
Lego collecting delivers huge and uncorrelated market returns - pseudolus
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/lego-collecting-delivers-huge-and-uncorrelated-market-returns
======
mabbo
When the Saturn V rocket Lego set came out a few years ago, I decided to try
this "Lego collector" market. I bought and built (and now proudly display) one
set, then bought and stored another in the back of a closet, inside the
shipping box. Perfect condition, I figured, for when they stop selling it and
it skyrockets in value.

They didn't stop selling it. I think they never will. I'm going to be storing
this enormous box of Lego forever.

Still an amazing Lego set.

~~~
PurpleRamen
They released it 18 Months ago, usually they sell those Ideas-Sets for 2
Years. Which means starting this summer the prices should starting to rise.

~~~
mabbo
According to my wife, it's been taking up closet space for at least a decade.

Still, I'll be interested to see if you're right and it vanishes from the
shelves in 6 months!

~~~
unclebucknasty
> _According to my wife, it 's been taking up closet space for at least a
> decade._

Our wives must use a shared Gmail calendar.

------
kgwgk
Matt Levine today: [https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/the-
co...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-17/the-companies-
are-in-charge-now)

"Sounds great! So if I am running a $10 billion institutional portfolio how
much of it should be in Legos?

">In one extreme case, a kit for Star Wars Darth Revan that retailed in 2014
for $3.99 went for $28.46 on eBay a year later -- a 613 percent premium.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. So the extreme case is making a profit of … $24.47 over a
year? I mean, I guess you could buy … a million … of those Darth Revan sets …
and … put them somewhere … but … no, I am going to say no, this is not a
strategy with institutional capacity. (And you can’t use it as an additional
signal in your multifactor general model of what stocks to buy, because they
are Legos, not stocks.) I suppose if you are a perverse sort of finance
professor though you should be using a factor model to trade Legos in your
personal account; let me know—and, more importantly, brag to your students
constantly about—how it goes."

~~~
patorjk
At the height of baseball card collecting in the 90's, my best friend's dad
went out and bought a closet full of baseball card sets (not classic sets, but
sets from the time period). He told my parents he was doing it to save for his
son's college education.

~~~
3pt14159
Yeah. People don't get this, but what you want to collect is what kids are
having fun with today that they'll want to have fun with again when they're
older.

Nostalgia and natural rarity. If it weren't for emulators, I'd wager that old
Nintendo systems would be the rage right now.

~~~
kgwgk
Nintendo has sold over 10 million units of the NES Classic Edition and Super
NES Classic Edition.

~~~
moate
While this shows the demand is there, it also shows that the "if it weren't
for emulators..." part of OP's comment is important.

Stashing a mint NES back in 93 with the hopes of making fat stacks today would
have been a folly because of how people are valuing the whole thing(they value
the game/experience, not the console/object).

~~~
einr
So maybe not the NES console, those are still only moderately pricy even in
mint condition due to the extreme number of consoles made, but certainly if
you bought a stack of Little Samsons and Mr. Gimmicks and Panic Restaurants
for $39 each in ’93 and sat on them until today you would be set for a while:

[https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eb...](https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.com%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F233057313810)

Yes, the ROM can be had for free and the experience of playing the game is
identical. No, a collector doesn’t care.

~~~
moate
But a game is not a system...There are def individual GAMES that are
bananapants expensive (I'm looking at you Super Copa!) but the systems aren't
as expensive.

Maybe I'm just being pedantic?

~~~
3pt14159
No I think you get it even better than I laid it out. The extreme or rare ends
are where nostalgia meets numismatics.

The casual nostalgics are happy with emulators, hence the systems not being
expensive. Still enough SNESes out there to placate the the small number of
people that want the original.

------
bunderbunder
So, now that there's been an article in Bloomberg, I'm guessing we can expect
future events to play out like the comic book collecting market has since it
became a thing in the 1990s: A bunch of people try to build up their
stockpiles at the same time, potentially driving up prices in the process.
Then, in a couple decades, they also try to liquidate their collections at the
same time, driving prices down to near 0 in the process.

~~~
Scoundreller
Or postage stamps. Though I quite like buying them from collectors for 40-60%
of face value.

