Current Events > Why are Lego's so expensive

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I was thinking of getting a Lego set since it has been years. The good Star Wars sets are over $600 wtf lol

scalpers and the trademark of lego.

Lego pays out for licensing and passes it on to the consumer.

tripleh213 posted...

I was thinking of getting a Lego set since it has been years. The good Star Wars sets are over $600 wtf lol

Stuff like the start destroyer and AT ATs that have thousands of pieces.

I was never a LEGO kid. It's probably why I also never got into Minecraft either.

in general? precision.

retired sets? supply and demand.

the good star wars sets (and, nearly all the sets in the multiple hundreds of dollars) are expensive because they are several times bigger than the biggest sets they made when we were kids.

tripleh213 posted...

I was thinking of getting a Lego set since it has been years. The good Star Wars sets are over $600 wtf lol

There are only 3 Star Wars sets over $600. Why do you not like others?

Manchildren driving up the price.

See also: Pokemon cards

I think its 10-12 cents a piece. Slightly more for the more popular licensed sets.

The upside is they last forever and can keep their value, if not become more valuable over time.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Manchildren driving up the price.

See also: Pokemon cards

That definitely happened with collector cards but lego no. There are just more elaborate sets that you can purchase and it sounds like TC is looking at the really high end ones

If don't have any shame, Mould King.

I was looking at the Imperial Destroyer

Well license costs would contribute. They license a lot of stuff. Besides that, they cost I guess what people will pay. Hard to know just how much it costs to make each piece, and obviously that'll vary a lot depending on the kind of piece.

Theyre generally $.10 a piece. (Give or take about 30%) Quality control is extremely high (errors lean towards extra pieces instead of missing). Instructions are very detailed and carefully put together. Licensing is a huge cost as well I'm sure.

Oil prices

Lego's what are expensive?

@Philoktetes

I bought a few cheaper sets for my kid and we assembled them together. It's great fun. Have to say the quality is very impressive. My best friend actually still has like a lego car thing he got as a kid, 24 years later good as new.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Manchildren driving up the price.

See also: Pokemon cards

When you were a kid lego was roughly same price per piece adjusted for inflation.

Only rich kids could afford the flagship castle sets.

As others have said, QC is astounding. You'll almost never find a messed up lego piece; not so for other similar brands.

Depending on what you are looking for, go knock off.

Example: A fan made this huge Razor Crest that was almost 4,500 pieces and it only cost about 150 dollars. From China and that cost included shipping.

Another example is the Slave 1 UCS knock off that is 2,000 pieces and was just under 100 dollars (I believe it was 90).

Or another Razor Crest that was 5,000 pieces and cost 130 dollars.

So yeah, you are paying for those licensing fees for Star Wars. Knock off sets feel just as good as the real blocks, just without the Lego stamp on the nubs.

Legos have always been expensive relative to other toys - while I'm sure licensing has exacerbated this somewhat, this sentiment existed long before the company ever got in bed with Star Wars and Harry Potter.

Even as a kid I always figured the extra cost was offset by Legos being far more versatile than other toys; the TMNT Technodrome was always the TMNT Technodrome, but Lego sets could be broken down, mixed and matched with other sets, and be used to create any damn thing you wanted. I wasn't familiar with their high QA standards before this topic, but I'm not surprised - I bought anywhere from 50 to 100 sets as a kid and I never once remember them missing a piece. Plus there's the fact that they'll never depreciate in value, as even the oldest Lego sets are still perfectly compatible with what's being produced today.

ReaperCloud posted...

So yeah, you are paying for those licensing fees for Star Wars. Knock off sets feel just as good as the real blocks, just without the Lego stamp on the nubs.

Also the Chinese knockoffs will add LED lighting every now and then.

Hmm, where do you guys buy your Chinese knock offs?

The tolerances in manufacturing are insanely small, and past a certain point, tolerance takes on a price curve that's close to exponential

That and the QC is really good; can you think of a time where a Lego piece came out of the box fucked up?

The quality. And the licensed sets will be more expensive too obviously.

Crescente posted...

Hmm, where do you guys buy your Chinese knock offs?

What the mods consider "illegal activities" is so vague and broad that it's probably not worth mentioning anything other than ebay.

Legos are kinda expensive, but as mentioned by several others there quality is worth it imo. If you just want to build something, I'd recommend looking into model kits. Depending on what you're looking for, pricing doesn't break the bank. There are levels to how complex you do or don't want to get. I picked up a few of the simpler ones during the pandemic, and it was more beginner friendly than I thought. Kinda wish I didn't wait so long to try my first one.

Quality control has really dropped in the past decade. As a kid I only ever had a couple fragile clip pieces break, now bricks just crack or shatter sometimes.

The problem with the licensing is that it drives the prices of the regular sets up as well.

Like a lot of LEGO City sets are more expensive than they arguably should be and that's largely because it's bearing some of the costs for all the licensing rather than the licensed sets bearing 100% of their costs.

Branding. Nothing else.

Also the more minifigs a set has the more expensive it is relative to a set with a similar piece count but less minifigs.

Like the LEGO City sets that are 100% just minifigs doing various activities (like the "At the Park" one) are ridiculously expensive for the number of pieces they contain.

I might just go with the ones that are about $100 or so.

Same thats why I bought a few sets

Powdered_Toast posted...

Quality control has really dropped in the past decade. As a kid I only ever had a couple fragile clip pieces break, now bricks just crack or shatter sometimes.

This is the most annoying thing. I have a huge Lego collection and for years now I've had crafting boxes full of spare clips I buy off bricklink. They tend to be dirt cheap so that's nbd, but it's definitely annoying to rebuild a set that's barely 3 years old and have to replace broken clips and tiles.