Community LEGO Blogs

For as long as I can remember, people have been puzzled by my interest in many things that were “for boys”, and I have been equally puzzled by why toys have a gender at all. As much as I am genetically and physically female, I have never been one to adhere to the likes and behaviors deemed appropriate to my gender. I am a builder and a creator. Both of my parents worked as computer engineers (although I used to think they worked on a train), so my brain and its nurturing were focused heav

So its no secret that the 9468 Vampyre Castle has a big following on this site and a lot of people have stashed them away hoping for the killer gains that all the awesome Lego castle's seem to bring. Around November, we were all finishing buying out Toys R Us, the Lego Shops near us (on clearance), and Amazon while salivating over what was to come. Suddenly, Toys R Us orders somewhere near a million for each store to restock for a huge sale. The Vampyre Castle (9468) then showed up on ToysRUs.co

One of the biggest "home-grown" LEGO themes around today is called the Collectable Minifigure Series. In each series are 16 minifigures that can be found in plastic bags at LEGO distributers. Each bag is non-see through, so it is by chance that you get the minifigure that you want... Or is it? Just because you can't see what's inside, doesn't mean you can't feel for it. There are often distinct features of a minifigure that make them easy to feel for. The second method is by bump codes. These co

One of the biggest draws of BrickPicker.com is the online Price Guide that is free to all registered members. In this tutorial/article, we will figure out how to search for a set, and interpret the data that is provided. Looking Up Sets On nearly ever page on BrickPicker is a search bar in the upper left corner. In this search bar reads “Enter LEGO Set Number...”. You do not have to enter the set number, and you can enter in a key word such as “truck” or “plane”. After you have typed more than

Hello, my username is Comicblast, and I will be your guide today. Please click here to follow along as the tour progresses. Enjoy! 1. Forum Topics Once you go the the link above, you will come to the main BrickPicker Forums page. On this page are --- main categories of topics, and several other sub-categories. The first is the BrickPicker.com General Board. This category includes more general information, not so related to LEGO investing, but still important. If you intend on participating in th

In an Article titled “I've been Searching for a Set Like You: Ebay Searching Tips and Strategies”, I commented on Ebay's search function and how you can maximize your Ebay searching potential by properly limiting searches. I wanted to expand on that with some great search examples I use as well is showing more in depth how I created them. This should help give you ideas for your own Ebay searches to check. I realize by doing this I am creating more competition for myself on Ebay, but hey, we all

When I first joined this site it seemed like there were a lot of people here talking about investing in Legos by buying sets and storing them until they are worth a lot more money. Basically a long-term investment. When I hear the word “investment” that is normally what I think of; buying or tying up capital in something and then waiting until it is worth more money than you paid for it. After a while though, I saw people who were mentioning how they make money on Lego by using the quick flip.

Thought you'd never use math once you got out of school? Think again. Today, as my first personal blog article, I am going to briefly describe a method to predict a set's worth using its CAGR. A while ago, Ed showed us what CAGR is, and how to calculate it in this blog article (http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/blog/4/entry-15-cagr-compound-annual-growth-rate-and-lego/), but for all of you who don't want to open a five hundredth tab, CAGR, or Compounded Annual Growth Rate, is basically

Just a quick blog article for today. For those who haven't read my Chima Evaluation Corner article, I believe Chima has the potential to be successful for investors if the TV show continues its previous success. That said, I want to point you in the direction of what I believe can be a potential investment sleeper from the Chima line along the lines of Ninjago's Spinners, 70107 Skunk Attack (click the link for the Brickset review): <image courtesy of Brickset> This is the ONLY way to g

Welcome to the exciting world of Lego Investing! This primer is intended to provide you with as much information as possible to create a buying strategy for yourself as you buy Lego from Canada/USA/Europe. Buying and selling anything can be hard, but as with all commodities, if you can buy low and sell high you can make a lot of money doing this with Lego over time! This article is more Canadian focused as it was created with the Canadian shopper in mind, but it should have some tidbits that can

Looking at the world from the ground is a lot different than in a hot air balloon. On the ground, you see details, colors, and textures of everything in front of you. In the air, you see what the overall landscape looks like, and all of those small details combine to form a picture of the earth's terrain and landscape that we cannot see from ground level. These overhead views can provide a weath of information about the nature of the area's weather patterns, climate and even its inhabitants. As

Last day of work tomorrow. Making a Lego gift for a colleague. Lego out on living room floor. Wife is painting nails. I have to do toes because she's 35 weeks pregnant (yeah, I'm committed...). I'm clumsy. I knock the remover over. It pools around some Lego that I left on the floor. The Lego is damaged because Acetone eats Lego. Moral of the story: Don't spill nail polish remover on your Lego Lesson of the story: If you do want your Lego to be stuck together (I did the unthinkable and glued toge

Lone Ranger Lego...     Just wanted to let those three little words sink in for a second. Most on this site would agree that this line, with a couple exceptions, is not among the best of choices to place your investment dollars. I tend to agree with that sentiment. I am also a fan of building sets and as such this line is pure gold. The sets are reasonably priced,  have great builds, and come together as a group nicely. For the record I have grabbed a few of these sets at an extreme markdown  

