My last post to this site was way to long ago, but I feel this site still brings benefit to a few people, especially those who are in the parting out business. What happened to my store? My store, UniBricks, is still open and has a couple thousand items. However, this is a big difference than it was in December 2015. I had over 200,000 items in my inventory either listed or ready to be listed. So why did I liquidate? This is what this post is about. Why did I liquidate and stop parting out? I liquidated most of... Bricklink / LEGO / LEGO Selling Hopefully you have read Part 1, so now we need to finish off our store terms with the shipping section. Shipping Charts A Shipping chart will likely keep a buyer shopping. Even if you don’t charge exact shipping costs, buyers want to know an estimate. I have simplified mine to include prices that would apply to 99% of my orders. Want the code for a US PayPal Rate shipping chart? Check the Bricklink Code page! Customs Notice After running a store long enough, you will eventually get a customer that asks: “Can you mark the customs form for less value/under this amount/as...
Store terms are a part of every BrickLink store. If you have a BrickLink store, you have some basic store terms already in place. You will always default to some information, but you can add or change information as you see fit. You can look at mine or most other Bricklink stores for more ideas. Countries to Ship To Click Here to edit your store’s ship to list! Choosing which countries to ship to is totally up to you. Often new sellers stick to their local country at first which is great! However you will reach a much broader market if you... Bricklink / LEGO Selling LEGO storage for your collection, Bricklink store, etc. should not be just stack-ons. I highly suggest using Sterlite drawer systems or other similar brands. (I will refer to Sterlite, but that includes other brands that may be more available in your area or country) Sterlite and Large Plastic Storage Systems Here are a couple of the different styles I have: I use a couple other types for my LEGO storage, but I always try to get as many thin large drawers (shown in the products above) as I can get.
Reason being is so I can store a high quantity of a part... LEGO / LEGO Selling Many people store sealed LEGO sets in their closet for years to increase in value with Sealed Set Investing. However you could pre-pack sets before storing. The benefits vs cost I think it is pretty self explanatory what the main pre-packed benefit is. It is ready to ship. Maybe put the weight in the remarks and instant shipping quotes. Also you can wait to find the perfect box, not have to worry about not having enough packing materials, and it is very well protected in storage. The what I would call “Neutrals” is the space it takes up and multiple set purchasing....Here is a brief summary of what you can learn and where to start! Watch the video to get a overview: Selling LEGO Brick Sales 101 is an ongoing series on how to sell LEGO different ways on various platforms. From Storage to Sourcing a lot of information is available! I will continue this series for a long time so don’t worry if you don’t see the exact post you need.
If you have a special request for a post, topic, or discussion, let me know via the contact form! You probably saw that little newsletter opt-in... Now just about every Bricklink seller has their own storage so this is not the perfect way. It is just a way. But after going through many methods, I found my storage system to be twice (yes I checked mathematically) as efficient as the older methods I used. Stack-ons By far the best storage investment I have made. Stack-ons (Or any hardware drawer based system) are fairly affordable for the benefits they provide. Stack-ons are also very expandable which I will get to later in this post. The biggest thing with using stack-ons is labeling them. You could label the first drawer... Now there are many ways to get used bulk LEGO. But you want to keep in mind a few things. Where do you get bulk used LEGO lots? Answer is a lot of places. I have personally gotten bulk LEGO from Facebook, Friends, eBay, Craigslist, and by far my most successful – Garage sales.
I watch most of these places for deals that are fantastic. Some people pay upwards of $5 a pound for reselling (and I have heard $10 for sorted out collections!), but my rate is rarely above $3 a pound. Often I get bulk for much less. Now that you have decided what area(s) you want to focus on, you need to get product! Buying LEGO can be fun, but also tricky when you need larger quantities. This post is focusing specifically acquiring *new* inventory for your LEGO selling business. Where do you start? The reason why YOU shouldn’t buy from LEGO directly for reselling is because the risk of being banned. And it isn’t easy to be unbanned. LEGO doesn’t mind resellers (A common misconception), they just want the resellers to not interfere with the availability of product to... Parting out LEGO sets is by far one of my favorite LEGO selling techniques. Although I use a combination of a few of them, this is the one I prefer. What’s parting out mean? Well let’s take a set like 10243 Parisian Restaurant.
