Community LEGO Blogs
LEGO Blog Articles Submitted by the Brickpicker Community
259 blog articles in this category
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FTL: Faster Than Light is a top down, real time strategy, rogue-like indie game created by developers Subset Games released for digital distribution on September 14, 2012. The general premise is you, the player, are the high ranking commander of a faster-than-light travel capable spacecraft belonging to the remnants of a once great Federation trying to transport secret tactical information to headquarters which could ensure victory over the malicious Rebels all the while avoiding destruction or
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In this entry of the BrickIndex Spotlight we will be focusing our attention in only the second set from the Architecture theme that has been retired so far (if you don't count the Sears Tower version as an actual retirement). Up to this point, we have really not had any significant amount of data to determine the secondary market success of sets in the Architecture line, and we have been using the only retired set, John Hancock Center, as our only guide. Thankfully, Sungnyemun can now be conside
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81,711,327! That's the estimated number of Lego sets produced in a year. Let this sink in for a minute. Almost 82 million Lego sets are produced in a year. How did I calculate this? It's actually fairly straightforward. Using 2012 data: 1. I found an estimate online for the number of bricks produced by TLC in a year: 19 billion 2. I divided this by the average number of bricks included per set according to Brickset's 2012 set list: 221 This yielded a "gross" number of sets produced in 2012
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Benchmarks: LEGO Technic This the sixth 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 LOTR/Hobbit, City, and Super Heroes themes and this time it’s the turn of Technic! My aim is to provide some basic stats for the theme mainly around averages for a few simple measures relating to set sizes and value for money metrics. I’m going to leave out investment retu
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This the fifth 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 LOTR/Hobbit, and City themes and this time it’s the turn of Super Heroes! My aim is to provide some basic stats for the theme mainly around averages for a few simple measures relating to set sizes and value for money metrics. I’m going to leave out investment return measures such as CAGR and the va
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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,
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One of the many tabs on the BrickPicker homepage is a drop-down menu titled “Tools & Data”. There are 4 sub-menus: Compare Sets, The BrickIndex, Bulk LEGO Data, and CAGR By Theme. We will be visiting all of these, in no particular order in this guide. BrickIndex “The BrickIndex is a chart that displays the top performing LEGO sets on eBay over the past six months. By utilizing the licensed eBay Terapeak data, we are able to show the LEGO investor and collector the current hot LEGO sets and
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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
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The 9465 The Zombies is a medium sized set comes from the Monster Fighters theme. The set has 447 pieces. The set has a retail price of $39.99 USD. This means the Price Per Piece (PPP) ratio for the set is nine cents ($0.09 USD) per piece. There is another ratio that I use and it is called the Price Per Gram (PPG) ratio. This set has a weight of 0.725 kilograms, or 725 grams. This means the PPG ratio is about six cents ($0.0551 USD) per gram. The set has four minifigures. They are Jack McHammer,
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By popular demand, I moved the up to date stats and blog contest data to the Community Blog to simplify matters for members and contestants. Please feel free to add comments or correct mistakes that I have made. The Blog Contest will end August 1, 2013. As with the Review Contest, there will be a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winner with some Honorable Mentions thrown in. The winning blogs/writers will be based on content quantity and quality...with an emphasis on creativity, accuracy and originality.
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This the second 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. Last time I focused on the Star Wars theme and this time it’s the turn of Ninjago. My aim is to provide some basic stats for the theme mainly around averages for a few simple measures relating to set sizes and value for money metrics. I’m going to leave out investment return measures such as CAGR and the various ROI time periods we
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I’d like to start 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. Focusing on one theme at a time my aim is to provide some basic stats for the theme mainly around averages for a few simple measures relating to set sizes and value for money metrics. I’m going to leave out investment return measures such as CAGR and the various ROI time periods we have available as I think they should be a different discu
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This the third 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 and Ninjago themes and this time it’s the turn of Lord of the Rings & The Hobbit. Technically LOTR and the Hobbit are separate themes but many people lump them under one overall theme and consider each of the two branches a subtheme and that’s what I’ll be doing here. My aim is to provide some basic sta
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When I first got into Lego's, my wife was a little resistant. She thought they were cool, but just didn't really see anything about them that made her want them. Then she say a couple of themes she liked, for instance Harry Potter, and all of a sudden my obsession was understandable. Two of her favorite movie themes of all time are Star Trek and the Transformers series and so she immediately asked me if Lego had any of these themes. She was very disappointing to find out that Lego did not have
