The Money Earner

Lego investing: The easiest way to double your money

what is lego investing

What is Lego investing?

 

Lego investing is a very simple plan to see great returns on your investment simply from buying and holding toys for 1 -2 years and selling on. 

 

Just as you would with stocks, gold or cryptocurrency. But personally I see potential for much better growth in a shorter period of time and the beauty of it is it could not be simpler.

2022 I made over £900 profit and plan is to keep reinvesting into more and more lego!

Lego investing is hitting the news as well with recent articles about this lucrative investment – Times article

3 simple rules to follow

The best thing about Lego investing as a side hustle is it could not be easier to grasp

  1. Buy Lego when discounted
  2. Focus on popular and collectable sets
  3. Aim for sets that are retiring or appear close to retirement

 

Lego generally works on a cycle, so sets will be out for 1-3 years, depending on the theme. Then the set will retire. Once the set retires the more popular and collectable a set is the more it will increase in value. All you have to do is wait till it hits your price point, I aim to sell for three times what I paid, so after fees I double my money, and then sell on. 

You can see my sales breakdown for 2022 for the returns I was making

How to know if a set is popular?

At face value it may seem it is hard to know whether a Lego set is popular or not, and it is easy to come unstuck if focus on what you think is popular. But it is much easier than you think. For Lego when on the market, you can check the Amazon BSR best seller ranking for free to see where it sits – the higher it up is the rankings the more popular it is. 

 

Also check the star rating on Amazon as well to see a popular Lego set based on its star ratings. 

A popular set will still be popular when it leaves the market

 

Which themes are the best to invest in?

I have bought an array of different sets and themes. But there are some themes in particular that I am always confident of a great return. Not that others are not good money makers, but these I would say are the most consistent.

Lego Technic – check out the 2023 investment guide here

Lego Harry potter – Check out the 2023 investment guide

Lego Star Wars Check out the 2023 investment guide for star wars lego

Lego Speed champions

How long does Lego take to retire?

There is no hard and fast rule for this however I have looked at sets average retirement dates, some follow a consistent pattern. The vast majority of sets will hang around on the market for 12 months to 30 months (2 and a half years) so anything a year old is not going to be a particularly long hold. 

However there can be some exceptions and some that I have bought. Particularly it seems some star wars, harry potter sets, but also others can be on the market for a while longer. The big stand out sets (Hogwarts express, millennium falcon, tie fighter) I have all invested on and see no end to their time on the market.

Read more about the average expiry dates here

 

How to decide if a set is a good investment?

There are a few different ways I see if a set is a good investment, on top of their popularity and perceived collectability, the discount of the product and how long I think it is to retirement. 

There are two other metrics which can give a good understanding of the likelihood of great success on resale. 

 

  1. Check Keepa chart for when out of stock if price rises. 
  2. Look at similar and past sets and see how they have performed. A site like brick set is great for this to see how similar sets have done. 

Where can you sell your Lego ?

For selling your Lego, you have two different avenues really, you can either sell on Amazon or eBay or similar. 

The big advantage of selling on Amazon is that your Lego will be open to a much bigger audience, you will also get a higher price point than you would selling on other platforms. If you sell via FBA (fulfilled by amazon). Amazon arranges all of the shipping and returns, you just send to Amazon. Which then because it will be a prime delivery item, you will sell for a much higher price. Although fees will be higher but is normally extremely worth it.

 

You might find better luck selling elsewhere such as on eBay, Facebay, Vinted etc etc. The advantage of this is that you can sell them with cheaper fees. eBay is great for example if you are selling with the advantage of a final value fee discount that are often available for personal sellers. But the price does tend to be cheaper than if selling elsewhere, people always want a bargain on these sites, and less likely to consider your product ‘new’ compared to than when buying on amazon.

 

For me neither is wrong really, but if you are serious for doing lots of Lego sales, then you will have to use Amazon FBA at some point, then you can send all your items in bulk to Lego and it makes it a much more passive experience than arranging all the sales, delivery and returns on eBay or the like. 

 

Where is the best place to buy Lego ?

Any place is a good place to buy Lego. The most important aspect of Lego buying is that you buy it at a good discount, this will depend on the sets and themes as to what is a good discount, but normally I am always looking for at least 20-30% off to consider a purchase. 

 

Often it is much easier than that you might think and can readily find Lego discounted at 50% off and more. 

 

Supermarkets are a great place to buy discounted Lego, you can see the quality of the product. Often throughout the year, supermarkets will want to clear their shelves for new stock, this means you can pick up amazing half price and more discounts on clearance sets. 

Also Tesco and Sainsburys and others have really good sales on some of their Lego. The majority of the best Lego discounts I have got are from Tesco. Including Lego 42120 hovercraft for half price. 40% off 42121 a very popular Lego technic set. 

As well as retail there are always great discounts online as well. Amazon being the prime one, I like amazon because you know their returns policy is good, the delivery is fast as well. Amazon will often price match any discounts with other retailers as well. So any discounts it is worth checking amazon for the same product. 

 

Argos is another where I have got a big bulk of my Lego purchases. They do lots of excellent discounts, on multibuy or stacking with vouchers. You can also collect nectar points with Argos. Their sales are often extremely good

 

How much have I made?

I always knew when I started Lego investing that it would take a couple of years to see good and consistent profit, this is due to the nature of the hustle. 

Year on year you can see the steady increase of profit. 

2021 I made a very nice £384 profit from £800 worth of sales

2022 The earnings grew further with more of my initial sets retiring as well as my purchases getting smarter – I managed to earn £900 profit. 

2023 I expect an even greater year

My Lego plan

My plan continues to be to put any Lego profits straight back into the Lego business, to keep growing and growing. I will be continuing to share my sales and profits, and all the hot Lego discounts that I find on my way. So make sure to follow me. 

 

Check out my Lego inventory to see what sets I am currently holding and reviews of the sets I am holding about what I have learned on the journey. 

 

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