Community LEGO Blogs

Welcome to the fifth and final installment of a series started by Comicblast called “The Superior Market - eBay vs. BrickLink”. If you haven't read the previous articles, I suggest you start at the beginning and read Comicblast's initial articleshere ($0.00 to $9.99 and here ($10 to $24.99). The third installment can be readhere ($25 to $49.99) and gives further background about the purpose of these articles and my approach to continuing the analysis. The fourth installment is here ($50 to $99.9

It is long known that United States of America has a relatively huge privilege when it comes to LEGO pricing and investment potentials. They get the best deals and the best retail prices. While I will mostly discuss Europe pricing compared to USA, I added ''world'' to the entry title simply because every country has the same problem. 1.00 U.S. dollar = 0.749625187 Euros (€) If we just look a couple of late price comparison: 9474-1: The Battle of Helm's Deep US price: 129.99 $ EU price: 139.99 €

I wanted to start a dialogue about what I think many people are missing when they discuss any myriad of topics on this and other sites and that is the view of our ‘business’ from a distance, the big picture if you will. I'm not talking about a bubble bursting or not bursting conversation, but instead the changes in the Lego culture that have manifested over the past few years. I will start out by stating that I don't have all the answers, none of us do; but I think we need to start talking about

Let me start out by saying that the title is definitely stereotypical gender bias, but don't let that exclude anyone. If you've got a man/parent/other supporting you, by all means change the title in your head to whatever is applicable. This is a topic I don't think gets covered enough. The people in the background. The behind the scenes workers who don't get the spotlight, or even the credit sometimes, but are nonetheless pillars of all the business we do here. My woman is amazing. She is the r

Investor: Veegs Investments (LEGO) to date: About $8000 Sales to date: About $600 Wife (One day overdue now...and still very pregnant) anger level: 9.5/10 Most Recent Acquisition(s): Captain America at TRU.ca (only to get 30116 polybag) I was just perusing the other community blogs and really enjoyed reading articles that are a mix of personal as well as Lego. I also have the ability to type, so I figured I could emulate my fellow Legoists and provide a little (more) content to a site that I us

Out of curiosity, I started taking a look at TLG's annual financial reports available since 1999, and thought it would be interesting to show some graphs with the evolution of the company since then. This is not meant to be an in depth analysis, but rather a very visual and quick way of examining how these little bricks that occupy so much of our time have performed over the past decade (more than 12 years actually). I might get into more detail in further posts of whatever I find and consider

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.  Apologies as I’ve been a bit slack and missed the last data update that was in January and had data up to the 10th of Jan.  As such this update will be based on values as at the end of Feb-14.  This means comparisons in the “Last Rank” column of the tables will be comparing movements from the Nov-13 positions. Again, here a

This blog follows on from my first blog back in June that used data to the end of May-13. This is the next update in what I would like to be a regular series of articles that presents the top 20 sets in terms of secondary market price growth according to the data we have available here on Brickpicker. 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 acro

I want to start a regular blog that will update the information I presented there along with an expansion to include the other time periods available and a little analysis/commentary. Firstly 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 themes are included as I have zero interest in Bionicle/Hero Factory for example. (I just didn’t have the willpower to gather the data f

[box type="info" ]This blog follows on from my previous blogs (May, July, September, and October) presenting the top 20 sets in terms of secondary market price growth according to the data we have available here on Brickpicker.[/box] 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 zero interest in Bionicle/Hero Fa

Welcome to the July 2013 Best Selling Sets on eBay blog entry. Unfortunately, there was a delay in the updating of June's numbers that did not allow me to write a list for that month, but that's in the past already. Here are the Top 10 Best Sellers in July!: (Positions in the list are determined by both Used and New listings, but I will only include information for new copies) July 2013 Top Ten 1- One of the favorite sets for investors has finally made the best selling lists and in what a wa

Welcome to my Top Ten Best Selling Sets section for the month of May. This will be the first of a series of articles dedicated to examine some of the purchasing trends as shown by eBay data collected by Brickpicker every month. My aim is to publish one of these as soon as each month's update is completed by Ed/Jeff and show the users of the site some of the most popular sets so that they can use it as a guide about what is hot at any particular month. Hope you find it useful. May 2013 Top Ten

After a 2 month hiatus, it's time to see the current trends as far as best selling LEGO sets is concerned, based on eBay licensed information. This time, I will only include comments on those sets that are new to the list or that have experimented an special "event", as I can't really add too much information to, say, the 7965 MF's every single month. Let's get to it! September 2013 Top Ten 1 421 Sold (New) I don't really think anyone will be surprised to see this set in the top spot of th

