Lego sets come in all different sizes with different numbers of Lego pieces. Of course bigger sets cost more, but is there a linear relationship between set size and cost? Let’s take a look. Oh, and yes – I did look at this before, but that was a long time ago. It’s time to revisit the data. It’s not too difficult to find data for Lego prices and number of pieces. If you just look on the Lego online store. There you can find both the price and the number of pieces for each set. You can even sort them by “themes” – like “Star Wars” or “friends” Even though it’s easy to get, I only collected price data for a subset of the themes (mostly because I am lazy). If I put all of this data together, I can get a plot of the set price vs. number of pieces in set. Here is what that looks like. Let’s look at the linear function that fits this data. The slope of this line is 0.104 US Dollars per Lego piece. There is your answer. On average, one Lego piece costs 10.4 cents.
Also, I think it’s nice to notice that this data is fairly linear.What about the y-intercept for this fitting function? The value from the fit is 7.34 USD. That means that for this function, if you had a Lego set with zero pieces in it, it would still cost $7.34 – you know, for the box and instructions and stuff. Yes, I know that there are Lego sets cheaper than $7.34 – this is just the y-intercept for the fitting function. Now let me point out the three outliers in this plot. Notice that all of these (one from Duplo and two from the City theme) are train sets. Of course train sets are going to be more expensive than a set with the same number of pieces (but not a train) because of the electric motors and stuff. If you are looking for a “good deal”, might I suggest the Trevi Fountain (21020). This set has 731 pieces for just $49.99. According to the fitting function, a set with this many pieces should cost about 83 dollars. Suppose I break all the data into the different themes.
If I fit a linear function to each of the different themes, I can get both the price per piece of Lego and the price of a zero piece set. Here are the brick prices for some of the Lego themes. The error bars are the uncertainties in the fit parameters. If you know what a Duplo block is, you probably aren’t surprised that they are the most expensive (63 cents per brick). These are bricks created for smaller kids. They are all large so that you can’t swallow them. It just makes since that they would cost more. The other expensive bricks are the City sets. But this is deceiving due to the high set prices of the train kits. I suspect if you removed these train sets from the plot, it would be a more normal price. What about the base cost? This is the y-intercept of the linear fit. Here you will notice that the City theme has a negative base cost. This means that if there were no pieces (on average) in a City set, Lego would pay YOU money. But why is this negative? It’s because of the high price of the train sets.
They increase the slope of the linear fit but also push the y-intercept into negative values. The real bargains are the Architecture themed sets. These have a base cost of only 70.7 cents where as the Marvel themed sets have a base cost of 3.61 USD. I’ve probably already answered some of these questions in the past, but it would still be fun as a homework assignment. Some of these aren’t too difficult. You could think of them as Duplo Homework. Notice that not even once did I use a plural version of the term “Lego”. Some LEGO pieces are probably more expensive than others, but what is the average price per piece of LEGO pieces, when sold as part of a kit? Is there any place containing statistics or graphs about the prices, showing the range of smaller and larger pieces? A brief search led me to a very thorough blog post by Ruth Suehle on GeekMom, which includes the data and a Graph: Does It Feel Like Lego Bricks Just Keep Getting More Expensive? In her findings, she found that average cost per piece in 2011 is about US$0.12, down from a high in the '80s of about US$0.40 - these prices were adjusted for inflation, etc.
Prices tend to be most affected by the price of oil, as that's a key component in plastic manufacture, so we might expect to see prices starting to creep up again. Interestingly the licensed sets (Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc.) don't seem to have much of an impact on the price of the sets, it's just that they are often bigger sets, so have higher price tags - For example the Super Star Destroyer with a retail price of $399 had 3152 pieces working at $0.13/piece - although yes, an extra $0.01 multiplied over 3000 bricks does seem to add an extra $30 to the set. There doesn't appear to be much data on weight or type of brick. Brickset has information on individual sets, and has some interesting data in its Data Mining section. Towards the bottom of that page they list Best price per piece in the UK Worst price per piece in the UK Best price per piece in the US Worst price per piece in the US The average price per brick value for all the sets ever sold is going to be unhelpful.
The prices of sets are influenced by the exclusiveness of the set, product licence (I.E. Star Wars), year of production, etcetera... I don't think a statistical representation exists for that reason.Browse other questions tagged sets shopping piece-information or ask your own question.Mr. Freeze™ Ice Attackproduct_label_list_price_accessibility 14 Reviews123451Warning!Choking Hazard.Small parts and Ball.FIND MORE PRODUCTS LIKE THISTHE LEGO® BATMAN MOVIEProtect the power plant from Mr. Freeze’s ice attack! Mr. Freeze⢠Ice Attack Reviews - page 2 If there’s one big gripe common among brickheads, it’s that the prices of LEGO sets are quite lofty (plus maybe not enough spaceships). But two disparate people interested in the plastique fantastique eschewed conjecture in favor of hard data, and found that LEGO prices scale linearly with piece count, and that on average, prices of sets have actually remained constant over the last couple of decades. In a recent Reddit post published by user proxyformyrealname, a graph originally created and then posted to twitter by Ken Steif shows that the cost of a LEGO set increases linearly according to piece count.
(Steif controls for both the theme of the set, and the year.) My 3 y/o (ahem) loves #lego. Using @brickset data, controlling for theme & year, each add. piece on avg. adds $0.09 to set price. — Ken Steif (@KenSteif) January 14, 2017 (a major hub for the bric-a-brick world), found that “each additional piece adds $0.09 to the price of the set, on average.” The idea that some sets having a far better price/piece ratio may be overblown (although perhaps not totally untrue). But while this may seem reasonable, it could still be that LEGO set prices have increased wildly over time, right? ) the average price for a LEGO set has actually remained roughly constant over the last 20 years. Sielen, whose research is absolutely superb in terms of rigor and presentation, notes that “From what our data shows, it seems that the notion that LEGO is increasing in price is false at least in regards to the last couple decades. Since around 2006, the average price of a piece of LEGO has remained relatively stable between 10 and 13 cents apiece.”