Community LEGO Blogs

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

LEGO CUUSOO has announced the results for the Fall 2012 LEGO Review. The sets up for selection included the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover by Perijove, the UCS Sandcrawler by mb_bricks, and the Thinking with Portals! by Brickthing and Team Jigsaw. Here is the official video. As many of you already know the process for production is a long one taking several months to a few years depending on how fast you gain supporters. First you post an idea on the LEGO CUUSOO website. Once you get

Please read my other article about the "Magic Number". Here is a link: http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/blog/11/entry-237-the-magic-number-when-the-growth-stops/ To find when a Lego set will potentially stop growing in value. You can use this system to determine under which category the set falls under. You can use the four variables explained in the other article to determine when a set might hit the magic number. To find what category a set falls under, the set must be graded on a sc

It is still very early to perform a proper and more accurate re-make impact evaluation about the UCS X-Wing, but now that we have our first month of actual eBay data I wanted to make a couple points and observations that I found interesting about both sets. Later this year, once we have several more months of data, I will be able to write a more in depth analysis. For now, let's just take a look at the numbers presented by the "old" UCS 7191 X-Wing so far this year: There are a couple of s

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

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have missed out on Free shipping from LEGO Online Shop. So many times I have said, "I will place that order tomorrow" only to see it come and go. Then when I finally sit down and place an order, I see a shipping cost of $12+ and I start to curse at myself. Sure, I know that I procrastenate, but at least for the next year or so, I won't have to worry about missing the special. You can see here that they mention it on their site that they have Free S

I know I've seen a few people say a few things about sourcing shipping boxes so I wanted to share that you can get free USPS priority boxes at your Post Office or online. Flat rate boxes are going to be good for really heavy lots (probably over 6-7lb or more) and all the boxes with an "O" in the title followed by a code are just general use Priority boxes. I just found boxes that will fit the Orc Forges I bought allowing for a layer of bubble wrap to go around. Just be aware that, though these b

Is the Friends theme worth investing in? If one were to search the forums for an answer to this question, you would find rather fervent opinions on both sides. Currently the Friends theme sports a CAGR of over 35%, making it one of the highest in the LEGO universe. So is that it, end of story, numbers don’t lie – ‘Friends’ is an investment winner? It is hard to say with such a short history to go on, but I’m skeptical. There is no question that the Friends theme has been exceptionally popular

Last February I did a blog on the Bottom 50 LEGO sets with regards to CAGR values. Among the Bottom 50 LEGO sets, there were 5 Toy Story sets: 7591 Construct-A-Zurg 7598 Pizza Planet Truck Rescue 7789 Lotso's Dump Truck 7596 Trash Compactor Escape 7593 Buzz's Command Spaceship Not only did the Toy Story theme make up 10% of the Bottom 50 LEGO sets, the worst performing set was a Toy Story set...the 7591 Construct-A-Zurg. Well, I took a look at the most recent BrickIndex, which shows the top appr

Hello, I'd like to tell you about an idea that I had. I'd like to make June 25th Give a Sick Kid a Brick (Break) Day. This would be a day where we can give to a little served cause. It might not even cost you a dime. I don't know how many of you have had a sick kid. My child's been to the emergency room more times than I can remember and admitted to the hospital for observation 3 times. The children's hospital is just as dreary, just as stark and joyless as an adult hospital. Somehow it see

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

I thought I would share my views on Brickvesting and purchasing Lego in Australia. Firstly, a bit of background on me. I enjoy Lego. I played with it as a child and I still play with it. The Duplo that I had as a child I still have and my son plays with it. I have worked my way through the themes of Space, Town, Technic, Creator and most things in between. I have over the past few years gotten back into Lego and I have been collecting both current and retired sets. Since the advent of online auc

I have done quite a few Ebay articles so far (as you all can tell I spend quite a bit of time on Ebay), but I wanted to add a couple of extra things that I had thought of as an addendum to purchasing things on Ebay. These are some extra tips and tricks that fit outside of some of the other articles I have done. These can help you score some good deals on Ebay as well! The Watch List The watch list is a pretty nice feature that Ebay has and if you have ever been on Ebay you have probably used it.

