[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/ 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...

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...

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

[twic]

Ah, exotic America: where people think seriously about exploring Mars, while still using top-loading washing machines. Truly, a land of contrasts.

[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...

[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.

[gpderetta]

Yes, assuming people will be playing with Legos in 10-20 years ( which is a safe assumption) and that knock off will stay low quality (which might be not), there is a floor on the value of a set.

[hn_throwaway_99]

That was my sentiment exactly. I couldn't tell 100% from the article, but it looked like the professor only looked for items that had been on sale in the secondary market, and then looked back at the original retail price to gauge the return. Worthless (or near worthless) items wouldn't be put up on EBay at all. This invalidates the entire study.

[white-flame]

Bulk used Lego sells pretty consistently around $10/lb. Certainly less than retail, but never un-sellable. Of course, selling piece-by-piece on Bricklink will net more, for more work.

Especially when compared to pure "collectibles" that are past their peak, they're much more regular in value and always sell.

[jncraton]

You can usually get closer to $5 per pound on eBay if you search carefully. I built an algorithm to do this searching and filtering for me:

https://joncraton.com/lego-by-pound

[pavlov]

99.99% of wine and jewelry sold is also worthless (beyond immediate enjoyment, which LEGO also provides). For any successful product the collector market will be small.

[wslh]

Or a lack of false positive/hypothesis test analysis.