If you can remember back a few years, 2020 was the pandemic and people were at home with a bunch of US government stimulus checks and nothing else to do. Many of them resorted to ordering LEGO sets to build in order to pass the time. As a LEGO fan, this is an awesome thing to happen. It’s great to see more people join the hobby and get into building. The downside was the pricing on LEGO sets. With high demand, sets flew off the shelves and the LEGO company could barely keep up. There was no need to have a sale or offer discounts. Then in August 2022, prices on a number of sets went up by around 25%.
It was a depressing and expensive time to be a LEGO fan, but great if you were the LEGO company raking in the profits.
I’m writing this post in November 2023. The US Federal Reserve has raised interest rates in an effort to fight inflation and the rampant spending on LEGO sets has dampened. A few years ago, new release sets were on backorder within a few hours of their release on LEGO Shop @ Home. That’s not happening as much anymore.
The big retailers in the US (Walmart, Target, Amazon) have been running sales for a few months now. Sales have been on everything from small CITY sets to larger Ideas and even UCS Star Wars sets. Definitely shop around before you pay full price on a set. Even some of the sets released in 2023 are being discounted already.
LEGO has been increasing sales as well. We’ve seen more discounts on and a lot of GWP offers with sometimes more than one GWP at a time if you spend a specific amount. This weekend is the LEGO® Insiders Weekend 2023 sales event. You can redeem codes to snag discounts on some bigger sets, grab 2X point on all sets and 3X or 4X points on a select few. This is along with GWPs at specific price points and I saw something about maybe being able to redeem fewer points for discounts. I suspect we’ll see a bunch of items go on sale as well.
However, I am calling foul on a few of the sales at LEGO this weekend.
#10255-1: Assembly Square is set to retire this year. It originally retailed for $279.99 in the US. In August 2022, the price increased to $299.99. This weekend there is an offer to redeem a $60 off the set. So LEGO raised the price and now they’re offering a sale on it.
#21325-1: Medieval Blacksmith is also set to retire this year. It originally retailed for $149.99 and then the price increased to $179.99. Now it’s $35 off. I guess it’s a deal now, but that’s just bringing it back to the price it was before the price went up. How come there isn’t a bigger discount on this one?
In the end, I guess we should be glad for any discount at this point. Oh well. Happy shopping so you can have some happy building!