Some rare Lego sets are now selling for literally thousands of pounds online, as enthusiasts snap up the popular toys. But it's not just rare pieces that are selling well, with standard sets now frequently worth more than when they were new and even old bags of unsorted bricks in demand. “With the soar in popularity of Lego with both adults and children, the effect on the values of both rare, hard to find sets and new releases has been incredible," said Bev Channell, event director for Lego event BRICK 2015, running at Birmingham's NEC this week. “It’s well worth searching through your old sets to see what treasures are hiding there.” The bigger, rarer sets tend to be worth the most - but with Lego frequently refreshing its range that means any old set that's large enough could be worth upwards of £1,000. Currently, these are the most valuable sets: Sadly, to get the best prices for your Lego, it needs to be “mint in box” - which means not opened since it was bought and still factory sealed.
The good news for people who want to play with their toys is that you can still get good returns for assembled models – as long as there are no pieces missing. The easiest Lego sets to sell are Star Wars themed, with Millennium Falcons, Death Stars and X-Wings all selling well – and some prices in the thousands. But there's much more than just Star Wars selling. A look at the best-selling kits on BrickPicker shows trains, play houses, dinosaurs, Harry Potter sets, Back to the Future Deloreans and Pirate sets all featuring. Most of the sales take place on eBay, with BrickPicker providing lists of the top selling and biggest rising prices – as well as a tool letting you compare the price of sets. You can also search on eBay for sold prices of similar sets. If you've got a box of Lego, rather than a specific set, you can bulk-sell as well – although prices for these are a lot lower. That said, if you have the time and can split the box out by category (be it Star Wars, pirates, Medieval, Technic or whatever) these smaller – more specific - bundles will frequently sell for more than a job-lot of unsorted bricks.
To get the most value, you need to be selling pristine-condition Lego toys. “As with any sort of collectible, the safe storage of the collectible is very important,” Ed Mack explains in a piece on How to make money from Lego . “Although the actual Lego brick is pretty much indestructible under normal conditions, the Lego boxes and instructions need special care.” That means quite a lot of space to store them all if you're trying to make money from them, and possibly adding the cost to your insurance. Then there are the seller fees on eBay. And the shipping costs – remember, Lego is bulky and could cost quite a bit to ship. And if you're selling to a collector, they'll expect it to arrive in good condition, so packing costs go up again. Oh, and don't count your profits before you sell – the price of a set can drop fast if Lego re-introduces it while prices can rise as well as fall in line with demand too. Is Lego better than gold? 500+ VOTES SO FAR The market for old toys on eBay is much bigger than just Lego.
If you've got some old childhood clutter just gathering dust, here are 8 ways to tell if your old toys could be worth more then just memories while our guide to getting the most cash when selling old toys on eBay can be found here.The link to this page may be incorrect or out of date.2. You may have bookmarked a page that has moved.LEGO Technic Service Truck #42008 Brand New Sealed (ship from Canada)When it comes to movie-themed toy tie-ins, no film will ever compare to Star Wars. In the nearly four decades since the first film hit theaters, almost every character, vehicle, and location from the franchise has been made into a figure or playset, and kid and adult fans alike purchased—and continue to buy—as many as they could afford. In honor of Star Wars Day, we decided to take a look at some of the figures that you may have owned that are now worth a fortune. To do so, we enlisted the help of the man who literally wrote the book on the subject: Mark Bellomo, toy expert, mental_floss contributor and author of The Ultimate Guide to Vintage Star Wars Action Figures 1977-1985 (among many, many other books on toys).
Bellomo tells mental_floss that his love of the Star Wars universe began with the release of the first film in 1977; his connection to the toy line began the next year, when he got his first C-3PO figure. He now owns every vintage figure ever made, including the "impossible to find" Early Bird Certificate Package. With doubles and multiples of many figures and sets, Bellomo could not give a ballpark estimate of how many pieces are in his collection. Suffice it to say there are a lot, and some were harder to track down than others. "It took me two years to obtain a sealed bag of foam 'trash' for the Death Star Space Station playset," Bellomo says. "As for crown jewels, I have about 150 to 250 mint on sealed card (MOSC) vintage Star Wars figures and a bunch of factory sealed playsets and vehicles, most of which never made it into The Ultimate Guide due to space restrictions." According to Bellomo, there's usually a spike in vintage Star Wars figure prices when there's a major media tie-in (new films, cartoons, or shows made available on streaming platforms), but it's also a case of limited supply and high demand;
a lot of collectors want the toys, but the number of vintage figures is finite, which increases their value like a piece of fine art. Millions of figures have been produced over the years (the Kenner company shipped an estimated 250 million Star Wars figures by 1985), so what happened to most of them? "Think of it this way," Bellomo says. "How many people do you think would have bought a Star Wars figure in the spring of 1977 and saved it in its original packaging?" The answer is: Not very many, which is why mint condition versions of the 10 toys listed below are worth a fortune to collectors. (And something to keep in mind: While the potential profits of selling these figures do sound impressive, they shouldn't be taken as a sign that we should all invest heavily in toys and wait for our dollars to multiply. "If you could go out right now and buy an action figure off the rack for $15, and turn around in a year and sell if for $30, everyone would be doing that," Bellomo says. "It doesn’t often work out that way.")