When I was a kid eons ago, there were only four Lego themes: Town, Space, Castle, and Technic. Amazingly, these three themes still exist to this day: City, Galaxy Squad, Castle and Technic are today's version of TLC's four evergreen themes. Lego was built on the backs of these themes, and can thank them for its ascent to the multi-billion dollar toy behemoth it has become. Although they are sometimes shunned by Brickpickers for newer, more complex, or licensed sets that have been designed to br

"OUR EXCLUSIVE" Those two little words on Toys R' Us' website in regards to the Grand Emporium (10211) sparked a minor uproar recently among Lego investors. What does this mean? Will it change the Emporiums expected immanent retirement? Will 10211 languish forever at inflated TRU prices post EOL ala' Vampyre Castle? Should we all dump our large and exclusive sets in favor of poly bags and mini figures? Breath people, take a step back and chill. I, humbly, submit that it will have no impact what

Ever since this since was founded, the CAGR figure has been the go to number in order to determine relative performance as well as forecasting future set growth. The topics addressed previously about this matter are broad in range, but there is one in particular that so far has not been discussed. As you know, the CAGR of a set is the figure that averages year to year returns of an particular set, but as you probably know the growth trends of LEGO sets after retired do not follow a smooth patte

For those of you who read my past review on the 10179 UCS Millenium Falcon, I will let you know upfront that this is mostly the same information I presented in the growth potential section. I decided to post it here because I believe it will get more exposure AND because in here you will be able to post your comments and feedback on my analysis. So, in summary, if you read my review you can go ahead and skip to go directly to the comments sections and let me know what you think, while if you did

The best of the best. The Millennium Falcon is the biggest Lego Star Wars set ever produced to this date. The set has 5,195 pieces in the set. The set has 5 minifigures with it. That is a rare feature. I have only seen a few UCS sets that have minifigures. This is my favorite set. I have built this set. It took me a really long time to build it and it was really fun. Here is the Lego.com description of the set: Build the ultimate Millennium Falcon™! This is it - the biggest, most spectacular LEG

Just a quick blog entry today. This morning there was a post in the forum discussing this, but since I already wrote the blog entry last night, I figured I would release it anyway... For all you Star Wars enthusiasts, check out this website that chronicles one man's journey to build a UCS AT-AT that is minifigure scale: http://gimmelego.blogspot.com/2013/07/ucs-at-at-they-think-its-all-over.html Here's a picture of this behemoth! Some stats on this MOC: Piece count - approximately 6,250 Pie

After a shocking release of a remake of a Star Wars UCS model, the question in everyone's heads is "Who's next? What's going to be remade next?" I did a little analysis a couple days ago, and want to share my results, and why I made the predictions that I did. 7181 TIE Interceptor - 2000 This is a very epic model of the TIE Interceptor, and has very nice black box, that many investors and collectors miss. Unfortunately, it seems that LEGO's partnership with Star Wars requires all Star Wars produ

The last few weeks have been perhaps the most difficult in my life. My sister and brother-in-law went through a harrowing experience; one I’d never wish on anyone (my avatar gives some clues as to part of their troubles). They weathered the storm like true superheroes and I wanted to give them a gift that really meant something. What was that gift? LEGO, of course. Those close to me know that if I give LEGO as a gift it comes straight from the heart, and if you’ve read my last blog post you’ll k

In my last post I briefly mentioned that buying Lego for someone else could be quite a good ‘investment’ as they may possibly reciprocate. Here’s unorthodox Lego ‘investment’ tip no. 2: complain to Lego. When my local Lego store opened (I say store, I mean shop, because I’m British) I went along pretty sharpish. I was desperate to bulk out my budding Lego collection and headed straight for the Pick A Brick wall. I was informed by a very friendly member of staff that they’d run out of large PAB c

Many Lego-related blogs are written about modern sets. This especially applies to investment-related blogs. In a series of articles I try to generate enthusiasm for some of the more interesting vintage Lego sets. We enjoyed building them as kids, whereas probably more often we jealously admired them in our best friend's collection or in the Lego catalogue we devotedly picked up in the toy store. This is primarily a blog of nostalgia. However, investing in vintage Lego can be an interestin

I own every set of the Hobbit and both waves of the LOTR sets and I want to create a battle scene, it will be my first scene ever creating so I need my fellow brickpickers insight and advice here's some photos of my sets feel free to shoot me any ideas thanks for the help and criticism.

If you have taken a look around BrickPicker's home page you have probably noticed a tab that reads Theme CAGR. What you will get by clicking it is a list of every major LEGO theme in order of highest to lowest CAGR, that unlike for individual sets encompasses the whole product line of a specific theme. We can use that list as a proxy for theme popularity and overall investment performance in a variety of ways. However, I want to take that list and twist it a little bit to get some different insi