Lego buying/selling -- I'm kinda lost, don't want to overpay

[Tanooki]

I found of all things a small business owner setup in town here that opened recently that buy/sell/trades Lego parts and sets. I'm positive the bulk bin buys are crap priced but it's just so hard to tell. I started looking on ebay and that's a crap shoot too. Some want to say Xlbs of parts for $ and others say 1000 parts for $X.

I can't make a lot of sense of it. I've been thinking of getting a bulk buy of the things to have a little fun with. I'm not too particular about buying sets, though I think the space shuttle is cool and I remember a few small ones I had in the 80s I think I'd take back if the price was right. I just think a bulk pile would be best to just screw around with and with my kid turning 3 shortly sooner than later she'll be able to handle the stuff too.

I just have no idea what a good price is, I see peoples say online $6-8/lb, but no one seems to have any damn clue how many parts are in a pound, and no one addresses those doing like 1000 pieces for $50 shipped so I have no clue if that's a better thing to swing some money at. Almost no one bothers to take a picture of the actual parts as they're resellers with tens of thousands of pieces they randomly shove in a box unless I am missing some search parameter.

Any help would be good figuring this out. Thanks.

[Hobie-wan]

Lego are expensive. They are quality and they' are awesome. I still have all of mine and last bought a set last fall. That being said, I don't know the prices on knockoffs now that they're available, but I'm sure they're cheaper. The problem with X pieces for $Y is that a piece can be a little 1X1 flat or it could be some fancy 4 inch diameter quarter circle beveled bit. I think that's why you tend to see per pound listings.

I'd check out prices on some of the various knockoffs and look on Craigslist as well. I'm not sure what to tell you is a good price range on used though as all of mine have been purchased new except for the time a friend gave me theirs.

[Tanooki]

Well hopefully someone here is into it, if not, my loss and I'll have to figure it out.

I found a lego used/new buy/sell/trade shop in town last week. It inspired me to rebuild my Black Seas Barracuda pirate ship, the original one from the 1980s, and I found I was only down 6 broken red mini flags and a half dozen little bits missing and they could replace all but the red flags so I went and rebuilt it. I also paid $20 for another small pirate set I used to own and that's up next to the ship. I was thinking a big bulk box would be random fun, but I'm also thinking of the few sets I once had along with some interesting looking Indy sets at the moment.

I used to have this forestmans tree mini-fort back then, the floating original lego police boat, the old original space set 'space dart' among a few other castle and space sets I'm forgetting. It could be nice to have those back.

[Hobie-wan]

Complete vintage boxed sets command high prices, so just be aware of that if you go looking to replace childhood ones.

It took me a while to find a vintage Technics dune buggy set that I hadn't owned, but wanted to pick up. Maybe try to hit garage sales too.

[Retrogamer0001]

Complete vintage boxed sets command high prices, so just be aware of that if you go looking to replace childhood ones.

Yeah, reminds me of another hobby so near and dear to our hearts...

[flojocabron]

My last big lego purchase if I could call it that was a few months ago.

At a fleamarket a guy with lots of boxes was getting ready to go.

He had a bunch of toys strewn out on the tarp. And lots of legos beneath them.

I made the guy an offer of $10 bucks to fill a bag with them

I went through the whole place and looked through the bottom of cardboard boxes

I got the bag 3/4 full. There were lots of classic pieces, bionicle stuff and Technic as well.

But being just random pieces, whatever they were was long gone. There were pieces of star wars stuff and lots of minifigs.

But for $10, I think I did alright.

Maybe you can do the same? I know they're not complete sets, but you can do the same as me and make offers at yard sales and fleamarkets and thrift stores.

I've never really bought lego sets growing up anyways. So there's not that much nostalgia for old sets. Like I did with that bag for $10, as a kid I would gather a bunch of legos for a couple of bucks and use my imagination to build stuff.

One of my first jobs was working at a thrift store. Back in 2000 the thrift store got a tub full of legos. They put them in large ziplock bags and charged $8.00 for them. Obviously, I hid them, and waited for the day they were 1/2 off. and I ended up buying Six bags of them.

To make a long story short, If you dont care about sets, you can still find them on the cheap.

[Tanooki]

I've never seen them at flea markets here except one of those 3in1 plastic little tubes where it goes like car, truck, boat and never ever even once at a thrift. That's why I was investigating online as the local newish lego resale shop wants I think too much for the price/container from their random tray. A very large baggy if it closes bursting is $60 and a tub you get like a 1lb of potato salad in is like $8 and then 2 other bags are $20 and $40 which seems too high to me, but they do have vintage sets and without the box the prices are comparable if not in some cases beating a little ebay.

I don't see me ever buying a box set on ebay, you'll get raked over the coals for it and it's ultimately useless and would end up in a closet.

[Hazerd]

I just started getting back into Lego with the purchase of Metal Beard's Duel 70807-1 set from The Lego Movie.
http://brickset.com/sets/70807-1/MetalBeard-s-Duel

The last time i had bought Lego before that was in 2000, which was a Cargo Railway 4559-1
http://brickset.com/sets/4559-1/Cargo-Railway

Since alot has changed since 2000, the internet is a very good resource for organizing your Lego collection with the follow website, http://brickset.com/ which i posted above already, along with numerous other websites ive found for future purchases:

http://www.bricklink.com/
http://www.minifigforlife.com/main.php
http://www.customminifigstore.com/

Love this "idea" website that Lego has, people can submit there own models and can get feedback from the community and even be released as an official Lego set.
https://ideas.lego.com/

As far as buying bulk pieces, dont think i would ever go that route, im more of a Set collector, if i bought bulk i would want like 5-10 pieces of like every Lego ever! or at least the most common pieces and it just seems confusing and expensive, and i dont have a dedicated Lego room like some AFOL's out there.

But i would definitely ask at garage sales, or keep my eye out at flea market for any Lego.

[mjmjr25]

A rule of thumb is each lego is about $0.10. A 1,000 piece set should be about $100 or slightly less.

We have at last count about 40 larger sets and 15-20 small-medium sets.

They do not go on sale often and even used, hold their value quite well.

The knockoffs are plentiful and they are crap.

[Tanooki]

So true, I always think back to that Family Guy scene where Peter gives Lois crap for not buying Legos and getting him Mega Blocks, and she's like there's no difference and he nags her that there is.

And there is.

It's good to know your formula, I hadn't seen that one where .10cent/piece = $100 for 1000 pieces. I saw this bulk lot of stuff, I think it has a few mini guys this one big ebay seller with a perfect record does where it's 1000 pieces for $50~ shipped. That doesn't sound so bad at that. The only downer is it's a stock image --> http://www.ebay.com/itm/1000-WASHED-SAN ... 3f2cfd0632