Original Retail Price: $7.99Current Price Range: $675-$725+ (mint sealed in box) Standing 7.5-inches tall, this wheeled figure featured a secret compartment that opened to reveal an electronic circuit card and plans for the Death Star. The value of this figure is highly dependent on the color: The white plastic commonly turns yellow when exposed to sunlight or heat, so the whiter this 38-year-old R2 unit is, the more he's worth. Original Retail Price: $10.97Current Price Range: $1000-$1200+ (mint in sealed box) According to Bellomo’s book, this figure was based on the land speeder Luke drove in A New Hope , but there was another, smaller land speeder figure that was not controlled by the R2-D2 remote (“clicker”). This version was only sold in J.C. Penney Christmas catalogs and cost $10.97, which is around $40 when adjusted for inflation. Paying that much for a toy in 1978 usually meant that it would leave the box, but the select few that remained untouched are now worth 100 times that high sticker price.
Original Retail Price: $29.99Current Price Range: $3000-$3200+ (mint in sealed box) Slightly less menacing than the enormous Jawa Sandcrawler from Star Wars, this toy is still in high demand 37 years after its release, and 39 years since the vehicle first appeared on screen in Star Wars: A New Hope, Bellomo says. Even its removable pieces purchased alone are valuable: Elevator stairs and hatches can be found online for three times what the entire toy cost nearly four decades ago. Original Retail Price: $29.99Current Price Range: $2800-$3200 (mint in sealed box) Pieces on pieces on pieces! This playset had a number of removable components, including weapons, a cockpit canopy windshield, a game table, landing gear, a secret compartment, and a lightsaber training set like the one Luke uses in the film. Finding all the pieces together is rare, but some sellers do offer accessories on their own. "With most '80s toys that possess a bevy of difficult-to-find accessories, more money can be made sometimes selling the toys piecemeal," Bellomo says.
"With some vintage toys, an accessory or accoutrement may be worth more money than the entire shell/hull of the vehicle." Original Retail Price: $49.99Current Price Range: $825-$975+ (mint in sealed box) A taller AT-AT was released in 2010 with more features than its 1981 counterpart, but collectors still crave the original, which had a D battery compartment, clicking guns, and posable legs. Original Retail Price: $9.69Current Price Range: $1200-$1550+ (mint sealed in box) This rare set was sold only in the 1980 Sears Wish Book, so if your family belonged to that exclusive club, you may remember it. It came with a backdrop and four action figures: “Han Solo in his Bespin outfit, Lobot, Dengar, and Ugnaught.” This piece is valuable because the materials used to make it weren't necessarily built to last decades. "Most exclusive Star Wars toys constructed out of chipboard are getting more and more difficult to obtain on the secondary market," Bellomo says. "Star Wars is a multi-generational global brand: Every aficionado wants to own one of each piece from the vintage Star Wars line ...
The Sears exclusive Cloud City Playset is getting more difficult to find in decent condition—and more expensive, too." Original Retail Price: $16.99Current Price Range: $975-$1100+ (mint sealed in box) This Kenner toy came with several removable parts, including Han Solo in carbonite, a tinted canopy, stabilizer fins, and a cargo ramp. Many removable parts meant a high probability that they would go missing once the figures were opened, which is why collectors seek out sealed boxes. "If 100,000 Slave-1 toys survived the early '80s, maybe about five to 10 percent of the extant samples survived from 1981 to 1984 in good condition with labels intact and looking sharp," Bellomo says. "Maybe a quarter of that five to 10 percent are absolutely complete with all of the respective parts. Most are missing the tinted canopy or the side hatch or the cargo ramp or the Han Solo in Carbonite Block accessory." Original Retail Price: $2.99Current Price Range: $2300 to $2600 When Bellomo wrote the prices for his guide between March and May of 2014, one of these mint condition figures in its original package (MOC, or "mint on card") was worth between $1250 and $1400—but the price has since skyrocketed because "it was produced in far fewer numbers, and the card artwork is uniquely different," he says.
"Anything related to him is collectible." Boba Fett, who was first introduced (in animated form) in The Star Wars Holiday Special in 1978, remains one of the most popular characters in the Star Wars universe, and collectors are eager to obtain the gold-plated coin and jet black Imperial Blaster included with this figure. Original Retail Price: $2.99Current Price Range: $2600-$3000 The coin itself is worth $100 or more in mint condition, but owning the figure mint on card with the silver coin can mean a much nicer payday, depending on the condition of the packaging. Original Retail Price: $500Current Price Range: $2500-$4500+ This limited edition set has more than 5100 pieces and included minifigures of Han, Chewie, Leia, Obi-Wan, and Luke. Believed to be the second largest LEGO set of all time (behind the Taj Mahal set that was released in 2008), it was not cheap to begin with, and even a completely constructed version will set you back more than $1000 on the secondary market today.