Another short blog post here. After seeing the incredibly large, unused Lego collection posted by JoshTX earlier in the day, I thought I would try to calculate the MSRP and current Brickpicker value to see how good of a deal this actually is. Let me preface this by saying I hope nothing bad has happened that would force the owner of this portfolio to sell this great collection. I would never wish ill upon a fellow Brickpicker. Here are the values I came up with: Total MSRP on all sets: $18,74

So, let's take a little further look into the numbers behind the Houston lot. First, I broke down the lot into retired vs. active sets, and small, medium and large sets. For each of these groups, I calculated the % of sets by quantity and % by current BP dollar value. Here are the raw numbers for each category: Retired vs. Active Sets Total sets: 282 Total BP value: $17,043 Total retired sets: 98 (35%) Total active sets: 184 (65%) BP value of retired sets: $3,840 (23%) BP value of active set

Now that Quacs has dissected the real value and investment viability of this lot when it comes to complete sets, I wanted to give you all some perspective and information about a very different way to consider the potential of the lot: Parting out the whole lot. When you start to think about just how many parts are included in this lot, it becomes quickly apparent that there is a lot of upside to opening every single set and selling each brick on a Bricklink store. But let's evaluate this thoug

"Should I invest in the Fire Brigade?" "Yes." "No." "Maybe so." "It has been available for way to long.  Collectors and investors already have all that they need.  You will have to wait a LONG time before the set appreciates." "It is a modular. That alone will make the set a winner. " I have seen this conversation take place in the Brickpicker forums many times.  The most common reply that I saw said something like "Everybody's brother (and dog and cat and pet gold fish) has one of these.

In my last blog entry, I estimated and discussed the number of Lego sets, and number of sets by model, that Lego releases yearly. To summarize my estimate, TLC releases about 82 million sets, and roughly 160,000 of every model number globally. To further the discussion, I figured I would try to estimate the number of sets, and number of sets by model, that are released by continent to get a better feel for each of these mass markets, and then try to further segment these mass markets into marke

There are somethings that you just can't get enough of, but at the same time, you have to know when to stop. When I first started LEGO investing, I had a problem with this. I had almost never seen LEGO's on clearance at Target or Walmart or the LEGO store, and rarely set "foot" in Amazon. Once my eyes were opened to the sheer number of discounts and deals, I simply couldn't get enough!! Eventually, I figure out that I was obviously buying more than was within reason and had to return some things

I recently went to the store and could not believe some of the clearance deals they have on LEGO sets. Before this trip I purchased Jabba's Palace and spent about the exact same amount of money. However, I nearly doubled the amount of bricks for my buck compared to the single set. I will break down each purchase for you with excel graphics. NOTE: I was going to do the excel bit, but for some reason this site wont let me copy and paste pictures and it doesn't leave excel cells in the right format

For decades, the problem with collectible toys has been degradation of the materials. For most toys made in the past 40 years or more the main component is ABS plastic. ABS plastic breaks down and changes color as it ages. This process can be accelerated via exposure to UV rays (sunlight or fluorescent bulbs), Heat,  and chemical reaction to other plastics. Most collectors have fought a losing fight to prevent their lighter colored plastics from turning yellow (or green if there is a blue

For those of you who read my post about ebay powerselling (from what feels like 10 years ago) you'll note I had grand ambitions to become a powerseller by this Christmas season to reduce the cut ebay takes from each sale.  I planned on adding more polybags, smaller sets and the like to boost my total sales numbers.  I didn't have enough complete sets that were retired or purchased sufficiently below retail (Canadian retail) to move, so I was hoping to go smaller and faster, Ninjago-like, if you

The talk of a Lego "bubble" has been discussed ad nauseum on this site, yet there is a side I thought about yesterday that hasn't been touched on yet. With thirty one themes (per Lego S@H list), TLG's product line is monstrous so it's plausible to foresee a certain segment of the Lego product line undergo significant devaluation sometime in the not-so-distant future. To figure out if any sectors are at risk, let's define what a bubble is first. The classic definition of an economic bubble condi

The search function on Ebay is nothing to go “Lego” over (Get it? Like “Loco”? Nobody? Alright...), but it is something that a buyer can utilize to their advantage to quickly find sets they are interested in and to be more aware of everything listed on Ebay so they don't miss out on that great deal. If you are searching for a single specific item you want, searching is pretty straight forward. Just type in what you want and then select categories or sorting mechanisms to simplify your search and

A while back I posted a thread in the forums asking what everyone would like to see next as a theme from Lego (The thread is here: http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/topic/4105-whats-the-next-theme-you-would-like-to-see/page-4?hl=next%20theme ). One of our the BP members, El Guapo posted an awesome idea here in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. I want to make sure before I do this article everyone understands that he came up with the idea and it was a great one (Hey, maybe if Lego does