Hi All, I have recently joined in the hopes of making a little cash off my childrens lego. I have weighed their bulk lot and it comes in at 21kgs. I don't know where to start with sorting and sets.. We have all sorts of stuff from the late 70's - early 80's... Which I collected as a child.. then we have 14years of current (and possibly some discontinued) lego. From star wars sets to harry potter, bionicles, Indiana Jones, Lego city etc.. How do i go about sorting all this. i got to counting 300 pieces and gave up lol. Thanks in advance for your help :)

The more time you put into sorting the more money you will get, time is money! Make sure you take lost of pics and be honest about the condition of what you are selling. Least amount of money: 1. Take the entire lot, weigh it and sell it on ebay listing the weight. In the U.S. you would likely get at least $6 a pound for it. Also list any instruction manuals and set numbers if you know them, that will help. This will take the least amount of time and give you the least amount of money as someone else will sort through it. More money: 2. Sort out any complete sets and sell them separately with instructions if possible. Make sure you list if the set is "complete" or not. 3. Sort out any technic pieces you may have and sell these pieces separate from the others, these will often bring $10 a pound or more in the U.S. 4. Separate out any minifigures that are not in a complete set and sell these separately. If you have common minifigures such as community workers and such these will bring about $1 each in the U.S., if you Star Wars or some rare minifigs you could get much more. Good luck!

Thank you so much for your reply. I was hoping to avoid having to go through it all as there is so much of it. I don't even know what goes with what anymore. Seems that is the way to make the most out of it but I don't know if I can be bothered.. May have to hang onto it until I have some motivation to do some sorting.. Thanks again

Do you still have the instruction manuals so you know what specific sets you have? If not, you can still get a good idea of what sets you have by using bricklink.com--they list what lego pieces and minifigs went in which sets. Identifying exactly which sets is an important step if you are going to try and divide them out. Needless to say, this can get quite time consuming. If you don't want to sort through them all, at least take out the minifigs as you can usually get more for those, especially the ones that have come from licensed sets (i.e. Indiana Jones, etc).

I warn you if you decide to try to sort out complete sets it will take awhile. Probably the best way is to separate by color and type. If you still have the instructions it will make sorting out complete sets more tolerable.

Wash and rinse the Legos. Grab the instructions or download them from what you can recall. Dump them all out and have your kid attempt to build as many sets as he can. Then, decide to sell or not after. That will keep him busy. =)

Thank you all for your informative respones... Since posting this thread I have sorted all pieces by colour and kept the mini figures seperate, as the wheels and tyres, the "lights", accessories Etc... and have also come across some crappy mega blocks... (Being a Lego kid I never have gotten used to these things and obviously they have been given as presents by someone not totally in tune with the whole Lego building experience. ) I have tried to encourage my kids to keep everything intact, but unfortunately over 14 yrs +, we have had Puppies come and grow(some not out of the habit of chewing Lego -.- , little sisters and just basic disresept for ones belongings and I have limited instruction manuals, (well complete ones) as well as whilst sorting this 21kg sack of colour I have come across broken bits or chewed pieces (as previously mentioned puppies and little sisters :/).. Where do I head now? Is there a spare parts market? or do I just bite the bullet and sell in bulk? Once again thanks for the help...

It doesn't sound like you have high hopes for completing a lot of the sets. If you decide you want to try, you can find any pieces you might be missing on BrickLink.com. You could also just sell your individual elements there as well. Taking the time to list all of your parts on the site may take longer than trying to build the sets though. Looking at a huge pile of unsorted LEGO elements can be overwhelming when you know you have to sort them. To help motivate me, I would look up the values from that sets that I should have in the pile by using the instructions that are still intact. If you find out that a some of the sets are quite valuable, you'll probably be a little more interested in putting those together. After pulling the most valuable stuff, you'll have a better idea if it's worth your time to continue putting sets together. Once you're done trying, pull out all the minfigures, their weapons and accessories, along with any unique looking elements (some elements can be very valuable, you can check their prices on BrickLink also) and sell the leftovers in bulk.