Buying LEGO

Weather you’re an AFOL, a teen, FLL Coach, or the parents of a LEGO Fan, you know when buying LEGO it gets expensive fast. This guide is meant to help you get the Most LEGO for your money.

In Store Purchases

The most common purchase point for LEGO is in the store isles. We’ve all been there walking the store with our kids (or ourselves) and spied that neatly decorated and styled box of LEGO. You want it, you must have it. But hold on that may not be the best way to get your LEGO fix.

Physical store retailers may or may not have the best prices, and some of them (Toy’s R Us) are know to charge prices above the MSRP. But sometimes it might be. it all depends, Do you have to have it now? Is it on sale? Is there a limed edition promotion? If so, go ahead buy that LEGO set.

• Immediate gratification of your LEGO Craving
• Easy to browse and compare

Cons:

• Possibly Higher Costs
• Limited Set Availibility

Discussion About Value

While were at this point, we should talk about value. Most, AFOL’s measure the relative value of a LEGO set by it’s piece count. that is the number of elements in the set. clearly posted on the front of the package. a good rule of thumb is the set should cost about .10 cents per piece. Liscenced Themes like Star Wars and Toy Story will command a premium price presumably to help pay the licencing fees. So you can expect to pay more for those sets. But even that does not cover the whole story. LEGO which sells the sets does not value them based on pieces, but rather by the amount of plastic used. which is most easily determined by weight. AFOL’s on the other hand are more interested in pieces, because well larger pieces(SPUDS) are not as useful, and so a focus on piece count serves them well, but for your little youngster, this is not the best measure.

With that out of the way, let’s move on.

Online Purchases

By far the largest array of lego sets can be bought from online retailers such as the Shop.Lego.com website, or Amazon you just have to wait for them to be shipped and arrive, As an added bonus, most online only retailers such as Amazon, do not charge sales tax unless they have a physical presance in your state, and usually have free shipping. Many of the rarer and uncommon sets are offered only through the Lego SHOP, so if your looking for the exclusives check them first, and be wary of Ebay. It’s a great store to buy bulk used Lego, but most of the sets sold online through Ebay are current sets being sold at sometimes crazy markups. That is not a rip on Ebay itself, but rather some of it’s individual sellers, so be careful.

• Lower Costs
• Possible Tax Discount
• Larger Selection

Cons:

• Takes Longer to receive Order
• May not be as easy to Browse

BrickLink

So far, we have talked about standard online and brick and mortar stores there is however 1 more: Bricklink is an online website that hosts many stores form the LEGO community each of them run by their individual store owners. BrickLink is shinning if you are looking for specific LEGO elements, or out of production sets or Mini Figs. There are no fees to sign up with Bricklink, only when you buy, and those fees are determined by the store you buy form. Many of ULUG members maintain an online pressence here, and you can help suport us, and fill your lego needs by purchasing from one of their stores:

• Creative Fury
• Studmart
• Brickfusion
• Argo Brick Collection
• Blackdragon’s Keep
• Jason’s 1 Shop
• ScottDee
• TheRuralBrick
• Custom Chromed Lego Ebay store