~~~
joering2
Unless you have this stamp [1] .. since its been discontinued and story went
viral, unused unstamped sheet of 16 got sold for $1000 on ebay.

[https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-postal-service-
statue-l...](https://news.artnet.com/art-world/us-postal-service-statue-
liberty-1313108)

~~~
winslow
I'm confused why the USPS has to pay up $3.5M in this case. They purchased the
image from Getty Images I assume with the proper license for
printing/distribution. However, since this is the statue in Vegas it's not in
public domain? How does that work? Are you not allowed to legally photograph
the Vegas statue?

Does this mean if the USPS wanted to create stamps for the major cities of the
US say LA, Chicago, NY and were to use pictures of Santa Monica Pier,
Sears/Willis Tower, and Empire State building that they can't purchase
pictures from Getty Images and would need permission from the owners of those
properties? Also what stops me from suing Google or Zillow for taking a street
view shot of my home and claiming copyright infringement on monetizing google
maps / Zillow listings with a picture of my home?

~~~
gnopgnip
The artist that sold the images to Getty did not have the appropriate property
release, Getty was made aware, and Getty made the US Post Office aware.
Without this property release the artist's photograph, and the stamps are a
derivative work of the statue because it is a work of art. They continued to
use the image commercially to sell stamps, knowing that they did not have the
appropriate release for years after the fact, selling nearly 5 billion stamps
with this image. I expect the $3.5m judgement will be challenged though, the
case has been ongoing for 5 years, and it is unusually high when you consider
the actual economic loss of the artist who made the statue.

>Does this mean if the USPS wanted to create stamps for the major cities of
the US say LA, Chicago, NY and were to use pictures of Santa Monica Pier,
Sears/Willis Tower, and Empire State building that they can't purchase
pictures from Getty Images and would need permission from the owners of those
properties?

A property release is not normally needed for buildings. In the US copyright
for buildings viewable from the public is treated differently from copyright
for statues or sculptures or other art. Also some of those are in the public
domain because of their age, or because the architect did not register the
copyright to the building. There are some cases where the trademark could also
be an issue too, like for the Transamerica pyramid. It is generally not a
problem for a photographer to get a property release before selling stock
images for commercial use.

>Also what stops me from suing Google or Zillow for taking a street view shot
of my home and claiming copyright infringement on monetizing google maps /
Zillow listings with a picture of my home?

Google is not using the image commercially, and does not need a release from
the architect or property owner to use the image. Whether or not they make
money is not what determines commercial use or editorial use, and editorial
use does not require a property release. In a newspaper that costs money it is
OK to take a photo of Trump for a headline about him, and ok to use this next
to an ad the newspaper is getting paid to publish, but not OK to use his photo
as an endorsement for a product without a model release. Zillow generally gets
your permission to use your images to sell your home when you upload them to a
site that syndicates with zillow. For other uses where they are not selling
your home, like showing the past sale price they would not need a property
release. The architect would be the one with standing to sue under copyright
law, to prevent others from making derivative works. If they did not register
the copyright this is not practical because there are no actual damages, and
they cannot collect statutory damages. The owner of the home could sue under
right of publicity laws in some states if the image was used commercially.
Historically but this has never applied to regular homes, and it would be rare
to have meaningful damages. See Robinson v HSBC Bank USA

~~~
winslow
I really appreciate the time you took to put together that solid response!
Definitely learned a lot. It makes a lot more sense now for why USPS is facing
the $3.5M judgement since they were made aware of the license issue and
continued with printing/distribution.

------
virgilp
Ok, interesting as a curiosity, but:

> In one extreme case, a kit for Star Wars Darth Revan that retailed in 2014
> for $3.99 went for $28.46 on eBay a year later -- a 613 percent premium.

Say I'm really prescient, and know exactly which kit to collect.... can I
expect to invest 400K and get that 600% return? I doubt it. Sure it's possible
for 4$, or 100$, but is it possible at any kind of significant scale?

~~~
hjnilsson
Yes. This is the problem with this as an investment strategy for anything but
hobbyists.

In addition; it would require quite a lot of labor to auction and send all
these sets around, as well as paying for storage space. Something which is not
accounted for in the 10-20% return figure.

~~~
mipmap04
So my dream of an LBS ETF will remain a dream.

