Gloria Haas stole enough Legos last week to build her own plastic prison cell, according to authorities in Nassau County, New York. The 53-year-old was arraigned Friday on grand larceny charges after she allegedly snatched 800 sets of the iconic toys from a collector in Long Island and tried to unload the haul—valued at $59,000—on eBay. Less than 48 hours later, police toppled an even bigger Lego crime ring in Phoenix, Arizona, arresting four people in connection with at least $40,000 worth of Legos stolen from several Toys “R” Us stores. They also discovered $200,000 in Lego merchandise—18 pallets’ worth—in one of the suspects’ homes and a storage facility. While Legos aren’t exactly uncut diamonds (they’re not nearly as portable), as far as untraceable commodities go, they’re almost as good. Thieves can sell unopened Lego sets, which are very difficult to track, almost immediately online for as much or more than the retail price. And if they sit on them for a while, it gets even better, because many of the bigger sets rapidly appreciate in value—at a rate much faster than inflation.
In other words, they’re money in the bank. Last week’s back-to-back busts underscore what appears to be a growing awareness among criminals of Legos’ street value. Over the last couple of years, professional thieves and opportunists around the world have turned the Danish building blocks into fat stacks of Benjamins. They’ve included Silicon Valley executives, criminal masterminds in Florida, Oklahoma conmen and even drug dealers in Amsterdam, who have started accepting Lego toys as payment. Some go for the toy stores, others rob the delivery trucks. Earlier this year, a suspected band of crooks in Australia brandished angle grinders and crowbars to pilfer at least $30,000 in Legos from four different retailers. In England, bandits in Watford Gap and West Yorkshire pulled off Lego truck heists to the tune of $87,000 and $67,000. In recent years, many criminals have devised increasingly sophisticated schemes to get their hands on the sweet plastic bricks.
It took Phoenix police four and a half months of investigating before they could finally arrest Garry Fairbee, 35, Tarah Dailey, 33, and Melissa Dailey, 34. The crew was quietly stealing the most valuable sets and selling them at a discounted price to Troy Koehler, 40, a realtor by profession, who would then peddle the goods online. Others prefer to work alone and spread the crimes across several states to avoid detection. William Swanberg made in 2005 after he allegedly boosted more than $200,000 in Lego bricks from Target stores across Oregon, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and California. The Reno, Nevada, man had meticulously mapped stores he planned to hit with special software. He would then switch bar codes on Lego boxes, swapping an expensive label with a cheaper one, according to police. In almost every case, the ill-gotten goods are eventually sold over eBay and other online marketplaces, where Lego lovers are willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars for Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and Legends of Chima sets, whose retail prices alone can run as high as $500.
EBay currently lists more than 107,000 Lego sets, including a collector’s edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon for $3,350 and an unopened Eiffel Tower set for $3,300. BrickLink, a marketplace that deals exclusively in Lego products, lists more than 11,000 sets and nearly 35,000 parts for sale. Online vendors say the persistent demand for Lego sets, their tendency to appreciate in value over time and their difficulty to trace over the Internet make the plastic toys irresistible to thieves. “It makes total sense why people would steal Lego,” says Nathan Francis, who grosses between $3,000 and $4,000 a year legally selling sets on BrickLink in his spare time. “Lego sets can and do fetch a pretty penny. In fact, the value of some coveted sets can skyrocket in a matter of years. For example, Francis says, the Lego 3450 Statue of Liberty sold for just $200 when it hit the market back in 2000. Lady Liberty, if unopened, now sells for as much as $10,000 on Amazon. “Lego holds its value very well on the secondary markets,” Francis says.
Just ask Thomas Lagenbach. Investigators found hundreds of stolen Lego sets in 2012 inside the Silicon Valley tech executive’s multimillion dollar home. Lagenbach later pleaded no contest to fabricating his own bar codes at home, which he would then place on pricey Lego sets at Target to buy them at a cheaper price. The former vice president of SAP, a German software company, sold more than $30,000 in Lego sets on eBay under the name “tomsbrickyard,” authorities said. “This particular crime, the way it was done, the sophistication, the amount of expenditure in time and money to do it, suggests there’s something way beyond money that motivated him to do it,” said Cindy Seely Hendrickson, a deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County. Perhaps it was just the thrill of the game. To his credit, Lagenbach’s eBay ratings were 99.9 percent positive.Be sure to keep an eye on our Facebook page, newsletter or website to be notified of future promotions, updates, special deals and giveaways!
