Does anyone out there do Lego Investing/Collecting/(according to some people) Hoarding full time? If so, how does it work? Long term or short term? If I want to start doing it full time, what are some steps I should take to start it?

Looking at the graphs on the price guide the numbers sold for any one set shoots up in Nov/Dec time (and surprising January). But do these sets actually sell for more than they would during the rest of the year? Does the market not flood and lower the selling price?

The price shift is subtle overall, a couple of percentage points, but it is consistent. There might be some hot sets that go up substantially, maybe 10-25% or more, then drop back down to regular levels. People just want items around XMAS and are willing to pay higher auction prices. The trick with anything is finding that hot set and flipping it at the right time. January's sold units might go up because there are lower prices, but the prices drop to the lowest level of the year in January on eBay...this is a fact.

After Ebay fees your 30% return on revenue drops to 8-12% This assumes you charge shipping at cost.

But I agree the thrill of the hunt is the fun bit for me. I buy bulk lots and I love finding sets in there that weren't listed by the seller. Sometimes you can see them in the pictures, others you do not find out until you sort the pieces after you have won it. For example, the current lot I am breaking down I paid approx

The price shift is subtle overall, a couple of percentage points, but it is consistent. There might be some hot sets that go up substantially, maybe 10-25% or more, then drop back down to regular levels. People just want items around XMAS and are willing to pay higher auction prices. The trick with anything is finding that hot set and flipping it at the right time. January's sold units might go up because there are lower prices, but the prices drop to the lowest level of the year in January on eBay...this is a fact.Like my query with the price spike on 10226 Sopwith Camel Which shot up 30% in December to above RRP. A case of high demand low supply. The surprising thing was that it did not come down in January, either in price or units. But looking at January numbers of units sold in January they seem to be nearly as high as December, certainly higher than October/November. (on the sets I follow)

I never used to sell much in January but this year it was a record month, an income of nearly

Making a living just by selling LEGO is possible though only a few manage it. Problem is the fact to make living out of LEGO you need A) alot of money to invest a long time to acquire alot of money to invest. + you need tons of time getting the best deals. I personally think untill prices of LEGO sets do not equalize over the whole world (so retail price is the same everywhere and controlled by LEGO) (which will never happen) the only country that CAN make a living of LEGO is USA. Everyone else has atleast 100% harder time investing and making living out of LEGO.

I agree with A and B. Not sure about the rest though. The US is a huge market but this can lower prices. The UK market is smaller and the new prices are higher, and the corresponding secondhand market is also higher. Plus there is free trade in the EU. If I did what I currently do full time I estimate that I could market

I agree with A and B.

Not sure about the rest though. The US is a huge market but this can lower prices. The UK market is smaller and the new prices are higher, and the corresponding secondhand market is also higher. Plus there is free trade in the EU.

If I did what I currently do full time I estimate that I could market

Mods! Correct me and place this somewhere else if i'm in the wrong forum. Does anyone make a living off investing in lego?

No. Don't try it. I'm sure there are some who make a decent income from selling Lego, but it is much more difficult then it might seem. When investing is used to grow "fun money", it can work, but you will here this from pretty much every regular on this site. Don't quit your day job.

Those who have enough money to put a lot into their lego investments are already making more at their day job than they ever will selling lego.

Horrible idea. I assume that most of the people here do it as a fun hobby to fuel their personal Lego collections, or as a way to make a few bucks on the side.

Mods! Correct me and place this somewhere else if i'm in the wrong forum.

Does anyone make a living off investing in lego?

Ebay is a full time job but don't quit your day job. I sell to make a few bucks here and there to buy Lego with it. I don't intend on making a living. It's just too complicated and hard and you'll never know what's gonna happen.

Horrible idea for some, not for all. I would equate this question to people wanting to open a restaraunt. It seems like fun and games but the reality of it is that its much harder work than it seems.

I look at it as a small fun hustle. Trying to make it a living would be too tough. Remember the key word...LEGO Investing/Investment! Nothing wrong with breaking down sets and selling Minifigs, and sets with no minifigs on the side.

Ebay is a full time job but don't quit your day job. I sell to make a few bucks here and there to buy Lego with it. I don't intend on making a living. It's just too complicated and hard and you'll never know what's gonna happen.

Yeah it is a part time job at best. Do whatever you can to keep your day job

Yeah, your day job (salary/hourly) is guaranteed money in the bank...don't quit. Would not be as fun if you really depended on re-selling to make a living/support yourself and family. Almost like playing poker full time or opening a restaurant as stephen_rockerfeller mentioned...harder than it seems.

I think I made approx

A few other threads you might want to look into... http://www.brickpicker.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/2332/ http://www.brickpicker.com/index.php/forums/viewthread/1594/ Overall concensus is no, don't do it. It takes a huge amount of money, and it is pretty risky.