~~~
Scoundreller
Local Bike Shop Exchange Traded Fund?

I’d think there may be an opportunity for a buying group or banner type
consolidator though.

Or just straight up acquisitions, like independent pharmacies getting bought
for 2-4x earnings, then sold as a package to public investors at 10x+
earnings.

~~~
monktastic1
Lego-backed security?

------
stuaxo
Investment markets come in to ruin yet another thing - people who just mix up
Lego and play it themselves, now under pressure to keep their sets, sets.

~~~
avar
I don't see how you can think of this as a negative thing. We should be
celebrating people buying $100 toys for their kids because they know they'll
retain (or increase) in market value than $5-10 trash.

It:

a) Reduces waste, since we get re-use rather than disposable plastic that's
thrown away soon after its first use.

b) Gives owners an economic incentive to preserve quality toys for
generations, thus preserving iconic products.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
If you get your kids a "collectible," you're not buying them a toy, you're
buying them a decorative box. If you open it and play with it, it stops being
collectible and the resale price plummets.

~~~
avar
You can be buying both. E.g. used LEGO Death Star II sets seem to go for
around $700 on eBay (~$1500 new), and similarly if you buy BRIO train sets for
your kids you'll both get better quality and something you can re-sell at a
reasonable price, v.s. say buying crappy IKEA train sets.

After having kids I've seen the sheer amount of crap in excessive volumes that
gets gifted to kids. Everyone would be better off if kids got 10x fewer toys
of 10x more quality.

------
yukonbound
The analysis ignores 99.99% of LEGO that has been sold and is now worthless.

Focusing on items that have been resold would bias the analysis to show larger
profits for LEGO investment.

This looks like a great example of survivorship bias.

~~~
ryanmercer
>and is now worthless.

Not quite. You can always part stuff out on
[http://bricklink.com/](http://bricklink.com/) and might get a penny per
element or might get several dollars per element depending. Us AFOLs that make
MOCs are frequently buying random elements we need for this or that. For
example:

To make this Mars habitat MOC I spent about 60$ just to get some of the
elements (like the curved tops of the habs, the PV panels and the ISRU tanks)
because I simply didn't have the elements or anything comparable. That base
plate was 11-12$ by itself and it's the only thing remotely Mars-regolith
looking that Lego has produced
[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/29/my-
lego-m...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/29/my-lego-moc-of-
habitat-modules-for-a-mars-mission)

When 31032-1 Red Creatures came out I really wanted a black dragon, not a red
dragon, so that was another 15-20$ I had to spend, again didn't have some of
the necessary elements, to be able to make one
[https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/6/lego-31032...](https://www.ryanmercer.com/ryansthoughts/2016/7/6/lego-31032-1-red-
creatures-reimagined)

I will agree though that speculating on any given, current production, Lego
set is idiotic at best. You never know what will be popular and what won't,
you'll never know when something will be retired or won't.

I also add to my Modulex collection every quarter or so. Modulex elements are
considerably smaller than traditional Lego and incompatible. They were a 1:20
scale for building architectural models that never really caught on but are
just neat
[https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Modulex](https://lego.fandom.com/wiki/Modulex)

~~~
justin66
> I will agree though that speculating on any given, current production, Lego
> set is idiotic at best.

The comment you're replying to doesn't suggest any of that.

yukonbound's comment made me think that comparing the items whose value really
popped to those whose value didn't might provide a guide to which items would
become more valuable in the future.

> You never know what will be popular and what won't, you'll never know when
> something will be retired or won't.

The really obvious counterexample is Star Wars-branded stuff associated with a
current feature film. I don't think it would be that hard to identify stuff
with a limited production run. The "will be popular" part is trickier, yes.

~~~
ryanmercer
>The comment you're replying to doesn't suggest any of that.

Uh

>The analysis ignores 99.99% of LEGO that has been sold and is now worthless.

That blanket covers 99.99% of anything Lego, combine that with what this
article is about... speculating on Lego sets... my comment is fine.

"worthless" though is not the case. Individual elements absolutely have value
on the secondary markets. Bricklink has more than a million mmebers, 10,499
stores and 125,105 unique elements with millions and millions of pieces for
sale.

