Brickpicker Confessions: I am a reseller.

Ed Mack · 2019-10-02T15:03:31.000Z

Hello BrickPickers and LEGO fans, On a monthly basis, I write a few articles for BLOCKS magazine. I wanted to share my most recent article with the BrickPicker community before it hits the shelves in a month or two. I believe the article speaks for itself. I usually don't share a BLOCKS article with BrickPicker members, but in this case, I believe BrickPickers should hear it from me first. I know it will stir things up a bit on the site and there will be a few questions, which I will try to answer the best I can. What I will say before you read it is that it's all good. My experience reselling LEGO sets has been a positive one and the online toy retailer I dealt with did a great job of selling and shipping thousands of my LEGO sets. Most of all, the secondary market is still remarkably strong in my opinion. I know this post will shock some people, but I believe it's good news for many LEGO resellers, investors and fans out there. The information I have learned over the years on this site has been invaluable. There are some really smart people on this site and they are generous with their knowledge. Please feel free to ask questions. Some specific questions I will respond to through PMs only, so feel free to write to me privately if you would like. Thanks for everything and enjoy the article...Ed Mack MY LEGO Reselling Journey... While this might surprise and shock some Brickpicker members and LEGO fans, this week marks the one year anniversary of my journey into the world of “reselling.” Over the past decade (...and more), I have collected thousands of LEGO sets with the hopes of reselling them on some rainy day. I never sold one. Well, for my family and I, that rainy day came last October when my wife and I sent thousands of my LEGO sets to a major online retailer to sell on a consignment basis. With a leap of faith, we took a chance with thousands of dollars of LEGO sets and other collectibles and sent them to be resold on all the major online marketplaces such as Amazon, eBay and Walmart. Selling the LEGO sets was a necessity because we have been looking to move, and a basement full of LEGO sets is a major negative with regards to home selling and moving. That being said, I have gained experience and learned a lot over the past year on reselling and the collectibles market in general. While the vast majority of my collection has been LEGO sets, I diversified in the Funko world as well. While I have always had a knack for picking out potentially profitable sets, I have learned that the LEGO secondary market is changing and that the old school methods that I relied upon for years don’t apply or work well in today’s quick-flip secondary LEGO markets. The LEGO Group has changed the way they do business over the past few years. By bringing iconic sets like the 10189 Taj Mahal out of the vault and putting it back into production and releasing newer and better versions of other legendary LEGO sets such as the Ultimate Collector Series 10179 Millennium Falcon, LEGO has decimated the top tier of the LEGO collectibles lineup. Resellers are afraid to invest heavily in many of these new and wonderful sets, for fear of future re-releases and remakes. Buyers with extra discretionary income will not fork out big dollars for high-end sets because The LEGO Group might release a new and better version, at a fraction of the cost of the retired LEGO set. But all is not lost. Over the past year I have been able to see what is still popular and what is not through my own sales. I (with some help…) sold thousands of LEGO sets from dozens of themes and even reinvested some sales money back into newer sets and analyzed that data. I was surprised at what sold and what didn’t and how I wish I had more of certain sets and not others. So let me break down some key points and trends that I noticed from my personal sales adventures… The Ultimate Collector Series is done as a viable collectible. What was once the “Gold Standard” of LEGO investing and collecting has been severely damaged by recent releases like the 75192 Millennium Falcon and new 75252 Imperial Star Destroyer. Don’t get me wrong, these are well designed and awesome sets, but as collectibles, they are too large to store and ship, and there is always a threat of another release of these sets in a few years. The old Ultimate Collector Series sets have taken a huge blow to their values, and the new one might take forever to appreciate. Only inventory shortages seem to drive up values on these types of sets. I still have a bunch of UCS sets on the market at fair prices to be sold and few takers. Counterfeits have also taken its toll on these sets. Sad. It’s getting more difficult to sell on secondary market sites like Amazon and eBay. I believe this is the biggest negative moving forward in the world of reselling and flipping products. The horror stories I read online and from first-hand experience on how these large retailers have control over a small online reseller is fri