This set retails for $159.99 and “parts out” to a value of $389.30 at the time of this posting. That means if I sold every piece for the average price they have sold for in the past 6 months, then I would sell them for $389.30. Now you are not going to be able to sell every piece for... So the definition of “used” LEGO is vague, especially on Bricklink, but that’s for another day. In general though, most used LEGO consists of parts that have been played with or built with. That doesn’t mean the parts are in horrible condition, it just means they are not new. (Like I said, vague.) Technicality aside, the selling part is probably what you wanna know. What are the benefits of selling used LEGO? This is probably the biggest reason to go this route. Most businesses go for a 50% profit on product. Used LEGO can sometimes yield 5-6...When I first got into LEGO as an AFOL I was looking at all of the Star Wars sets that I had missed and how much they cost. It became necessary to figure out a way to get the sets cheaper or make more money.
I knew that some people must be making money buying bulk lots and taking out the stuff they wanted and selling the rest. That seemed like 2 birds with one stone. I looked at the bulk lots on Ebay, realizing that most of what I would get from these guys were common pieces. So I started looking at bigger lots, somewhat intimidated by their cost. I figured, however, if an Ebayer was getting $10 for a pound maybe I could make some money just throwing stuff in a box, easy money. I made a purchase of about 50 lbs for about $350 because I saw some Star Wars sets and minifigures in there. Oh boy, easy money and some treasures of my own. Boy, was I wrong. The money is anything but easy. I quickly discovered that out of my 50 lbs of mixed LEGO, at least 5 lbs were easily recognizable as not building bricks at all. Tinker toys, K'Nex, Hot Wheels, plastic army men, broken action figures, Lincoln logs, playing cards, thumb tacks, thorny burrs and even broken glass was mixed into the ABS blocks.
On top of all that junk, the real problems started. All of the Mega Blocks, BTR, and assorted knock off blocks knocked another 5+ lbs out of the lot. That's at least 20% of my precious blocks that was basically trash. As you filter through, you discover broken bricks, severely teeth marked ones and yellowed pieces. profits are getting slimmer by the minute. Ok, so I regrouped and focused on the sets that were obviously present. I pulled out the stuff I immediately recognized most of a TIE Interceptor, a little car, Jedi Interceptor with Hyperdrive ring, half an ARC Fighter, etc. All of these I scattered around me like ancient peoples paying homage to their creator. How do I go from lots of partial sets to lots of complete sets that I can flip to make back the money that I sunk into this thing? Well first I needed to figure out what was missing. So, I looked at instruction books to see what steps I needed to take to complete them and what pieces were missing from there. That's an awful way to do it.
So I took apart the sets I had figured out and checked the inventory against Bricklink. I discovered what was missing, and that sometimes kids substitute pieces in the middle of a build. Now that I knew what was missing, time to turn back to 20 lbs of assorted bulk. digging through mixed bricks looking for the piece or pieces I need was time consuming and futile. Time to sort them out to make it easier. My wife and I sorted that 20 lbs of pieces by color. We had 10+ bags of pieces separated loosely by color (old and new colors mixing futilely.) That made it easier to look for pieces, but still sometimes wasting a lot of time trying to pick out a small piece in a big bag. After exhausting my patience, I turned to Bricklink to acquire the pieces I needed, dumping more money into this hole. Eventually I sold a bunch of sets I made from this and a few other bulk lots. Between the Bricklink orders I placed to complete them and the fees and shipping, I think I made some money. My book keeping was pretty terrible.