Parting a 'worthless' set out can often yield you more, if not several times
more. Sure it might take you years to sell every single element of a set, but
by no means is 99.99% of Lego 'worthless'.

>really obvious counterexample is Star Wars-branded stuff associated with a
current feature film.

Plenty of Star Wars sets have gone on varying levels of sale/clearance (some
quite drastically) via both shop.lego/Lego stores and non-Lego retail outlets
in the past several years. 42 of the 97 Star Wars sets are currently on sale
on shop.lego for example and almost certainly won't rocket up in value, ever.
The Clone Wars sets were probably the worst failure here.

Lego also has plenty of series that just never gain traction. Most recently
I'd point at Nexo Knights. Kids just weren't interested, despite the cartoon,
and most of us adult fans only bought it because we wanted space and/or
castle/knights to come back and this was the closest offering. We basically
got 2 rounds of releases the they scrapped it.

Legends of Chima is mostly a flop.

The Minecraft series had some of the steepest discounts I've seen directly
from shop.lego/lego stores.

Architecture sets are more often miss than hit and you find unopened sets
fairly regularly in thrift/budget store chains.

Bionicle flopped hard and only has a small die-hard fan base not unlike the
Dreamcast.

Angry Birds had pretty steep discounts direct from Lego early on.

TMNT several years ago was a pretty big bust and hasn't retained value.

Etc.

~~~
phazon_dude
>Bionicle flopped hard and only has a small die-hard fan base not unlike the
Dreamcast.

This is a very poor example; Bionicle sets have skyrocketed in value.

Plenty of things may go on clearance now but become worth a lot of money years
later.

~~~
ryanmercer
>This is a very poor example; Bionicle sets have skyrocketed in value.

Comic con/promotional exclusives, yes. Everything else, no. The biggest
increase I'm seeing is a 14$ set going for staring around 42$ sealed (and only
7 new have sold in the past 6 months on Bricklink and 0 since November with
only 16 new available), a 300% return that is not impressive - especially
considering this is one of the 3-year old reboot sets which means the bulk of
that value is likely from speculators and not actual collectors and will
probably go down considerably over the next few years. You can see this
clearly on Bricklink:

[https://www.bricklink.com/v2/search.page?q=bionicle&brand=10...](https://www.bricklink.com/v2/search.page?q=bionicle&brand=1000&rpp=100&tab=S#T=S)

~~~
phazon_dude
> only 7 new have sold in the past 6 months on Bricklink and 0 since November

Yeah, on Bricklink. Have you tried looking at more mainstream places like
Ebay? There are dozens of sealed sets selling there.

>a 300% return that is not impressive

Really? You dont think 300% ROI is not impressive? Most of the regular sets
from the 1-4th generation also sell at that kind of inflated price so its
really not that unusual.

------
GorgeRonde
Certainly related, cause or effect ?

> Mar 22 2016 > Why Stealing Legos May Be the Perfect Crime > > A recent
> undercover sting operation busted a Lego thief in Portland, but thanks to
> the toy bricks' high price and the ease of reselling them online, stealing
> them has become a lucrative trade.

Source: [https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvx77j/why-stealing-
legos...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvx77j/why-stealing-legos-may-be-
the-perfect-crime)

~~~
tubbs
Similarly, a former SAP executive was busted for printing his own fake UPCs,
applying them to Lego sets, buying them, and reselling them on eBay in 2012.

[https://venturebeat.com/2013/08/03/former-sap-exec-
faces-30-...](https://venturebeat.com/2013/08/03/former-sap-exec-
faces-30-days-in-jail-for-stealing-legos/)

[https://www.wired.com/2013/08/langenbach/](https://www.wired.com/2013/08/langenbach/)

------
mswen
I have a client that has a reverse logistics business buying second hand X,
testing, cleaning, repackaging and then selling X as refurbished. They have
been doing this a few years and created a multi-million dollar business unit
with reasonable margins.

They did a trial about 3 years ago of buying separating, sorting, cleaning,
repackaging and selling LEGO bricks/parts. After about 3 months they ended the
trial deciding that the economics of the process just didn't work for them at
any kind of scale.

