It's no secret that everyone's favorite Danish toy company has been on a tear of late. Thanks to forward-looking licensing agreements capitalizing on the likes of the Star Wars franchise, the brand now carries more clout than that of Ferrari.If you're both a block-fiend and a gearhead, there's never been a time more dangerous to your wallet. Lego makes large-scale versions of the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 911 GT3RS, as well as smaller Scalextric-sized models of everything from the McLaren P1 to the Ford Raptor. The Speed Champions sets are a hot seller, with more than three-quarters either sold out or backordered in the run-up to the holidays. The latest set, which we'll see in March, is particularly inspired: it pairs a '66 Ford GT40 with the current Ford GT, both set up in their respective Le Mans livery. Cool details abound, the kinds of subtle little nods to the full-size originals that reveal not just a love of design, but a love of cars. In order to pull back the curtain on how the Speed Champions design team keeps getting things so right, we spoke to Lego design manager Craig Callum.
That's when the rooster tails of sand showed up.Callum received his degree in Automotive Design at Coventry University in the UK. "I wanted to be a car designer since around the age of 5," he says, "Lego toys were the tool that helped me down the path to becoming a Car Designer, and so working at the company was merely a return to the beginnings." Attending the Goodwood Revival whenever he can, Callum self-describes as "a bit of a vintage car nut," and currently owns a 1930 Ford Model A. It's the latest in a line of about thirty machines, and the attainment of a dream."I have wanted a Model A hotrod for as long as I wanted to design cars," Callum says, "I had an old diecast car that was my favorite. It had shiny exhausts, huge back wheels and flames down the side." You can find a tribute to that childhood relic, flame job and all, parked on a trailer as part of the Lego Ford Raptor (above) set. Callum's current Model A is more period-correct: higher-compression head, uprated carburetor, and a straight-through exhaust."
The numbers may not be high," Callum says, "But it feels fast when you are rattling along in a car that survived WW2 in occupied Denmark."It must also feel pretty exhilarating when you're lining up against a 1914 LaFrance with a Hispano-Suiza V12 airplane engine and side-pipes. Which is what Callum and his compatriots do when they spend a day at the beach. Between 1919 and 1924, the tiny island of Fanø was a paradise of speed. The hard-packed sand of its main beach stretched for two-thirds of a mile, ideal for land-speed-record attempts, and head-to-head drag-racing.Daredevils like Captain Malcolm Campbell were regulars at the Fanø sands, which boasted a rogue's gallery of early speed merchants. At its height, it was the equal of Pendine Sands in Wales, or the Bonneville Salt Flats. Campbell would go on to set his final speed record of 301mph at Bonneville in 1935, becoming the first person to drive over 300mph. Sadly, it was Campbell's record-breaking V12 Sunbeam that would close the beach at Fanø when a wheel came off and killed a young spectator.
The Danish government of the time seems to have come down hard on further speed record attempts elsewhere: a newspaper clipping from 1928 claims that the Justice Department has forbidden Campbell from further testing his car on the west coast of Jutland.But in 1999, the Danish Motor Club was successful in bringing Campbell's V12 Sunbeam back to Fanø for a vintage event. Pre-1940 cars and motorcycles sprinted on the sands once again, clashing over an eighth-mile drag race.This year, the premiere event in Danish vintage sand racing was the Rømø Motor Festival, held at a beach with better access than Fanø. Cars were restricted to pre-1948 classes, with only period-correct modifications allowed. Callum was there with his Model A, which he's cheerfully dubbed Old Red. Over the course of a weekend, engines roared and sand flew from spoked rear wheels, and people partied, and everything was pretty much what you'd expect from the descendants of the Vikings. Competitors came from Sweden, Norway, and Germany, bringing along all manner of vintage racing machinery, including the titanic V12 LaFrance."
I only race a few times a year," Callum says, "But when a car is nearing 90 years old the rest and repair period can become a bit lengthy."Still, given the simplicity of the Model A, and a day job based around building things to stand up to the abuse of smashing into floorboards at speed, Callum is more than up to the task. Come 2017, he'll be out there on the sand, dropping the hammer when the flag drops. As for the rest of us, if we're lucky, we'll get a little of that passion rattling around inside carefully-wrapped boxes tucked underneath the tree.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.