Evaluation Corner
LEGO Evaluations
62 blog articles in this category
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Where Are They Now? is an ongoing blog series dedicated to analyzing specific high-profile Lego sets that have been targeted for investment and sold out / retired a year or more in the past. The idea is to review and summarize a wide range of investment factors surrounding the set a few months before, during, and after it stopped becoming available at retail prices... then look at the financial performance of the set thus far, and perhaps discover a clue about future growth and/or similar
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Today, we are going back in time to almost three years ago (time flies!) and taking a look at one set that had the forums and the entire LEGO community talking almost non-stop: the LEGO Technic 4x4 Crawler Exclusive Edition. Unlike the majority of LEGO sets released throughout the years, the Limited Edition Crawler was designed through a fan base contest, with one of the conditions being that the creators utilized the chassis of the 9398 Crawler. The winner model was to be selected and prod
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Welcome back to the November 2013 entry of best selling LEGO sets based on ebay data. As I mentioned last time, I will only be commenting on those sets that are completely new to the Top 10 listing, as it talking about the original Minecraft set or the Millenium Falcon gets a little repetitive after a couple times. Interesting about this list is that we can actually starting watching some trends regarding sets that may become very popular during the month of December, and in some way help us pr
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So I think it would be a little bit of an understatement to say that the Lego Lord of the Rings Orc Forge (9476) has caused a stir in the last couple of weeks. If you haven't been paying too much attention, here is the rundown of what happened: The Orc Forge goes to “retiring soon” status in the Lego Store in late June The Orc Forge Sells out in the Lego Store around the first week of June. About a week later, it sells out at Target.com (it is a target exclusive so now it is technically unav
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In part 1 of this set, we examined the 5 smaller new Star Wars sets to look at their pros an cons and, most of all, their future investment potential. In the second part, I will be examining the larger sets in a little bit more detail. We all know that the larger Star Wars sets may not always be big gainers, but usually offer the most potential for a theme that has so many smaller sets. 3 of these are remakes, so we should have some good past data to pull from. AT-TE 75019 From the Lego webs
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For any of us who are into Lego investing, we know that the phrase "Lego has brand new Star Wars sets!" is not really deserving of the exclamation point. In fact, according to current BrickPicker data, there have been 346 Star Wars sets as of the writing of this article. Saying these sets have been "mass produced" is a little bit of an understatement. Yes, in the past, it seemed that just buying a Star Wars set meant solid returns. Now, this is not true anymore with all of the remakes and clone
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I was recently lucky enough to pick up a Back to the Future Lego DeLorean on Ebay several days before it was released (for close to retail price!) and when I got it I couldn't help but open it. So I decided to write another review so those of you thinking about picking it up would know more about it and what to expect. First off, the box is great. I love the darkness with the Delorean coming out of the light. The clock in the back ground is really cool looking too. Weirdly enough, this box op
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What makes a great LEGO investment? Why do certain sets do better than others? These are questions that LEGO investors should ask themselves before diving too deep into the world of LEGO investing. I realize that rare and limited edition sets (e.g. 41999 Crawler, 21100 Shinkai Submarine,) are some of the best investments, but I will not be covering these types of sets. With rare or limited edition sets, the most challenging part is finding them. It is not hard to decide if you should buy the
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Back in the year of 1999, Lego introduced the world to their latest and incredibly epic license acquisition to date of Star Wars. In the first year alone, they released a mix of thirteen sets based around the original trilogy and beginning of the prequel trilogy. To further the themes’ collectability by the following year, they issued four of the short lived Minifigure Collection (or Minifig Pack) sets each containing three characters plus special stands and introduced the most highly detailed d
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Whether you are a major fan of the Star Wars saga or if you only know of the films through what you hear from others one cannot deny the powerhouse that is the Star Wars theme. But with over 70% of star wars lego sets being remakes you need to know how you can make informed decisions to protect your investments. Even with the gradual decline in popularity (save for UCS models and some of the other large sets) among AFOLs one can be fairly safe when investing in most Star Wars sets based on any o
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Back in 2007, LEGO released the first of the 'Town Modular Buildings,' set 10182, Cafe Corner. Since that time, seven more modular buildings have been released, including the 10197 Fire Brigade in 2009. Each set can stand alone or be used with the other modular buildings to form an entire block of LEGO buildings, with sidewalks, streetlamps and other structures found on your average city block. Not only are these modular buildings attractive, creative and accurate in appearance, they have bee
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Welcome to the 2nd Edition of the Re-Make Impact Evaluation section. For those of you who read the 1st Edition, the purpose of this article is already clear, but if you are new to my blogs, I recommend you to at least read the intro section of the first Impact Evaluation dedicated to the Sopwith Camel. As you all probably know, 9516 Jabba's Palace set was the focus of investor and collector's attention a couple of months ago when news about its possible early retirement were spread through the