What I just described is quite different than buying new LEGO sets, leaving
them unopened and storing them for a few years and then selling them with the
hope that some of them have appreciated so greatly that the overall collection
is worth substantially more.

~~~
patrickk
Apple products?

~~~
Scoundreller
On a sample of 2 tear downs, I’d say harvesting Apple products for parts is
where the real money is.

~~~
patrickk
Or refurbishing and upgrading old iPod classics:

[https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3daq4n/music-
geek...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3daq4n/music-geeks-are-
retrofitting-old-ipods-to-keep-the-perfect-mp3-player-alive)

I've done this myself (listening to 5.5 gen iPod, I'd forgotten how good mp3
sounds vs Spotify), but for personal use not flipping for profit. Some
refurbished iPods sell for quite a lot though.

------
m-i-l
See also "Lego a 'better investment than shares and gold'" on HN 3 years
ago[0] and the various Lego investment websites[1]. Not something I engage in
myself, but have been aware of. Like the people who "invest" in
trainers/sneakers[2].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791057)

[1] e.g. [https://www.brickpicker.com/](https://www.brickpicker.com/) &
[http://brixinvest.net/](http://brixinvest.net/)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18535897)

------
pattle
I've been a fan of LEGO since I was a kid and have got back into in the last 5
years or so.

I wish I'd have bought more sets when I was younger as some of them sell for
crazy amounts of money now. Particularly the early Harry Potter, Star Wars and
Pirates of the Caribbean sets. The minifigures alone can sell for close to
£100.

I dabble in buying and selling LEGO and it is true that you can make money but
it's a lot harder than it used to be. LEGO makes and sells a lot more sets now
so it's not as lucrative.

At the end of last year I bought a load of sets that were shortly going to be
discounted in the hopes of making money in the future. Some of the sets I'm
expecting to do well are the Silent Mary Pirates of the Caribbean set as this
was the only set released when the latest film came out. Also I'm predicting
the Old Fishing Store set should do well as it's a much loved set and it was
only on sale for a year. Generally the higher priced licensed sets have netted
you a nice return in the past.

The problem with buy sets if you have to have somewhere to store them and be
prepared to keep them for a long time, even slight damage to a box can harm
its resell value. Plus my wife doesn't like having lots of boxes lying round
the house. I'm mainly concentrate on collecting minifigures now as their
easier to store and take up a lot less room.

------
empath75
There was a time that beanie babies, baseball cards and comic books would have
yielded similar returns or better. The collectible market can get insanely hot
and then die in an instant.

~~~
tehbeard
I wonder how much the compatibility between sets (being able to snap blocks
made in the 80's to ones from a set today) affects that, along with them
having more of a "repeat use" than something like a baseball card or comic.

~~~
giancarlostoro
I think that's the distinction that matters. You can collect it, and it stops
being sold, now somebody somewhere wants your set in brand new condition so
they can play with it, cause well they love Lego's and you've got some rare
set they wish they had.

~~~
usrusr
The lower bound for the price of a collectible Lego set is what you could
expect when sold solely as a cheaper, slightly outmoded alternative to a new
Lego set. That's better than baseball cards and the like, but still easily
offset by the cost of storage and handling.

------
lordnacho
Why would you expect correlation? Financial assets are correlated because
people tend to think of them together.

Lego is not in most people's investible universe, so there's no wealth effect
or substitution effect to drive correlation.

~~~
benj111
I would expect correlation to the amount of cash sloshing about / the state of
the economy.

Unemployed people aren't likely to be buying collectors sets of Lego.

Its unclear how much of this return is due to a recent boom. I hadn't heard of
Lego collecting until 5? years ago. So now you have adults in the market with
a lot more money to spend, wanting to relive their child hood (not intended as
an insult), is this just a bubble?

~~~
lordnacho
But mental accounting probably does not lump the stocks/bonds portfolio
together with the hobbies.

Also most people actually don't have any stocks or bonds, it's held by pension
funds who certainly aren't Lego investors.

~~~
benj111
What do you mean by 'mental' accounting?

