Community LEGO Blogs
LEGO Blog Articles Submitted by the Brickpicker Community
259 blog articles in this category
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Even if you are not a big Star Wars Lego fan, you know the planet series as they are EVERYWHERE in stores. These are cool, cheap little sets that cost 9.99 that include a minifigure, about 60-100 pieces to make a Star Wars ship, and a hollow planet that has attachments to either sit or hang from the ceiling. As mentioned before, these are everywhere and many have made it pretty far into clearance cycles; I have seen several sets of these that were 50% off. What will these do in the after market
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There has been discussion and analysis in great quantities about the Star Wars Ultimate Collector's Series ever since the investment potential of the sets was discovered a few years ago. Even though this great display sets have been greatly successful, I want to go ahead and bring the spotlight to a somewhat related kind of set: the play-set versions based on the ships that have been released under the UCS. I don't really want for this to become a sort of competitive comparison between the two,
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In previous articles, I touched on the best ways to set up Ebay searches and how to periodically check for items so that you make sure you catch those great deals when they pop up before anyone else does. I was thinking a while back, when I was setting all these searches up, that it would be nice if this messaged you much more often that new items matched your search. Then I wouldn't have to refresh the page 100 times. So I set out on Google to try to find something that did that very thing. My
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Disclaimer: All references to tax law refer to US tax law under the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Posts are my thoughts only and should not be taken as authoritative statements of the law. I once held a CPA certification, but it is no longer active. Please do your own research and consult a licensed professional for all legal, tax, and accounting matters. It's been said that there are only two certainties in life: death and taxes. The tax implications from selling your LEGO can vary dependi
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Bo and Luke Duke, the eponymous leads of the early 80's hit TV show The Dukes of Hazzard, were two rural Georgia “good ol’ boy” moonshiners that were always on the run from the show’s villain, Hazzard County Commissioner “Boss” Hogg. The show's story arc revolved around the efforts of Hogg and his sidekick, Roscoe P. Coltrane, to intimidate the Duke cousins into leaving them alone to hatch their nefarious, and often times illegal, schemes. Inevitably, Bo and Luke would wriggle out of Hogg’s gras
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As you know, there are now two X-Wing Fighters in the UCS(Ultimate Collector's Series) line. One was released in 2000, has 1,300 pieces, and has a retail price of $149.99 USD. The other one was released in 2013, has 1,558 pieces, and retails for $199.99. There are various affects of having another X-Wing fighter out in the market. There could be less interest in the older X-Wing because of its avalability and its current price. The newer one is more available and it has a cheaper cost. This may
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The Art Cleaning LEGOs Here's a topic we haven't seen here yet, and one that's near and dear to our heart... the Art of Cleaning LEGOs. After all, the difference between what looks clean, and what IS clean, isn't always black and white... but it is how parents keep their peace of mind. So, you found that awesome used LEGO set on eBay for a fraction of the cost. Good for you! But, you don't need to be a germ-a-phoebe to know that you probably have some other, very small visitors attached to them.
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So, by my reckoning (and let’s face it, who else would know?) I’ve officially been an AFOL for around 8 or 9 months now (with increasing intensity of course, as these things go). I think I’d measure it from the point at which I entered Brighton’s Lego Store and made my own Steampunk-inspired minifigures (one of which has now gone to a new home as a present to my colleague). In these last few months it has become increasingly known to those around me that I am indeed an adult fan of Lego. This ne
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Collectible Minifigures (CMFs) – they have a lot to answer for, don’t they? I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been drawn back into the grips of TLG by these ‘cheap’ Lego sets? ‘Cheap’ in inverted commas because you never buy one, do you? Every man has a part of his brain dedicated to hoarding and collecting and ‘having the full set’ – every kid does too. CMFs are the work of some scheming genius. The Guardian printed an article in 2011 on the success and effect of the CMF series: “Lego sai
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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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The success of the modular line in the Lego Investing culture is obvious. Market Street, The Green Grocer, and Cafe Corner all have seen and continued to see insanely successful growth rates, with the newer Modulars only boosting their appeal to people. Take a look at the CAGRs of the different sets below: Set NameRetail PriceCurrent Price (new)CAGRMarket Street 10190$89.99$1472.6759.34%Cafe Corner 10182$139.99$1426.2747.24%Green Grocer 10185$149.99$760.7438.37%So naturally, the Fire Brigade, as
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As many of you know, I have been a LEGO Star Wars believer, through and through. Though I have added on some new beliefs such as SpongeBob and Hero Factory, I never was convinced by the Lord of the Rings LEGO theme. Sure, I did realize that there would be some winners such as the Battle of Helm's Deep or Orc Forge, but this was partially because this was the common concensus with other investors. To further explain why, let's bring you back a couple of years. My older brother and I had just wal
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It was only around a year ago when LEGO finally released the long awaited by many Lord of The Rings theme. With the great success of the books, and more recently the movies, the release of a theme revolving around Middle Earth seemed to be one of the best licensing options available, and we can be grateful LEGO decided to go with it. The release of the LOTR theme was no accident. Even though the movies were already close to a decade all, LEGO probably knew that with the release of a new trilogy
