Alot of people have been asking me why I box my Lego sets up way a head of time. "Well the main reason is its a mental thing, 10 years ago when I had 100's of lego sets laying around, 20 cases or more coming from lego now and then, at first it did not bother me as I was selling be boxed uplots of other toys to, but as I got more and more lego sets and as time went by, I started to crack, so many lego sets I was selling some stuff to early, i wasn't loosing money but on some sets instead of making $300 and up on some Potter older castles, The SW Snow Speeder

 

Then in about 2006 thats when i started boxing all the sets up as I was getting them, see for me seeing all those unboxed sets laying around was getting to me, I just had the urge to sell even for small profits, I was Cracking. But Boxing everything up is great, only seeing brown boxes is way better for me. Plus the sets stay in perfect mint condition forever, plus sooner or later you have to box them up anyway.

 

Take the picture with the 58 Helm's Deep and 68 Vampire castle's, well thats my TV room and I do sleep on the Sofa there, So see plain boxes everyday does not bother me, but years ago when I had 150 SW 6210 Original Jabba sail barge, 50 SW 6211 Star Destroyer allin the TV Room it was getting to me, I always the urge to sell these now, it was hard, so thats when I started boxing all sets up. See back then I had 20-30 cases of all the big star war sets,The batman sets, Indiana Jones, The harry potter castles etc. back then I wasn't buying many Exclusives as gettin all the other sets wholesale was great.

 

I didn't really start buying the Exclusives until about 2007, I still have about 30 or so older exclusives. But since I can't buy Wholesale anymore, I am just buying 95% Exclusives and hard to find only.So I am sure alot of you new and even regular investors are starting to get the itch and can't wait to sell stuff during Christmas even for a minor or even break even profit. " Now take the Imperial Shuttle, well I have 50, its only been retired 9-10 months and its selling pretty good for that short of time, and since I paid an average of $200-210 I will sell about 10 on ebay for Christmas, same as the Potter Diagon Alley, and since I have 48 Black Pearls and 43 Queen Revenge I will do about 10 sets each on these to. As I will use the money to Buy More HH, Death Stars and a few other sets.

 

How many of you guys look at all your stuff and say why did I buy half of that cheap stuff, that will take forever to make a buck or so, I have had about 10-15 emails from people saying they are sorry they got all the cheap crap, instead of getting the big Exclusive sets. Now you guys that just flip most of the time and do great, well thats good, but the big money is the big and Exclusive sets. Another thing for you new and even other investors I am sure the one's that are married alot of wife's are always yelling and complaining about all those Lego you are buying, if they were all boxed up they might not say that much. So all total I have about 1100 Boxed up lego sets, and about 400 unboxed, which I will be boxing 47 Jabba's Palace this weekend etc. So One Of my son's moved out so I just piled all these sets in the room last week. " So the key to long term Investing is don't crack" Now the Crawler is a one in a million deal that most of us has made thousands on.

Hmm, that sure is an impressive stack of boxes as usual from emazers.  It certainly keeps things nice and tidy.  I do this with a few of my sets as well, but I leave the boxes untaped. Fairly often I have people pick up sets rather than needing to ship them, so then I can just hand them the Lego without wasting a shipping box.  

 

I'm not drinking the Kool Aid on the only buy bulk exclusives and big sets though.  There is quite clear evidence in the numbers provided on this site of other sets that have returns at least as good if not more than exclusive/big sets.  The "emazers strategy" works well for investors with large amounts of capital.  But for 99% of the members here that will not be the case.  Most investors would be best served by employing a wide variety of strategies.  Flipping, short term holds, used sets, long term holds,retired sets, and more, can and should be employed depending on the circumstances of the investor and the situation presented to them.

 

If you are an investor trying to maximise profits from a limited amount of capital, grow your portfolio, or even just make lots of side money to fund your own collecting - I implore you to read as many of the blogs and articles we have here on Brickpicker as possible.  Buy some big/exclusive sets, sure, but there are many many other great opportunities available.

I'm not drinking the Kool Aid on the only buy bulk exclusives and big sets though.  There is quite clear evidence in the numbers provided on this site of other sets that have returns at least as good if not more than exclusive/big sets.  The "emazers strategy" works well for investors with large amounts of capital.  But for 99% of the members here that will not be the case.  Most investors would be best served by employing a wide variety of strategies.  Flipping, short term holds, used sets, long term holds,retired sets, and more, can and should be employed depending on the circumstances of the investor and the situation presented to them.