~~~
lordnacho
A particular cognitive bias that creates separate budgets for things that
ought to be considered together.

~~~
benj111
Ok, I'm not sure how that relates to the conversation?

But it would depend on why you bought it? If you bought it as a toy, then yes.
If you bought I as an investment, wouldn't you then lump it in with your other
investments?

------
acomjean
My brother has a few boxes of unopened baseball cards from the 1980s.

They're not worth anything.

We also have star wars cards from the 70s. To worn to be worth anything, but
they brought a lot fun to young me.

If you collect things I feel you should do it because you enjoy it.
Collections for collections sake always puzzled me.

Also Beanie Babies. And a bunch of other "collectables". That market crashed.
Its very hard to predict.

~~~
castlecrasher2
LEGO is smarter than all of those companies, though, because there's always a
couple unique pieces in larger sets, and those are the insanely expensive
ones. The part-out value on Bricklink is useful for this.

------
tapland
I wonder how well that holds over time. Maybe there is a huge price increase
after LEGO stops manufacturing the set, with value not increasing much over
time after the point at which buyers are left to the secondary market.

Also, listing fees. Swedish eBay owned Tradera charge fees and 10% of sales
value.

But, I would love to save in Lego. Keep them around and look at the boxes.

~~~
yreg
Last black Friday I bought multiple boxes of Lego City series as an
investment. We will see how this goes.

~~~
bena
City is a bad move.

Licensed sets, Ideas, and modular Creator sets are better bets. You're really
looking of uncommon pieces in rare colors or unique minifigures.

The radar dish from the original UCS Millennium Falcon will fetch a couple
hundred dollars because it's a custom print.

There's an X-Men set "Wolverine Chopper Attack" or something that retailed for
$20 but goes for about $60 on the secondary market because it's the only set
with a Deadpool minifigure.

------
ikeboy
Doesn't need to be Lego. Buy most popular items when discontinued, hold for a
year, some people will be willing to pay more for it.

This is part of my e-commerce business. (I do some regular items as well but
discontinued items are often lucrative).

See e.g. [https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-H720-Bluetooth-Headset-
Packa...](https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-H720-Bluetooth-Headset-
Packaging/dp/B0030C4K8I/)

Two years ago this was going for $23.50 wholesale (I was offered by a large
supplier) and $35 retail. Tens of thousands of units sold. Price went up over
time and whoever still has units is making a killing now.

It's definitely possible to deploy millions into the business, but it's far
more of an active part of a portfolio. You can't trade an index of
discontinued products that appreciate.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
I'm confused. What moron would pay $270 for that cheesy bluetooth headset?

~~~
ikeboy
Someone who used the same one for years - this was one of the most popular
bluetooth headset for years.

Sales went down as price goes up, but I estimate it was selling 100+
units/month when the price was $150 and got worse as price got higher

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
These must be the same boomers I see mindlessly walking around Best Buy
looking for help with their phones.

~~~
milesvp
You may be heavily discounting the aversion some of us have to change. If I've
been using one thing for several years, and have become accustomed to it's
quirks, I may be very willing to pay a high premium to get the same thing
again when it craps out. This is doubly true, if I found it difficult to
settle on the thing originally.

Take this blue tooth headset as an example. If I spent $300 buying various
headsets 5 years ago before finally settling on it, I might expect to spend a
similar amount of money (or time) to find a new headset today, and may well be
willing to pay $300 just to get the same headset. It's not necessarily a great
example, since I expect the quality of headsets to be much improved today, but
I was super tempted to scour ebay for an old microsoft itellimouse when my
last one finally became unusable. I'd used this model for 2 decades, and no
other mouse I've used feels the same. I'm likely to give this new mouse I
found another few months, but I may end up deciding that it's worth it for me
to pay whatever premium it's currently going for.

~~~
JohnJamesRambo
Yes that's something boomers and the old do. One of their most identifying
characteristics is aversion to change. And they have more money than sense if
they are buying a $270 old Motorola bluetooth headset that has been superseded
in every way by a $30 headset today.

------
_Codemonkeyism
Made some money with LEGO technic sets something between 100% - 200%. But what
was much much better was keeping some Magic Cards currently valued ~5k which I
bought for pennies when at university.

