Community LEGO Blogs

Cars, trains, planes and ships, what do all these transportation methods have in common? They usually start depreciating the very moment you use them for the first time, especially so with cars but also true of all the others. In the LEGO world, however, the opposite is most often the case. There is usually a lot of talk in LEGO forums about the great appreciation usually shown by train sets, and that is something that can’t be ignored, but it sometimes makes me think that we are overlooking or

Central Europe Investors: protect your investment and satisfy your desire to build your LEGO sets. One of the easiest ways to burn the money you invested in LEGO is to open a MISB set, just because you always wanted to build that special model. You will decrease the value faster than you can change your brickfolio entry from “new” to “used.” Unless you have a good friend who lets you build his already opened 10179 Millenium Falcon, you have to sit in front of your MISB set and continue drooling

I just graduated in spring 2013 with a mechanical engineering degree, and the sole purpose of this blog post is to weigh in on the famous Lego vs. Mega Bloks debate with my "professional" opinion. I remember recieving a Mega Bloks monster truck as a child. About half way through the build, a few pieces would pop off when I pressed a piece on. It was very frustrating, and I put it away. When I was a little older, I tried to put it together again. This time i only needed to place one or two more

Now that summer is upon us, most collectors’ attention is squarely focused on the great summer releases and summer clearance sales that have come our way. However, I always find that as the days get hotter and hotter I begin to long more and more for the cooler days of fall and winter and especially the holidays – that magical time of year filled with simple joys, sitting by a crackling fire as the first snow falls, visiting grandma and grandpa’s house, skating on a frozen pond, and of course op

So the flavor of the last few years for Lego Star Wars while we are waiting for the new movies to come out has been to redo great sets in a (normally) better or different light. Some have been successes and some haven't. If they are going to do this anyway, I think they should ask us what we want redone next. So I took the liberty of putting together the 5 sets I hope they redo (if they insist on redoing sets). 1. Cloud City (10123) Alright, before you jump on me about how awesome this set is

As LEGO.com experiments with their new computer system, many of us have noticed slightly longer waiting times on their customer service phone lines. We needed to call a few times in the past week, and joined the waiting line. We had time, so out of curiosity, we did an average of our waiting times to calculate sets that you could probably complete while you're waiting. While some of us might build a little faster or slower, we're assuming times for slower builders to make sure everyone could com

In a 2 day competition, the LEGOLAND Discovery Center Arizona conducted a unique job interview searching for their new LEGO Master Model Builder. In the food court of the Arizona Mills mall 46 applicants participated in a build off to find the most qualified person for the job. What is a Master Model Builder? They are the person that creates the models and displays that decorate the location. They are the face of the LEGOLAND location, communic

The LEGOLAND Discovery Center Arizona is set to have their grand opening on April 22, 2016. They are located in the Arizona Mills Mall 5000 S. Arizona Mills Circle. Tempe AZ 85282. Tickets are $22 for a single day admission, and you have to book a time for entrance. An individual annual pass is available for $65, or $60 per person for a family of 4 or more. The incentives for the annual pass holders include a 10% discount in the LEGO retail store and a 20% discount in the cafe as well as skippin

Recently, Arizona news outlets had stories about 50,000 LEGO bricks being dumped at a local shopping mall. Was this some weird Santa sighting? No. Did the ghost of Ole Christiansen manifest all of the bricks there? Sorry. It was in celebration of the beginning of construction of a LEGOLAND Discovery center at the Arizona Mills Mall. Arizona Mills is located in the city of Tempe, part of the larger Phoenix Metropolitan area. The attraction is scheduled to open in S

Licensed Sets: The Issue with Investing. It's common knowledge (and a common complaint) that sets from licensed themes often cost quite a bit more than those that are non-licensed. It makes sense of course, The Lego Company has to pay for the right to make sets based on characters that they didn't create and those who buy those sets of course have to pay their share in turn but the higher cost is still, especially for investors, a bit of a difficult pill to swallow. Investors must also face the

So here we have one of the worst performers in the Star Wars LEGO theme, and that is something that many would not have expected while the set was still being sold at retail. The Home One was part of a particular sub-theme (I guess we could call it that) named the Fan's Choice Anniversry Edition. This consisted of a fan voting period that would select the first SW to be produced under that label and, in theory, be part of a limited run exclusive to Toys R Us. The winner ended up being Home One,

I think the generally consensus on the Lord of the Rings theme among investors is that it will follow in the footsteps of the latest Harry Potter sets and be huge gainers. Though we haven't seen any of the theme's first line of set's retire, you can look at some of the prices currently for the sets and see a lot of them have barely lost any value before retirement. These don't have to go far to have a very positive CAGR (Like 9474 Helm's Deep) . One set in 9476 The Orc Forge is already doing inc