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I had a lot of fun thinking up different Lego sets in part 5 when I did Mario Video games. I immediately had tons more ideas that came into my head. So this time I decided to do Nintendo 64 games. The Nintendo 64 was my favorite system of all time and houses some of the best made games ever in my opinion. I tried to take the best games and pull out the best stuff from them so that I had some good variety. I am leaving out Mario 64 since I already had written about that one. This theme can be cal
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Welcome to the last installment of my analysis of the LEGO Star Wars BrickIndex. In this article, we will be looking at the 8129 AT-AT Walker, 8036 Seperatist Shuttle, 10129 Rebel Snowspeeder,10030 Imperial Star Destroyer, and 4500 Rebel Snowspeeder. 16. 8129-1: AT-AT WALKER 17. 8036-1: SEPARATIST SHUTTLE 18. 10129-1: REBEL SNOWSPEEDER 19. 10030-1: IMPERIAL STAR DESTROYER 20. 4500-1: REBEL SNOWSPEEDER The BrickIndex is a handy BrickPicker tool that allows the user to view the overall Top 2
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For my next article on themes Lego really needs to do, I think I am going to go with the most obvious one out there: Disney World. Now many people have mentioned this, and Disney Land, and all the other Disney type themes out there. It is actually pretty hard to understand how it has not happened as well. Disney now owns Star Wars, Disney has also had along line of Lego sets in Duplo as well as several other film themes like Cars and the recent Lone Ranger. So how has it not happened yet? Well,
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When a rookie LEGO collector, investor, or fan comes comes to the LEGO Shop, one of the primary thoughts must be “How on Earth do they have any sales? Sure they sell to other retailers, but there are almost never any sales at the LEGO Shop!” Well my young Padawan, here is the key to their success: A buyer can save a handful of cash by shopping at a different location, that might even be more well-known than the LEGO Shop itself, such as Toys ‘R’ Us. What money cannot buy from one of their retail
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The 7884 Batman's Buggy: The Escape of Mr. Freeze is a small set from the Batman theme. The set has seventy-six pieces (76). Since the set has a retail price of $9.99 USD, the Price Per Piece (PPP) ratio is thirteen cents ($0.13 USD) per piece. There is another ratio that I use which is called the Price Per Gram (PPG) ratio. Since the set has a weight of 0.13 kilograms, or 130 grams, the PPG ratio would be about eight cents ($0.0768 USD) per gram. The set has two minifigures which are Mr. Freeze
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The 10193 Medieval Market Village is one of the larger sets from the castle theme. The set has 1,601 pieces. Since the set has a retail price of $99.99 USD, the Price Per Piece (PPP) ratio is six cents ($0.06 USD) per piece. I also use another ratio called the Price Per Gram (PPG) ratio. The set has a weight of for this set is 1.905 kilograms, or 1,905 grams, so the ratio is about five cents ($0.0525 USD) per gram. The set has eight minifigures. They are two Crown Knights, a maid, a blacksmith,
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So after my Rancor article, I knew it was not going to be very long before I got the Jabba set out and completed this masterpiece of a Lego duo. I was actually a bit afraid it might be a little bit of a letdown after how much fun I had putting together the Rancor Pit. On the other hand, this set was a decent amount bigger and had a lot of cool little details as well as a ton of minifigures so I figured I would still be in for a good time. So I got the set out and dumped it out just as before. Fi
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Some of the older and more active members probably read my old LEGO predictions about LEGO LOTR wave 1. For the rest I will re-quote it for easier re-evaluation.... Posted 08 March 2013 - 07:43 AM Now let us look on the current standings: RETIRED 9469-1: Gandalf Arrives -17.78% 9470-1: Shelob Attacks -30.87% 9471-1: Uruk-Hai Army -22.94% RETIRED 9472-1: Attack On Weathertop -14.75% 9473-1: The Mines of Moria -36.14% 9474-1: The Battle Of Helm's Deep -19.02% RETIRED 9476-1: The Orc F
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I will be reviewing the Brickmania M1A1 75MM Howitzer on M8 Carriage and the Heavy Mortar with Brickarms Shell. These sets are made by Brickmania.com and they are LEGO customs. They can be discontinued and re-released at anytime so I wouldn't invest in these kits. They are high quality and well-built in my opinion, but not great investments at all. M1A1 75MM Howitzer On M8 Carriage Name: M1A1 75MM Howitzer on M8 Carriage Number of Pieces: 41 LEGO elements Number of Minifigures: 0 Cost
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Looking at CAGR return rates are great over a decent length of time, but for the purposes of shorter more accurate timeframes I feel that metric can be a little blunt. CAGR takes the current price and shows you the annual percentage growth rate that starting from purchase price that gets you to there. Typically we use the retail release year as the start point, all the Brickpicker set pages do so. This is fine if you purchased it in that same year but if you bought it the year after or even 2 or
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More often than not, resellers and investors of LEGO bricks are builders first, collecting second, and investors last. Not that investing is a terrible thing to do, but the love of LEGO usually comes before the love of money. One of the worst things about collecting and building is the mess. A few years back, some relatives came over and saw the LEGO’s piled on the floor, on the former dining room table, and on the chairs. Of course their nieces and nephews loved it, but one of my uncles took m