~~~
C1sc0cat
I must dig out my MTG cards from 20 years ago and see if I have any rares or
valuable cards I assume there is some online resource

~~~
dwd
Anything from the Alpha release is going to be worth a lot.

Even a set of basic lands will set you back $500.

When I used to play back in '95/96 (4th Ed/Ice Age era) any Alpha/Beta cards
were relatively expensive - now they're crazy.

~~~
bigger_cheese
MTG is really skewed towards high end stuff 99% cards are never really going
to be worth anything. I think a lot of people get disappointed when they find
out their old bulk cards aren't as valuable as they expected them to be.

I own thousands (probably 10's of thousands) of magic cards but I'd say 95% of
my collections value is tied up in probably fewer than 50 cards.

If you have unopened product (sealed boxes or packs) those are potentially
worth quite a bit. A lot of old unopened booster packs are worth $15+ now.

~~~
_Codemonkeyism
I'm lucky because I sold those 95% of cards (collection) back in the day and
have only a playing deck left which I kept in the drawer for 20y. I was
astonished to find that Mishras Workshop is $1k (also lucky that I've kept all
cards in sleeves from the beginning).

------
Waterluvian
Now that I have kids I've been looking up all my favourite childhood toys.
Some of them are worth a crazy amount now. But that's maybe 5% of them. So
what do I do? Hoard everything?

~~~
capty99
no, just pick the ones that will be in that 5%

~~~
Waterluvian
Yeah, exactly, right?

If I do the unquantifiable math on the cost of storage tomy happiness living
here, it's not worth it. But I value various things like clutter as incredibly
expensive.

------
topkai22
There is a several dozen location retail chain called bricks and minifigs
([https://bricksandminifigs.com/](https://bricksandminifigs.com/)) that
supports this trade.

It drives me crazy to spend $15 for a Jedi Master Plo Koon minifig but when my
kid has been saying for weeks that is what he wants, i shell it out, and I see
tons of other parents doing the same at our store.

~~~
Jaruzel
What REALLY annoys me, is that people selling minifigs on the second hand
market, are splitting them from new sets. Leaving the set without any figures.
If you search eBay you'll see 100s of nearly-new sets listed but with 'NO
MINIFIGS' in the description. If you wanted to buy a popular out-of-stock set
for your kid, expect to massively pay over the odds just to replace the
missing minifigs all because of the greedy minifig collectors market.

What LEGO should do here, is sell single minifig 'blister-packs' for all their
themed figures (Disney/Marvel, Star Wars etc.). This would have the benefit of
ensuring that new sets don't get split for profit, and also create a new
income stream for LEGO. They could even make some minifigs limited run
'blister-pack' only, driving up the demand/value.

I'm a casual minifig collector, but I refuse to buy figs that have been
clearly split from bigger sets. It makes it hard for me, as I also won't pay
more than £10 for a set, so I'm restricted to the blind-bags and the small
range of tiny single-figure sets. It's frustrating, but at least my conscience
is clear.

~~~
topkai22
Around here lego seems to be doing that, except they are the “trading card” or
“loot box” style packs where you can’t see what you are getting ahead of time.
This seems to be a direct strategy to further cash in on minifig collecting.

And on second reading, that’s what you might have meant by “blister pack”, but
I’ll still comment as I wasn’t sure.

~~~
Jaruzel
Yup, blister pack = trading card. Where you can at least see what you are
buying - think the individual proper Star Wars action figures from
Kenner/Hasbro.

LEGO do have the 'blind bags/loot box' type minifigs, which run in 'Seasons',
the last season was Harry Potter themed, so I skipped that. I'm currently
waiting for the next Season to come out.

------
dspillett
"Lego collecting delivers huge and uncorrelated market returns" \- _up to
2015,_ when articles like this started coming out and more people started
buying ans storing sets as investments.

If you invest now you will have more competitors with the same idea so
supply/demand factors are likely to be less favourable when you try to re-sell
the items later.

------
gpderetta
You should see the return of investment in reserve list Magic the Gathering
cards... I wish I had bought some 15-20 years ago.

------
jedberg
And yet there are places online where you can buy cheap legos by the pound (or
kilo).

