deceitful in their practices. But there are more parts to being safe as a Lego Investor/Collector that we must be aware of: CyberSpace issues. It seems silly that this amazing thing called the internet has brought us all of this joy, made this site possible
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So I wanted to write up another article about drop-shipping scams, specifically on Ebay, that looked more at the problems it causes to everyone, not just the people directly involved. I will spare you the long explanations of drop-shipping scams and how they work as they are covered in great detail in two articles shown below: Drop Shipping Lego: How to Avoid Being Scammed – By Talon http://blog.brickpicker.com/drop-shipping-lego-how-to-avoid-being-scammed/ Lego Larcency: Scams, Schemes, and Sha
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People are always looking for the next hot investment. With today's volatile stock market and falling real estate prices, people are looking for someplace safe to invest their money. I'm here today to make a case for LEGOS. That's right, you read it correctly...LEGOS. Hard to believe? Maybe, but let me show you some interesting tidbits and data that help me substantiate my claim. In 2000, LEGO was named "Toy of the Century” by Fortune magazine as well as by the British Toy Retailers Associ
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If you have used Ebay at all, you know how important Ebay's feedback and rating system is to the buying and selling process. As a buyer, when you buy an item from a seller on Ebay, you have a chance to leave feedback for that seller and rate their services. You can leave positive, negative, or neutral feedback for the item, along with a 100 word phrase to describe why you left the rating you did. You can also rate them from 1-5 stars in several areas: The item description, the seller's communica
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Over the last few weeks I've been looking into understanding how the time you decide to purchase a set for investment factors into your real investment returns. After one of my earlier blogs on how discount amounts affect your returns I began to examine how in some circumstances buying at a higher price but later in a sets retail shelf life may be beneficial. It’s all about the Time Value of Money and the Opportunity Cost of purchasing an item when your investment capital may be better utilised
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"ED"itor's Note: This informative and well written article was a collaboration of Quacs and Fcbarcelona101... In 2006, a television show debuted in the US called Man vs. Wild. Originally a British show called Born Survivor, Man vs. Wild was a reality TV series hosted by the noted outdoorsman and stuntman Bear Grylls that chronicled his efforts to thrive in remote locations by demonstrating and using various survival skills. Throughout each episode, Grylls used every piece of information and nat
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The differences in retail prices that Lego attracts across different countries and regions is an often talked about subject. There is always a feeling that Lego, both with its own stores and online shop and with the suggested retail prices that most big Lego retailers use, doesn’t exactly play “fair” when it comes to pricing. The reasons for that are many and varied and are beyond the scope of this article. But what I would like to do is present some evidence that may help put into perspective s
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I have done several articles about selling on Ebay, and several other BrickPicker members have as well. You can tell by just trying to sell on Ebay, or reading there articles that selling on Ebay includes quite a few different choices about how to list: Do I offer Free Shipping? Buy it Now or Auction? When do I end the Auction? I have been doing a lot of different articles touching on each of these and I wanted to touch on another big one that I felt could have an impact on sales and also offers
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Most of us here love when we sell a set online, no matter what it is. That sound of "cha-ching" comes and we are in Ecstasy. It brings a feeling like no other . But, unfortunately we are generally immediately brought down to earth by the fact that we now have to ship it. If you all are like me, you hate this part. You can never decide exactly how much shipping is going to be and whether you should add extra services. You always worry something will happen during the shipment. You ask yourself,
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Arbitrage is a term used to describe the practice of using price variances between different markets in order to make a profit. This may mean different geographic markets such as countries, regions, states, or even cities and towns. The term can also cover selling in different time periods if you are buying in today’s market and holding to sell in a future market. In the modern financial world using arbitrage is a common tool and it is what helps keep most international markets and prices stabl
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There have been several articles in the site about pretty much every single aspect of LEGO Investing: from how to store your sets to some of the "Hazzards", as Quacs explained in his blog article However, there are some other factors we all need to consider when we decide to enter this particular way of investment: the costs. I know it sounds pretty obvious, but I strongly believe that a lot of people even in this same forum, are not thoroughly consider all the costs they are incurring at the d
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While I was writing a review for the 10174 AT-ST UCS set I came across a phenomenon that had me intrigued. It was quite evident that the set had experienced a recent surge in secondary market price growth. After finishing that review I have been researching other sets that seem to share this second wind renaissance. Firstly I’m going to repeat a bit of the information from the 10174 review to set the scene before moving onto a few other prominent examples of second wind growth. 10174 AT-ST Lo
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When doing some research on Ebay for another article I did, Should I throw away the box from the set I just opened? I noticed some outrageously high prices for used sets on Ebay - way over the Brickpicker pricing. At first I just figured these were just some Buy It Now (BIN) listings that one poor sap jumped on, but looking through them, more than half were auctions where tons of people bid. I became curious as to why – what makes these auctions so appealing that people spend extra money over th
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Ever since a Lego store opened in my area, I have been fascinated with the concept of Pick A Brick (PAB) cups. The clear cups, coming in two sizes, offer the customer with the ability to not only choose what they want from a wall of different elements, but also how much they want through packing methods that have been refined over time. As years went by, my ability to fill every nook and cranny grew. My collection of empty cups grew. And my interest in the cups as investment tools grew as well.
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Will box damage reduce the value of my sets when it is time to sell them? We have all asked ourselves this question at some point, and it is actually seen on the forums relatively often, so I think it is time to evaluate a little more in depth how much does box condition really matter for the LEGO investor once it is time to get rid of some of those sets we have stored in our closets (or whole rooms, if you are lucky). There are very different types of damage to consider, ranging from the typi
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When I was a kid, I remember my younger brother wanted to be involved in everything I was. When I got a bike for my birthday, he wanted one. If I went to summer camp, he wanted to go, too. If I was hanging out with my buddies, he was tagging along behind us. As I’ve grown older and seen my kids behave similarly, I have come to understand that’s the nature of siblings. The younger ones look up to and emulate their elder siblings. In the wonderful world of Lego, the older brother is growing up: N
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Throughout the Golden Age of Baseball, when Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays patrolled the game's outfields, baseball writers and fans used three primary statistics to explain a player's offensive prowess: runs, home runs and RBI. This had been the case for a hundred years, but in 1977 a little known statistician named Bill James produced a magazine called Bill James Baseball Abstract. In it he presented a number of new statistics that more accurately represented how baseball players created or sav
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There is something I have been wanting to apply to LEGO for a long time but that for some reason I could not find enough time to do: a regression analysis. For those of you that have never heard of have already forgotten what a linear regression is, I will try to quickly summarize the most important aspects. Basically, by running a regression analysis we can determine the relationship between several different independent variables and how they affect one particular dependent variable, therefor
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For three years, I worked downtown and on my way home from work I would occasionally pass by a hot dog vendor named Ray who would stake out a corner near the entrance to the train station. Because I'm a sucker for a good Chicago-style dog (tomato, pickle, onions, neon green relish, mustard, celery salt, sport peppers, and NO KETCHUP), I would occasionally stop by Ray's cart for a dog, and he and I would chat for a couple minutes while I finished it. One day, we got around to talking about his bu
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Remakes, clones, variants, redo’s, copies, call them what you will but they play a big part in the savvy investors thinking. Especially in the most beloved Star Wars theme. There is almost always a remake or two, or more, in every new wave of Star Wars themed Lego sets that are released these days. In fact it has become one of the common criticisms of the theme across many Internet fan sites and discussion forums. So what impact do remakes really have on secondary market prices, both on the old