If you buy a lot of Lego sets, you know Amazon.om is a great place to get them. They usually have some of the best prices out there, they have excellent shipping terms with Amazon Prime and with their super saving shipping, and they price match everything (they actually price match everything, TRU, rather than just stating that they do…). But there is another way on Amazon to get some pretty good deals, and if you are not utilizing it, you are making a big mistake. It’s called the Amazon Gold B

The Taj Mahal is the biggest official LEGO product in existence, and one of my favorite LEGO models. Though the Taj Mahal doesn’t have a price tag of other large sets, such as the close rival 10179 Millennium Falcon, it has managed to keep its place piece count wise, for the last 5 years… The real Taj Mahal was built under the authority of “Mughal emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his third wife, Mumtaz Mahal,”^ and is often referred to as a great example of Muslim architecture. In the same way,

The Volkswagen Type 1, or more commonly the Volkswagen Beetle, was one of the offspring of Adolf Hitler’s plan for a car that was cheap to manufacture. The car was manufactured for 62 years (1941-2003), and approximately 21.5 million were made worldwide, a world record.^ The word “Volkswagen” derives from the German phrase “people’s car”. It was designed under the requirements that it carry 5 people and be able to travel 22 mpg, a stunning number, at the time. Eventually, the car was further de

I just pulled this off the brickultra.com website. Apparently, TLG is finally getting around to releasing a TMNT polybag. Here's what it looks like, and the link to brickultra's story: http://brickultra.com/new-lego-tmnt-polybag-30270/ My take: I think this is another in a long line of questionable decisions made by TLG regarding the TMNT theme. The first polybag should be an enticement to buy more of the theme, and I really question whether the best approach was to include a "Krang in the R

<links to sourced websites are embedded in the text for reference> I just saw an interesting story pop up on Brickpicker's front page from the website brickultra.com. In it, they explain that an expansion to TLG's current Czech Republic factory is in the works. This comes on the heels of stories released earlier this year that Lego is planning an expansion to their Hungary factory, another expansion of their Connecticutsite, and construction of a new factory in China. That's four expansion

I wanted to reach out to everyone and write another article about drop shipping and the problems we are now seeing more and more with Lego sets. I had another drop-shipping incident I had to deal with and wanted to offer a direct personal experience with an issue. I wanted to offer a few addendums to the information on the site provided before by Talon in the article “Drop Shipping Lego: How to Avoid Being Scammed” which is a great article to have pinned to your browser as a bookmark while you a

Well known towers, skyscrapers, residences, hotels and other famous landmarks. What do all these structures have in common? well, they all form part of their own dedicated LEGO theme: Architecture. A theme with origins going back to the 1960s, that was brought back to life by LEGO at some point in 2008 with the introduction of their very first mini model of a "real world" landmark, the Sears Tower (To be changed not much later to the Willis Tower). For those of you out there that enjoy architec

People have been facinated by the ocean numerous times over the centuries. There have been different books written about it. My personal favorite book about the ocean is Atlantis. The book talks about people who are trying to find the lost city. In 2010, the Lego Company released the Atlantis theme. The theme is based on minifigures trying to find the lost city of Atlantis. The theme has had twenty-three sets released into the market and there was a Lego movie aired on Cartoon Network using the

The Atlantis theme has twenty-three sets. These twenty-three sets were released over a period of two years: 2010-2011. Currently the Atlantis theme is retired. Out of the twenty-three sets, there are eight that have a positive CAGR. These eight sets will be ranked and explained. 1. 7978 Angler Attack The 7978 Angler Attack has the best CAGR out of all the Atlantis sets, which is 16.61%. I consider that a decent CAGR. The set is down 2.51% from the last month. The set has a retail price of $19.99

"Marty, we need to go back! Back to the Future!" - Doc Brown In 1985, the first movie of the blockbuster trilogy Back to the Future was released to accolades. It quickly became an 80's classic movie with kids and adults alike routinely quoting famous lines from the movie. From Bif bellowing "McFly!" to Doc stammering about flux capacitors, this movie quickly worked its way into pop culture, and today it stands as an all-time great. Imagine for a moment that we were actually able to time travel.

"Ed"itor's Note:  Over the past three plus years, I have encountered many types of people on our site and other LEGO sites.  One common thread that connects many LEGO fans is that many are highly educated.  There are many programmers, stock brokers, doctors, accountants, chemists, engineers and business owners that inhabit the various LEGO forums.  DoNotInsertInMouth is one such person...or character.  To make a long story short, I almost banned him for his name and wacko avatar he originally us

This is the Fourth entry in a series of blogs that analyses some of the data we have available here on Brickpicker to provide some simple averages to use as benchmarks. I have done the Star Wars, Ninjago, and LOTR/Hobbit themes and this time it’s the turn of the City theme. The City theme is one of Lego’s ‘evergreen’ themes, meaning it is never retired and there are always new sets in the theme available. The current iteration of the City theme began in 2005 and took over from the World City the