The relationship between LEGO and Maersk has existed for decades. Other than both companies being founded in the same country, I have a really hard time finding exactly how or why these two titans decided to occasionally produce sets together, but we can all be glad they did since most of the sets produced under the shipping company's brand have been quite successful once retired. One of the reasons I personally find the Maersk line appealing is that they add some more realistic feeling to the

In the world of Lego Investing, one of the best ways to save yourself money and maximize your investments is by using rewards programs. In a world of advanced technology, almost everybody accepts credit cards now, and even more so, most stores now offer their own credit card. Assuming you have good credit and know how to properly use a credit card, this can be a huge advantage in the investing game. If you prefer not to use a credit card, there are many great rewards programs you can use to stil

Since its original introduction more than a decade ago, the Star Wars LEGO theme has been the single most successful line of products in TLG portfolio. The fan base is just huge and the same goes for the content itself: hundreds of books, toys, 6 films (soon to be 9), miniseries, etc. To tap even more into the SWs market, back in 2009 the company decided to offer a little something extra to those Star Wars LEGO fans as part of the May the 4th promotions, and that was the beginning of a series o

May 4th is widely known as Star Wars day. On May 4th and 5th, 2013 there was a sale on Lego Star Wars sets in Lego stores and on Lego Shop online. Most of the Star Wars sets were 10% of. But there was one set that has 50% off. That set is the 10227 B-Wing Starfighter. Since the set was 50% off, many people bought the set online and in Lego stores across the country and world. This has a bad effect on the future value of the set. I heard that many people were buying the set so they could resell i

Hello, and welcome to my blog. My username here on BrickPicker and on many other sites is Comicblast. I've been a member here on BrickPicker ever since around late December of 2012. You can read more about how I discovered BrickPicker and about me in one of my other articles by clicking at the following link: http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/blog/4/entry-30-brick-brats-the-teenage-lego-investors-blog/?st=20#commentsStart. My article is the last on the page thus far, and is titled "Out

This will be my first entry in my new Blog category dedicated exclusively to polybags and minifigs.Even if sealed sets or sets overall usually get most of the attention in the forums, both minifigs and polybags also play an important role in the market, and it is good that we also keep them in mind when analyzing all of the aspects of LEGO investing. In this particular series named Minifig Corner, I will talk a little bit at some of the most expensive or interesting minifigs ever released by LEG

In this second entry on the Minifig Corner, I wanted to focus on one of the most sought after and expensive minifigs ever released: The Cloud City variation of Boba Fett. First of all, it seems logical that a minifigure of this particular character is one of the most popular released by LEGO, given the high popularity of the character it is based on. For some reason that's completely beyond me, Boba Fett has been one of the most admired characters of the whole Star Wars series, even though he di

Okay so back in the 80's I used to work for a top advertising agency in the UK. This agency did very controversial adverts, one of which was the Carling Black label campaign's That always ended with the phrase "I bet he drinks Carling Black label!" We were asked by Lego to do an advertising campaign for them. This campaign was to run in all the national newspapers and also on tube stations billboards etc. After much deliberation with the creative and design departments of the agency, It was deci

So you've spent your time researching the best sets and held them past EOL. You've watched their value climb and the time has come to start selling them on eBay, all is well until one day you get your first angry e-mail from a less than pleased buyer. What to do, What to do... There is no way that you can spend any amount of time selling items on eBay or any other platform without the occasional issue popping up. While some of the forums may make it seem that every single transaction is a major

So, anyone who has read the articles in my blog space here, listened to my comments on the forums, or seen my rantings about it in my created topics knows that I spend an insane amount of time on Ebay. Seriously the equivalent of a solid 2-3 hours a day. I love to shop (but not physically) and I really love to find deals. Most of the time I don't care if I actually want it - I like to find those "diamonds in the rough", etc. My views and opinions on Ebay have changed quite a bit in just a short

Alright, so most of you probably saw my first blog on becoming a power seller, Buyer Discussion (you may not have read it because of its length, ha!) but I needed to do the same for sellers, so this is it. I do want to let people know I am going to do quite a few Ebay blogs about being a power seller, owning an Ebay store, the toils of making this a business, and even more on it. On to the discussion though, this article is about how those of us who have become bigger sellers, selling several i

Here is a link to the new article. Hope you enjoy it! This and the myths/truths articles really were my favorite to write, but stay tuned for more... There are a few key points I wanted to stress in both of these articles: 1. Don't follow the herd when selecting sets. Make your own decisions based upon data. Instincts can play a role in investing, but good instinct is usually based upon experience. For those that have never experienced a sales cycle, your instinct has not been honed well enough

There’s no way that I’d be an AFOL if I hadn’t first been a CFOL (child fan of Lego – is that a term?). So many of us grown-ups would cite “getting the Lego I always wanted” as a top reason for still being into Lego way into our 20s, 30s, 40s and beyond. For me, as a child, new Lego was only to be had at birthdays and at Christmas. Kids these days seem to be showered with expensive toys with no sense of occasion – that wasn’t me. January to August would be spent playing with new Christmas Lego