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I decided to start a new kind of feature or at least semi-regular type of article that will focus in the impact of re-released models on their predecessors. I intend to at least do one of these per month as a minimum, but may increase the regularity based on how much time I have available from time to time. Also, I can only do this with sets that have been released over the past 12 months, as that is the only data I have available from Brickpicker, but I consider that is more than enough time to
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There has been a rather lively debate about the suitability of the new Microfighter line as an investment vehicle. Few new lines have been as polarizing as Microfighters (I'm taking about you Chima), it seems that you either love them or hate them with few taking the middle ground. For those that haven't seen them, the Microfighters line consists of a small build of some of the more recognizable Star Wars ships with a "seat" for a mini figure. The effect of having the minifigure seated in such s
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By now, chances are you have seen several of our members posting in the Forum that they have seen random Technic sets at a few Walmarts. On Walmart's website, all of last years line of Lego Technic are listed as "Out of Stock", but "Coming Soon" (you can see this here). Target's website actually allows to purchase any of last year's Technic sets (assuming they ship). Furthermore, if the fall of Toys R Us as a retailer does come to pass in the next several years, one would assume that this line w
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Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the LEGO STAR WARS Ultimate Collector's Series(UCS), let me tell you how a UCS set helped create Brickpicker.com... Adult LEGO fans(AFOLs) often talk about their “dark ages” when referring to their LEGO collecting hobby. Basically, the term “dark ages” refer to the time a LEGO fan stops playing with LEGO bricks(usually around the age of 12-14) and when they rediscover LEGO bricks(usually when they have kids or are old enough, with enough discretionary in
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It is pretty amazing that we are less than 3 months from the release of the first film of the new Star Wars trilogy: The Force Awakens. After George Lucas completed the much criticized, nonetheless enjoyable, prequels, I had come to the sad realization that we might never have another original Star Wars film. Sure, we would have the occasional mini series and other smaller productions, but nothing that would really catch my attention in the same way the feature
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I'm not stranger to polybags - if you've read two of my other blog posts about my personal attempts to reach ebay powerseller status, you'll know that a significant part of my strategy was accruing more total sales via small sets, i.e., polybags. I've spent a fair bit of time looking both online and in brick and mortar stores for some of these little guys. Like Pokemon, sometimes I just want to catch them all, although TLG makes this difficult by releasing an almost literal ton of them per yea
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From the most recent LEGO Press Release: "LEGO Ninjago, launched in 2011, maintained its success in all markets in 2012, with the ninja theme selling significantly better than expected." This is a statement that confounds many adult LEGO collectors and investors. Ninjas? Dragons? Snakes? Spinners? Trading Cards? What is this, Dungeons and Dragons??? Well, whatever you want to call it, the LEGO Ninjago theme is taking the LEGO world by storm. The Ninjago theme, along with another unconventional L
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Seemingly out of nowhere, Mixels have taken hold. These small polybags have become popular enough, that a smart investor needs to consider whether adding Mixels to their portfolio makes sense. What are Mixels? LEGO says, "Mixels features a world of colorful creatures who can mix and combine with each other, with hilarious and surprising results." Mixels are a collaboration between LEGO and Cartoon Network. This includes the LEGO toys, but also includes a variety of multimedia approaches, in
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So Far TLG has produced three Minecraft Micro World sets: 21102 LEGO Micro World - The First Night, 21105 LEGO Micro World - The Village, and 21106 LEGO Micro World - The Nether. The original Minecraft set was designed by Mojang on CUUSOO and began to make its way into houses in 2012. The set was such an incredible hit that the LEGO company actually ran out of the set, and had to get another shipment in. That only lasted about fifteen minutes and TLG had to get another shipment of the set.
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In the first part of the series I started about Chima and my belief that this line will be a winner, I talked about the fact that there were a few sets with short lifespans that were worth taking a look at before they were gone forever. Lets go back over a few of my main points of why the first Chima sets to retire may be the best ones to have: Chima seems to be popular among Children Chima has a TV Show driving its popularity This a Lego theme - they will not let it fail Short production r
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Looking back at the individual series that Lego has done that now make up the Lego Super Heroes Collection (Batman, Spiderman, etc.) we see some of the most successful Lego sets of all time. Though not too many of the current ones have retired, the ones that did have not disappointed in the least so far. Captain America's Avenging Cycle has been one of the shortest investments to doubling or tripling your money that many of us have ever seen. The Hulk Helicarrier - really a weak set besides the
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The end of the year usually brings the retirement (or at least the stock exhaustion beforehand) of 100s of Lego sets. If you are lucky, you stocked up on these exact sets throughout the year at really low prices and are not struggling to grab them at retail in the final minutes before they are gone for good and before the price skyrockets on them (assuming they were winners). With this, brings a brand new year, brand new Lego sets, and most importantly, brand new retirement targets: Sets that s
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Next up in my list of sets I am looking to horde this year, I am going to go through the Ninjago line and pick out the best sets. In reality, this shouldn't be extremely hard since the theme itself has over 40% lifetime CAGR. Almost every set from the first line of these has been a winner - really almost every set that has retired has been a winner. However, I am going to try to narrow down the obvious winners and, for myself, see if I can hone in on the obvious winners. I will mention this a c
