Used Tuesdays - Second Lot

My second used lot came as sort of an accident. My sister-in-law has a friend who was going to put their 23# LEGO collection in a garage sale. My sister-in-law sent me many pictures to ask how it should be priced. I studied through and saw several key pieces that intrigued me. After looking up the potential sets on Bricklink I went ahead and made a generous offer of $10 per pound. In retrospect I realize that I was setting a precedent. I'll have to be more clear in the future that that price was for clean pieces with no junk.

And there was very little junk! Only a handful of Knex. I started with some key parts to figure out what could be in there. I then sorted by piece type and started reassembling. Imagine how pleased I was that most of a UCS TIE Interceptor was in there! No stickered plaque or instruction book, which is fine for myself. If I ever want to sell it I'll need the plaque at a minimum. It was also missing the dark grey cockpit, a hefty piece. Where the 6 month average on Bricklink hovers around $30, I was able to score one for $22 in beautiful shape.


There were several Harry Potter sets too. Some had a low value per pound, others were higher. I decided to piece together Dumbledore's Office and the Knight Bus. The latter one was a mistake. I saw that it was missing about 40 pieces out of 236. I didn't think too much of it and built a wanted list. Only after I got halfway through completing that list did I realize how expensive many of the missing pieces were. Nothing over a buck each but when you're piecing together a $45 set to sell and you need to spend $25 to complete it, that shows a poor return. I would have been better off selling the parts I had on hand.

The other big problem with this lot was the lack of minifigs. I found most of them were missing and when the lot is primarily Star Wars and Harry Potter, the licensing upcharge can be a bear. I inquired about any other minifigs and got a bag of about half a dozen a week later.

Lessons learned:

• Parting out the remains of a set can be more profitable than piecing one together
• Licensed minifigs are expensive. Check for them before making a generous offer
• Some people have really clean collections!