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I was messing around with some of the data in the price guide and came across something I had recognized before but had never really paid much attention to. As most of you probably know from your LEGO investing experience, December is usually recognized as the best single month in which to sell some of your precious investments. More specifically, this trend seems to affect especially hard the modulars, large scale models and the UCS so I will be focusing on those in this first article. I selec
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I deal with bulk Lego more than any other type, I find it relaxing, I get to spend some quality time with my seven year old, and it is very profitable so long as you don't over pay or spend to much time on it. Time, time is the killer of an otherwise perfect lot. While there is no single solution to speed the process of finding value in a lot, there are several ways to speed up the process of sorting and building, thus finding the value quicker. Take the lot below, it is roughly 20-25 pounds of
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There are many people who have invested, are investing, and will invest in various markets, like the stock market. There is a wide variety of what you can invest in, and there is a lot of people to invest in them. Alas, the Lego collecting market is a lot smaller. Not that many people see that Legos can be used as an investment. They just see it as a great toy for children to play with. But, there is a few people who see that you can make a buck or two investing in Legos. The stock market is con
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So tons of articles on here are investment based articles and this is going to go right along with it. But I wanted to do something just a little bit different to see the type of response it got. So I decided to build a set as I was writing an article on it and take pictures along the way and then include them in the analysis. My starting set is one I have been waiting for a while to build: 75005 The Rancor Pit. The scene with Luke and the Rancor pit is one of my favorite scenes of all time fro
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Lego Castle sets have been a consistent theme in Lego's portfolio since the late 1970's when the first Castle set came out. Unfortunately, it has not necessarily been one of the most impressive themes in terms of CAGR, but some of that is because of how long it's been around and how many sets have been made (Just take a look at the Star Wars overall CAGR and you can see). Inside this theme, there have been some big winners amongst the normal gaining sets like the 7946 King's Castle (CAGR of ove
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Back in 2000 a movie came out starring George Clooney and Marky Mark called The Perfect Storm. This movie told of a confluence of weather patterns that led to a "perfect storm". Unfortunately for our heroes, they were aboard the Andrea Gail in the middle of the Atlantic when the storm hit. So what does this have to do with Lego and Lego Investing? Well, nothing really...except that on September 1st a confluence of polybags has made a "perfect storm" scenario at the Lego Store. To further explain
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If you remember The Perfect Storm, it didn’t end very well for the heroes. George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg went on to create classics such as The Descendants and The Departed while their on-screen alter egos – Captain Billy Thyne and Bobby Shatford - were swallowed in a monstrous tidal wave never to be seen again. So how did I fare with my Lego selling experience in September? Was the “perfect storm” of Lego giveaways successful, or was it a disaster? My Original Proposal On Sunday, September 1
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I think we all know that purchasing sets directly from LEGO S@H or actual LEGO stores is usually not the best choice when it comes to LEGO investing. It is a somewhat rare event when LEGO really discounts a set or a group of sets enough to make it worthwhile when taking into consideration that sites like Amazon, Walmart and even Toys R Us constantly run promotions that put sets well below 20%, the typical maximum discount offered by LEGO (with some exceptions). There is, however, one thing inves
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One very commonly asked question in the BrickPicker Forum is what is the better place to buy and/or sell your LEGO sets - BrickLink or eBay? More often then not, responses will list advantages and disadvantages of both services, but not necessarily which one is superior. The purpose of this article is to settle that dispute once and for all! Several installments of this type of article will be produced in the near future, but for now, here is the first part of The Superior Market - eBay vs. Bri
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Welcome to the second installment of a series of articles I am putting together called “The Superior Market - eBay vs. BrickLink”. The purpose of this type of article is to compare the average sale prices of LEGO sets over the last 5 months. These numbers are the final sale prices, according to data acquired from BrickLink and BrickPicker. Some readers were a little confused on the purpose of the first article, which you can read at: http://www.brickpicker.com/forum/index.php/blog/15/entry-430-
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Welcome to the third installment of a series started by Comicblast called “The Superior Market - eBay vs. BrickLink”. The purpose of this article is to compare the average sale prices of LEGO sets over the last 6 months. These numbers are the final sale prices, according to data acquired from BrickLink and BrickPicker from August 2013 to January 2014 (yes I realize that the January data isn't 100% complete, but I believe the impact will be minimal). Comicblast's original blog post's can be foun
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Welcome to the fourth 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 articles here ($0.00 to $9.99) andhere ($10 to $24.99). The third installment can be read here ($25 to $49.99) and gives further background about the purpose of these articles and my approach to continuing the analysis. [divider] Fees for eBay were calculated as follows