But it all taught me some things. Some of these things I learned could help some people just starting out trying to find treasure in Bulk lots. So, you're looking at a bulk lot that you found on Craigslist, Ebay, a garage sale, another auction or whatever. How should you evaluate it? So with these factors, let's talk about how they factor into the valuation. an average lot is usually in the $4-$6 per lb range. Average lots show some partial sets, some minifigures, maybe a few instructions, relatively clean, with not a lot of obvious non LEGO stuff. Depending on the quality and quantity of the better stuff, you might increase your valuation, but remember you're not paying top dollar for what you see, because there's still a lot of work to come. Plus, you're going to get some amount of stuff you don't want. I have been known to go as low as $2-$3 a pound for stuff that had no obvious sets, mediocre looking or no obvious minifigures and excess junk. Then again, I have gone as high as $10 a lb for lots of minifigures and several mostly complete sets of some value.
Some people stick to a hard $5 lb. Some lots of only minifigures I have seen sold for close to $100 lb. Figure out your comfort level and stick to it. Be prepared to have wasted your money on a big group of Mega Blocks. STEP 2: Sorting and figuring out what you have Once you get the lot, now you have to do something with it. Boxes full of bulk sitting in the garage is just hoarding. You're doing this to make your money work for you. So, I start by trying to pull out all the non LEGO, but also anything that gives me a good idea of what is there. Pull out minifigures, instructions, partial sets and set them aside. I bag the partial sets, with the minifigures and instructions wherever possible. I would never again sort by color. Finding a red 1x1 modified tile with clip in a big bag of red parts is much harder than looking through a bag of 1x1 modified tile with clips of assorted colors. Instead I start by throwing all the flats in one box. Slopes go in a second box. Bricks are a third box, etc.
It's the most general sorting at first. As I go, I look for unique identifiers of sets like printed pieces or unusual shapes. Once the initial sorting is accomplished, I sort again by element. The best way to make back the bulk of your purchase price is to complete the sets that you received. Some people will complete everything that they can, others disdain anything below a certain dollar amount. It's up to you how far down the rabbit hole that you are going to head. Once you get your sets, you need to figure out what is missing. Even if the set looks complete, it is best to verify. Some people will make substitutions in the middle of a set. Your customers may not appreciate substitutions, especially if there are megablocks in the middle of a build. So, it's time to take them apart to verify the inventory. If the sets are partial, you definitely should take them apart to figure out how much is missing. Look through your new bulk to see if you can find the rest. Focus on the expensive sets first.
Check through your minifigures, instructions, and interesting pieces to see what sets may have been broken down entirely and see if they are worth reconstituting. You could do another survey of your bulk to see if the seemingly random bulk is hiding some treasure. I look for the part numbers on the interesting pieces. Finding the part number can be difficult, since it's usually inside of the LEGO piece and hard to spot, except with the right light. If the piece appears in multiple sets, I check for context with other pieces in the lot. Again, the interesting pieces generally have a unique shape, sticker or printing. If you can't complete them this way, or even with other bulk you might have, then you have to decide if sinking some more money into them is worthwhile. Does spending $10, $20, or $50 more make sense? Only you know for sure, but you've already dug a hole into your resources and time. It's either keep digging, or see if you can punt it off somewhere. I tend to try to get as many sets working at a time as I can.
Hopefully this will help me to get the most missing pieces for the least orders. STEP 4: Dealing with the true bulk You're going to have leftovers after you pull out the stuff that is easiest to sell. You have several options. So, after all of that. You have to figure out whether it was worth it. If you made some money, or got some stuff that you wanted for less than the going rate, it will give you that rosy glow. It's fun to initially dig through all of that stuff searching for buried treasures. When you find something, it really does feel like it's all worthwhile. In the long hours of sorting, searching for pieces, and waiting for Bricklink orders it may be less fun. Waiting for the stuff to sell to recoup your costs is even less fun than that. I like to do it, but at the end of the day, the monetary returns vs. my time may not be the best. It may be the worst paying job that I have ever had. You really do need to have a plan for evaluating what you are buying and for dealing with it once you do.