The last time you were at a toy store, what was going on in your mind? Did you feel that there are too may toys? For instance, when you come to our store, Toot Toot Toys, you will be amazed at our collection. We sell all types of toys and all brands. Games, Puzzles and Plush Online toys? We have all of them. If you are thinking brands, we offer everything from Lego Toys to Brio to Bruder. At our store, we have recently added a kids play area and barista to help you shop at ease.You will soon find out about online toys Australia store of ours. Despite all these incredible facilities and the real life experience of shopping for toys yourself, there will be times when you are unable to shop. On one hand, you want to buy toys for your kids. Holidays are on the way or a birthday. On the other hand, for a variety of reasons, you are just not able to make it to the store. If you cannot come to the store, you cannot buy a toy. That would make you upset because you want to keep your kids happy.
At those times, you could be wondering. Is there no other way? If you cannot come to Toot Toot Toys store, does it mean you cannot buy from us at all? You know what, we have some good news for you with toys online. You can do that with online toys in Australia. Not only do we have a retail store, we also have a toys online in Australia where we can offer you all the toys that we sell at our brick and mortar store. That definitely sounds like great news for you, for a number of reasons. If you are new to online shopping, or you have never bought a toy online, allow us to give you some reasons. This will help you shop for online toys in Australia. We have an amazing store at 637, Centre Road, Bentleigh East. We are right next to that intersection of Tucker Road and Centre Road. You will see the big Thomas and lego logos adorning our store entrance and is very hard to miss. This all sounds good but, what if you are not from our city, Victoria? May be you were passing through Victoria on a business trip and liked our store.
You decide to shop from us, but you reside elsewhere. That would be a bummer. Thanks to our Online toys, you can get our store experience online. You don’t have be in Victoria or even drive all the way down to Centre Road. You can shop from you home, anywhere in Australia. Our online toys Australia site has been to work on computers, tablets and mobile phones. Whichever device you are using, you can do your toys online shopping. Our store opening hours are from 10 am in the morning to 5 pm in the evening. We only work till 4 pm on Saturday and we take a day off on Sunday. We follow the standard work hours that are usually followed by other toy stores and during these times, we have a full house.Even if you do live in Victoria and you are in a position to shop at our retail store, what happens when you want to shop at other times? You get off from work at 6 pm, our store is already closed. Or maybe, by the time you pick up your kids from school, its already 7 pm. There really is no opportunity to pick up your favorite Lego set or the Brio Train set.
You don’t have to give up on those toy purchasing because our online toys Australia store, unlike our retail store, is open round the clock. You can shop Online toys after dinner, or midnight if you just woke up and realized you need to buy something quick. You can toys online shop whenever you want. That is the sort of convenience that we cannot really offer you at our retail store. Buying toys online in Australia is not easy. You will always be spoilt with choice. With so many brands, and each brand with a lot of collections, you will always have questions. You want to know if they are suitable for your kids. Perhaps, you have a query about the price or about a sale we are running. No matter what type of query you have, we are here to help you out. You can email us if that is your preferred way to get your queries answered about online toys Australia. With email, as with our store, you can mail in your queries any time you want. If you prefer to speak, you can call in during our store hours and we will answer your queries.
You can get your questions answered, and with a clear mind, buy the toys you want from our online store. One of the main concerns you just might have about shopping online is collecting your toys. For that, we provide you with two options. We have the pickup facility at our store, and we have postal delivery. Let us tell you how this works. You will start by visiting our toys online store for your toys. You spend time on our website, you engage your kids and your family to choose the right toy. Eventually, you arrive at the shipping page. Here, you have the option to select Pick Up. When you use this option, you will be able to come down to our store and collect your toys. It is exactly as easy as it sounds. If you don’t want to pick up at the store, you can choose the shipping option. Here, we will collect your shipping address. After that you will be provided with a number of shipping options like standard and express. Once you do this, we will ship the order to you.