 

If you are an investor trying to maximise profits from a limited amount of capital, grow your portfolio, or even just make lots of side money to fund your own collecting - I implore you to read as many of the blogs and articles we have here on Brickpicker as possible.  Buy some big/exclusive sets, sure, but there are many many other great opportunities available.

 

There is plenty of money to be made on the smaller sets if you are paying attention to the market. How you use that (short term/long term) is up to your own strategies. I look at something like LOTR though and see plenty of dollars in it because it's Lego lifespan will die off quickly after the third Hobbit movie, and is unlikely to be seen again. 

It comes down to what works for you personally. There is no one size fits all here, that much is obvious. Everyone has different strategy, interests (in sets), and budgets, which makes it impossible for anyone to follower identical paths. Personally, if I buy a set for $15 and sell it for $25, that would be just as much of a success as buying a big exclusive set for $300 and selling for $500. Of course I have less money involved, but the return is the same %. If I bough 20 of the $15 and sold them all for this return, I net the same amount of money in theory. More work, perhaps, but maybe my budget didn`t allow me to buy them all at once, and rather picked them up over time. Just saying as an example.

 

Point is that if you make money in the end, you`ve made a successful investment. You can be "more" successful yes, but success is success is it not? Then there is the issue of deciding how much you want to make/when to sell. If you have happy to make a 30% return on something now rather then wait another year to perhaps gain 40%, who is anyone to suggest you do something different? Everyone knows what they hope to gain, and if you gain that, you`ve succeeded IMO, regardless of whether or not they compare to the hopes/strategy of others. 

Rather than box mine up beforehand, I put each set in a waterproof bag and seal it with Duck Tape.  I then write the set number on the tape so that I know what's in the bag.  The bags are black rather than clear so that there is no risk of boxes fading even though they are in the attic.  When I start shipping sets, they will remain in these bags before getting boxed as parcels are sometimes left out in the rain in the UK.

Don't Let Ed Fool you, There's Nothing Inside!

Hmm, that sure is an impressive stack of boxes as usual from emazers.  It certainly keeps things nice and tidy.  I do this with a few of my sets as well, but I leave the boxes untaped. Fairly often I have people pick up sets rather than needing to ship them, so then I can just hand them the Lego without wasting a shipping box.  

 

I'm not drinking the Kool Aid on the only buy bulk exclusives and big sets though.  There is quite clear evidence in the numbers provided on this site of other sets that have returns at least as good if not more than exclusive/big sets.  The "emazers strategy" works well for investors with large amounts of capital.  But for 99% of the members here that will not be the case.  Most investors would be best served by employing a wide variety of strategies.  Flipping, short term holds, used sets, long term holds,retired sets, and more, can and should be employed depending on the circumstances of the investor and the situation presented to them.

 

If you are an investor trying to maximise profits from a limited amount of capital, grow your portfolio, or even just make lots of side money to fund your own collecting - I implore you to read as many of the blogs and articles we have here on Brickpicker as possible.  Buy some big/exclusive sets, sure, but there are many many other great opportunities available.

 

I agree with this.  The one thing I have noticed in many emazer posts is he keeps telling people to put all your money in this set and that set. Like others have said, that may be his strategy and I am sure a decent one at that.  But if he keeps telling everyone to buy just these sets, he will be sitting on a big pile of doo doo in the future (well maybe not that drastic).  Anyhow, people do need to purchase what they feel comfortable with. Emazers has been helpful and I appreciate the images and posts, but people need to follow their own path. Nothing is guaranteed.

that's quite an impressive inventory Ed.  I think limiting to just hard to find sets and exclusive may be trickier now than before with the change in LEGO strategy of selling stuff longer.  The smaller sets may be more work to sell but they still only last a year or 2.

 

Thanks for the pics and posts!

Don't Let Ed Fool you, There's Nothing Inside!

 

It's like KISS.  The have HUGE stacks of Amps behind them and most of them are empty with no speakers.  Its all part of the show. 

Seems like a roundabout way to explain why you box in advance.  It seems convenient.  I like to see the sets I have for resale, not piles of brown boxes.  I do however keep the boxes sets are shipped in and just break them down.  Just takes a couple pieces of tape to get them ship ready again.  Still sticking to my own investment plan though.  Looking at boxes like that in my own home would feel eerie after a few months, I can only imagine what that would be like after a few years.

Can you imagine an episode of Storage Wars where Brandi & Jarrod come upon this stash?!

It looks like he has a pretty big house. A basement I am assuming there. Plus you can build forts in like every room!

Little Johnny makes forts out of 500 LEGO bricks. Ed Mazers makes forts out of 1,000 LEGO sets!