But, just to throw it out there, you can think about doing a full time business like the Bricks and Minifigs guys. A true store, devoted to LEGO. I have had quite a few conversations with them and they seem to be doing quite well.

I'm in college, eBay is a living for me right now. I just dont really need much money either hha

In order to do it full time you need to have some serious capital, like $200k+ from the start capital if you want to dive in and make enough money in order live comfortably. Also you'd have to wait on the sets your buying to go EOL before you could start making nice returns. I build, collect, and sell Lego on the side simply because I love Lego and its fun, plus good returns keep me happy. As far as doing it full time, well it takes more capital than most people realize, and most people that have hundreds of thousands of dollars laying around probably already have a full time job that pays really well. Also I think starting to sell Lego full time, right now (2013) is really, really hard due to the amount of Lego investors/resellers in existence. Most of the people selling Lego full time started years ago before the market was flooded with resellers, when competition was low. Those that got into the Lego reselling game 5-10 years ago are the ones who are making a killing right now! Unfortunately things have changed and making big returns on Lego is harder than ever, but is still possible when choosing the right sets ;)

I would say it's pretty hard to make a living welling only legos. I sell over $20k on ebay yearly. It's a good part time supplement to my fulltime photography job. Since I can hit up retailers in areas other than where I live when I'm out photographing it helps me find plenty of stock without spending a lot of money on gas. I think it's more of a stock issue. You could make a living if you had $200k to go drop on retail but youd have to hold the stuff for a couple of years. If you are only going to buy sale items at 30-50% off than you're probably not going to be able to find enough stock to make a whole living on it.

Wow! Thanks guys, I won't quit don't worry, I do enjoy it though! This post was bigger than expected. :)

There are going to be some odd numbers in this post (I welcome people checking my math, etc.. because that's not really my strong suit), but here are some thing that you might consider. The total LEGO listings on eBay at the moment is 2,761,179, and the value of those listings is $85,468,385.00. Now ignore for a moment that a "listing" could be something selling for a very low amount, a dollar or less, or a very high amount, potentially several thousand dollar. If you do simple math and divide the value of listings by the number of listings, you get an average listing value of ~30.95. Please anyone feel free to verify my math. For the purposes of this discussion, let's just look at the market as defined by eBay, and not worry about Amazon, Craig's List, etc.. If you were going to make a living off of solely selling LEGO, how much of that market would you need to capture? at 1/1000th of the market, would require the "value" of your listings to be $85,468.39. At 1/500th of the market that value is $170,936.77. These are very small percentages of the market, and "value" doesn't take into account your expenses to acquire and store the sets. Potential profit is only one component of value. I'd venture a guess that no one here controls 1/1000th or even 1/500th of the eBay LEGO market. While these numbers might be a little dubious...the point here is to be more illustrative than exact or precise. At 1/1000th of the market, if I divide by the average value of a listing, then I have 2761 "things". That is about 231 "things" that you're selling per month. At 1/500th of the market, then it's 5522 things, or about ~460 "things that must be sold per month. Let's say that somehow you manage to make a 30% profit annually from the total value you have. At 1/1000th of the market this is (maybe) $25,640.52, and at 1/500th this is (again, maybe) $51,281.03. At both values the number of "sets" you have to store, inventory, maintain, and list makes this really difficult. 230 or 460 sales per month is cooking at a pretty good clip, and you'd be doing all that work for $25k or $50k. Definitely not enough for most of us to live on. I know the numbers here can be easily challenged, but that's not really the point. The point is to be more illustrative than anything else. Illustrative of the fact that if you were to make a living solely by selling LEGO, you'd need to be moving a lot of volume, you'd need to have a significant amount of capital to invest, and you'd need a lot of room for storage. Imagine what something small like 2761 polybags would look like and how you'd catalog, inventory, keep track it, and sell them at opportune times. My wife makes more selling things on eBay than most people make at their jobs. Way more, and she does it part time. It wasn't an overnight success story...it took many years to build it up, and lots of mistakes were made along the way. She still makes mistakes, and one of the challenges we've always had is managing inventory and storage. eBay sales are a secondary thing to us...I make much more from my business. That's not to diminish her work, rather, it's not our primary source of income so we can take some significant risks in that area that I won't take with my business. Only about 10% of what she sells is LEGO. I really don't see that changing. LEGO is a good product and it's not that hard to make money off of it, but it requires a lot of storage space, and honestly, it's not the best thing out there for secondary market profits. There are other things out there that are more profitable and easier to store. In fact, in order to make significant money on eBay you want to be dealing in various product lines and you need to do a high enough volume that it's worthwhile. Another point to this long-winded reply is that while it's possible to make a living off of eBay, in fact there are many Powersellers that do exactly that, in order to make a living you have to find a reliable source of things you can sell for a profit on eBay. It's somewhat difficult to do this with just LEGO because it's nearly impossible for 1 person to hit every clearance available, and buying LEGO at retail prices means that you'll have to wait longer for your "investment" to mature.