So I guess the real value is in keeping the sets together? I suppose you could
make some money buying legos by the pound and then sorting them into sets and
reselling them. In fact I’m pretty sure I’ve seen people who do that.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I think the problem with this approach is the lack of the box and instruction
booklets, which are also part of the set.

~~~
jedberg
You can download them all from the lego website now, and if you want to be
full service, you can print them in color.

------
cmsj
I love Lego, my kids love Lego, they have all my old Lego and it really bums
me out how quickly Lego sets go out of production. One of my sons really wants
a set from the first Jurassic World movie, but it's been discontinued and is
only available for several hundred pounds on eBay (or 100-200 if you settle
for parting it out on Bricklink) and so he's not going to ever get it.

I get that they can't keep making the sets forever, it wouldn't scale, but
it's still annoying and drives this feeling of needing to buy any Lego set you
might ever want, because you'll never get it later without wasting loads of
money on scalpers/hoarders.

------
pdkl95
Lego bricks are an example of a product that has the market advantages of
popular with both children _and_ adults (as parents, nostalgia) that is also a
_durable good_ [1]. Purchasing new bricks today is a lot easier to justify
with the knowledge that can be used with the bricks purchased 20 years ago
thanks to their durability and backwards compatibility. While planned
obsolescence can be profitable, durability reduces sales friction.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durable_good)

------
mistercow
I dislike how this article goes out of its way to prejudice the reader against
a perfectly reasonable criticism but making it sound like critics are simply
unwilling to entertain unconventional ideas.

~~~
diminoten
I'm pretty sure that's tongue in cheek, it's a fun article but no one is
saying dump your 401k into lego.

------
ghostbrainalpha
LEGO collecting doesn't always work out.

I snatched up all the classic Bill Cosby Lego's I could find in 2013, thinking
I could get ahead of a trend when they announced a new Lego version of The
Cosby Show that was supposed to come out in 2014.

That show never came out, and Cosby's popularity isn't exactly what is was.
I'm still keeping my fingers crossed for some sort of morbid Lego fan interest
but so far it hasn't materialized.

My tech friends bough Crypto in 2013. I bought Cosby. Lesson learned.

------
sigmaprimus
I might be just cheap but the last time I was at a toy store shopping for a
Christmas gift for my friend's son, I was shocked at the retail price of Lego.
I wonder how the numbers would look if we were to consider the year after year
increased prices of new product, sort of an accounting for inflation. I do
find it very interesting how the Simpsons kits have lost value though, is it
because the bricks are somehow different than the rest?

~~~
Fricken
Lego is kind of like Apple in the sense that they exercise draconian brand
control, they have a best in class product no one can compete with, and thus
they can command ludicrous profit margins.

In spite of being expensive, though, Lego is still a good deal, because it
lasts forever. My childhood Lego, the oldest sets nearly 40 years old, was
passed on to my younger sister, then my cousin, then my nephew, and I've got
it back again.

No other toy from my childhood is still around, let alone in use. It's a
pretty safe bet that Lego will still be popular in 40 years, and my childhood
Lego will still be compatible.

------
wmf
A classic essay on collectibles is relevant to several comments here:
[https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photogr...](https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2009/02/the-
trough-of-no-value.html)

------
ekianjo
paying for storage of large amounts of lego sets will offset any gain you can
extract out of them... obvious flaw of the study.

------
forkLding
I believe Pokemon cards, other trading cards and sneakers are all valuable
collectible markets as well

------
howard941
Lack of interest in my Erector Set's going to average out those huge returns.

------
jerkstate
they could have said the same thing about baseball cards 30 years ago

~~~
52-6F-62
Haha. I'm still sitting on a binder and a box of hockey cards from over around
30+ years ago— thankfully I never had to spend a dime on them.

Some are still calling for a decent price, but I'm not sure there's the market
for them quite as much.

On the plus side, we might see a minor resurgence in their popularity:
[https://theplantnewspaper.com/2018/03/the-evolution-of-
colle...](https://theplantnewspaper.com/2018/03/the-evolution-of-collecting-
hockey-cards/)

------
dwd
When I was a kid I swapped a friend one Lego spaceship for his entire
collection of original star wars figures that he didn't want.

If they were still carded their current value would be astronomical.

------
tbabb
Sounds ripe for a speculation bubble.

------
randomsearch
Stamps.

------
gammateam
well, not anymore

