How to Get Rid of Your LEGO Collection

If you’ve ever done a search on YouTube or Google of LEGO collections, you’ve probably seen people showing off rooms or “brick caves” highlighting their builds, storage methods, and trophy sets. So what do you do with it all when it’s time to move on?

I found a video from a local news station in the Kansas City area talking about someone with that problem. First off, it must have been a slow news day if they had to show this, but he got some free publicity so maybe it wasn’t that bad. Secondly, who appraises LEGO collections?

Okay, watch the video and I’ll give my commentary and recommendations afterwards.

Retiring in Ecuador, can’t move your $78,000 brick collection, what do you do? Besides having the local news media come see it all, do you sell it all as a complete collection for $70,000? Do you sell items individually? Do you take a loss and sell the stuff to people who have Bricklink or EBay shops?

I think the most important decision you need to make is whether you need to make the most money selling your collection or you need to get rid of your collection fast. Or where you fall in the middle of those two…

Moving Fast:

Donate: Need to get rid of your bricks fast… give them away. I suspect you will have plenty of people who would love free bricks. If you don’t want to just give them away, look for a way to donate them. Can a charity sell them off and use the funds for good? Can a school or library or some other group use them for kids to build with? Depending on who you select and how much you donate, you might qualify for a charitable tax donation deduction. Check our the IRS website or ask your local tax expert/accountant for help there.

Find another seller: If you want to get rid of your bricks, you want some money out of it, and you don’t want to be bothered with the work, find a re-seller. Stores like Bricks and Minifigs in the US but sets or bulk parts and a quick Google search found a bunch of options out there for people who will buy sets or buy by the pound. You won’t get the most money for your bricks, but you’ll get rid of stuff fast and still get cash.

Post an Ad for Everything: Much like the seller in the clip above, post an add on any number of pages or forums hoping someone will want to buy it all. It might help to be in a LUG or have connections in the LEGO community to offload your stuff. No telling who you’ll end up dealing with though.

Make Money:

Sell on EBay, Bricklink, or other sites: Here’s your chance to set your prices on individual sets or even pieces and make a bit more money. This will take a bit longer and will require some effort. You’ll have to manage your store, deal with shipping and handling, do customer service, and all the fun stuff that comes along with it. The downside is you have to pay fees for the service and for the funds processing. So the money isn’t all yours for the sales.

Post an Ad for Individual Sets: If you want to avoid paying fees, find a local classified ad service for free or some other site you can use to post your sets. This probably will involve arranging meet ups with people and dealing with individual buyers. This will take a lot of time, but if you can wait to sell everything and deal with people, you can make a decent amount of money.

Garage Sale: Be prepared to haggle and deal with people all day who want a great deal. Probably not the best way to attract people who want LEGO sets, but you won’t pay any fees or anything. Good luck!

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What other options are there? If I’m missing any, feel free to add them into the comments.

Or you could just not sell your bricks at all…

Happy building!

EDITORIAL: What Would You Say About a Set if LEGO Sent You it for Free?

I haven’t done this before so we’ll see how it goes… I’ve decided to write an editorial piece capturing an opinion that I’ve formed as of late after scouring the LEGO fan pages. Specifically, I’ve been following the recent release of the new UCS Imperial Star Destroyer Set (#75252-1). I had a blast building #75192-1: Millennium Falcon and news of the Imperial Star Destroyer set release caught my attention. Thankfully, the fan media has their set reviews ready to go soon after release. From the sites I look at, there were Imperial Star Destroyer reviews on Brickset.com, Eurobricks, and on YouTube, Beyond the Brick had a video review.

I’m trying to decide whether I want to save up my VIP points to buy a Star Destroyer set. The reviews have been helpful in pointing out things I wouldn’t even consider. They’ve highlighted the less than stellar minifigures included, the lack of internal designs unlike the Falcon, points where the design lacks detail, and the mere challenge of trying to display a model this large somewhere. They’ve also highlighted the positives like the cool “greebling,” the built in carrying handle, the intricacy of the various angles formed, and some of the many cool details. To be honest, I have not decided one way or another whether I want to take the plunge or not.

Onto the meat of the discussion… I am glad LEGO sends out free copies of the sets to various LEGO fan media influencers. It works out great for them to get reviews published right as a set releases for sale so the rest of the fan community can get an inside look at the set. It’s a smart move on LEGO’s part and they probably see more benefits by giving away a bunch of sets for free than they do by giving up sets. Also to be fair, all of the reviewers acknowledge that they have received a free copy. For example, Brickset says “This set was provided for review by The LEGO Group but the review is an expression of my own opinions.” But are we in the fan community getting true reviews? Many of the reviews have a comment about the set being expensive, but it seems like it’s worth it to buy. However, they didn’t actually buy it. How can they make an assessment like that? I almost feel like I need to wait and find someone who as actually spent their hard earned cash to buy this before I accept any decisions on price. Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if LEGO sent me free sets to review (hint, hint… if someone from LEGO is reading this…), but I don’t think I could make a fair assessment on the price LEGO picked for a set without actually paying for a set. Often times, that’s why my reviews are much later as I tend to wait for sets to go on sale before buying them.

I don’t mean to stir up discontent among the community. I think LEGO is doing a great thing by sending sets to the community to review. I appreciate and thank the fan media for taking the time to create videos, post professional quality photos, and assess sets from the prospective of a fan builder. My recommendation going forward is to continue with this process. I would also suggest that we as a fan look into finding ways to assess the price that are more objective. We have the somewhat meaningful price per brick. I have seen price per pound used as well. The Star Destroyer is also compared in price to the Falcon which I’m not sure is 100% accurate either. What else is there? Any ideas on how to make this process more transparent?

Thanks for hearing me out. Happy building!