Weather you’re an AFOL, a teen, FLL Coach, or the parents of a LEGO Fan, you know when buying LEGO it gets expensive fast. This guide is meant to help you get the Most LEGO for your money. The most common purchase point for LEGO is in the store isles. We’ve all been there walking the store with our kids (or ourselves) and spied that neatly decorated and styled box of LEGO. You want it, you must have it. But hold on that may not be the best way to get your LEGO fix. Physical store retailers may or may not have the best prices, and some of them (Toy’s R Us) are know to charge prices above the MSRP. But sometimes it might be. it all depends, Do you have to have it now? Is it on sale? Is there a limed edition promotion? If so, go ahead buy that LEGO set. While were at this point, we should talk about value. Most, AFOL’s measure the relative value of a LEGO set by it’s piece count. that is the number of elements in the set. clearly posted on the front of the package.
a good rule of thumb is the set should cost about .10 cents per piece. Liscenced Themes like Star Wars and Toy Story will command a premium price presumably to help pay the licencing fees. So you can expect to pay more for those sets. But even that does not cover the whole story. LEGO which sells the sets does not value them based on pieces, but rather by the amount of plastic used. which is most easily determined by weight. AFOL’s on the other hand are more interested in pieces, because well larger pieces(SPUDS) are not as useful, and so a focus on piece count serves them well, but for your little youngster, this is not the best measure. With that out of the way, let’s move on. website, or Amazon you just have to wait for them to be shipped and arrive, As an added bonus, most online only retailers such as Amazon, do not charge sales tax unless they have a physical presance in your state, and usually have free shipping. Many of the rarer and uncommon sets are offered only through the Lego SHOP, so if your looking for the exclusives check them first, and be wary of Ebay.
It’s a great store to buy bulk used Lego, but most of the sets sold online through Ebay are current sets being sold at sometimes crazy markups. That is not a rip on Ebay itself, but rather some of it’s individual sellers, so be careful. So far, we have talked about standard online and brick and mortar stores there is however 1 more: Bricklink is an online website that hosts many stores form the LEGO community each of them run by their individual store owners. BrickLink is shinning if you are looking for specific LEGO elements, or out of production sets or Mini Figs. There are no fees to sign up with Bricklink, only when you buy, and those fees are determined by the store you buy form. Many of ULUG members maintain an online pressence here, and you can help suport us, and fill your lego needs by purchasing from one of their stores:You might soon be able to buy and build this ‘Golden Girls’ Lego set See all Editor's Picks Lego needs to be our friend and produce this set!
The Golden Girls may be off the air, but you might soon be able to create your own stories with Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia. A creative Golden Girls fan has proposed a Lego set featuring the whole gang that will be considered for production if it gains 10,000 supporters. The project, titled “The Golden Girls Living Room and Kitchen Modular Set with Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, Sophia, and Stan,” was created by Lego Ideas user lostsleep and features the familiar foyer, living room, and kitchen sets from the show. In addition to minifigures of the women, it will also include a minifigure of Dorothy’s ex-husband Stanley. Photo via The Golden Girls/Lego Ideas “It has been meticulously recreated to have opening cupboards and fridge in the kitchen, wicker sofa and chairs, a hallway backdrop, a storage closet in the kitchen, and an outdoor area with potted plants and a hose,” lostsleep writes on the project page. “I have recreated many classic scenes from the show, including a visit from Burt Reynolds, Rose shooting Blanche’s vase, Dorothy playing “Grab That Dough” and Rose rescuing her teddy bear from a mean little girl.”
If the set gets 10,000 supporters, it will head to the Lego review board, which will decide whether or not to approve it for production. It seems like the set has a decent chance of reaching its goal, with many enthusiastic supporters commenting on the project page. “If this doesn’t get made officially I want to buy it from you. This is amazing!” wrote Lego Ideas user ladymelissa83. As of this writing, the set has more than 3,590 supporters, with 343 days left to reach its goal.Photo via The Golden Girls/Lego Ideas Up next after the break: I went to Toys R Us recently to buy my son a Lego set for Hanukkah. Did you know a small box of Legos costs $60? Sixty bucks for 102 plastic blocks! In fact, I learned, Lego sets can sell for thousands of dollars. And despite these prices, Lego has about 70 percent of the construction-toy market. Why doesn't some competitor sell plastic blocks for less? Lego's patents expired a while ago. How hard could it be to make a cheap knockoff?
Luke, a 9-year-old Lego expert, set me straight. "They pay attention to so much detail," he said. "I never saw a Lego piece ... that couldn't go together with another one." Lego goes to great lengths to make its pieces really, really well, says David Robertson, who is working on a book about Lego. Inside every Lego brick, there are three numbers, which identify exactly which mold the brick came from and what position it was in in that mold. That way, if there's a bad brick somewhere, the company can go back and fix the mold. For decades this is what kept Lego ahead. It's actually pretty hard to make millions of plastic blocks that all fit together. But over the past several years, a competitor has emerged: Mega Bloks. Plastic blocks that look just like Legos, snap onto Legos and are often half the price. So Lego has tried other ways to stay ahead. The company tried to argue in court that no other company had the legal right to make stacking blocks that look like Legos. "That didn't fly," Robertson says.
"Every single country that Lego tried to make that argument in decided against Lego." But Lego did find a successful way to do something Mega Bloks could not copy: It bought the exclusive rights to Star Wars. If you want to build a Death Star out of plastic blocks, Lego is now your only option. The Star Wars blocks were wildly successful. So Lego kept going — it licensed Indiana Jones, Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story and Harry Potter. Sales of these products have been huge for Lego. More important, the experience has taught the company that what kids wanted to do with the blocks was tell stories. Lego makes or licenses the stories they want to tell. And kids know the difference. "If you were talking to a friend you wouldn't say, 'Oh my God, I just got a big set of Mega Bloks,' " Luke says. "When you say Legos they would probably be like, 'Awesome can we go to your house and play?' " Lego made almost $3.5 billion in revenue last year. Mega made a tenth of that. But Mega Bloks may yet gain on Lego.