If you’ve ever wondered what your LEGO sets are worth, then you’ve probably been on Brickpicker where you can see the values of pretty much every set on the secondary market. Our friends Ed and Jeff Maciorowski has recently released a new book called The Ultimate Guide to Collectible LEGO Sets, Identification and Price Guide by Krause Publications. It contains 250 pages and retails for $26.99.
In recent news, there have been many reports of LEGO sets being a better investment than gold and some people are jumping at the opportunity to make a quick buck or two. Many times, I’ve seen two distinct groups of LEGO fans, people who build and people who use LEGO as a business.
We’ve probably all seen what retired LEGO sets are worth on eBay or BrickLink if we’ve gotten into LEGO late. We know that prices for sets on the secondary markets gradually rise as time goes on. Since there is still pretty good demand for retired sets, this is where LEGO investors come in or as many people call them, resellers.
The Ultimate Guide to Collectible LEGO Sets can be seen as a good resource for newer investors to get started in the hobby because we’ve probably wondered what a certain set is worth at one point in time. I know that I have although I’ve never sold anything before. It tells you how to pick the right sets for investing and what sets to avoid. If you’re looking to buy retired sets for your own collection, this book can be useful to you to get a sense of a fair market value which you can use to get a good deal on them.
When you think of price guides, you think it’s just a book filled with charts and numbers. That isn’t any different with this book but it’s condensed in the latter part of the book and takes up only 49 of the 250 pages. The other 200 pages are filled some of the best performing sets, separated into different themes and are fully color illustrated. There the sets are examined in a deeper level to give you an understanding of why they were chosen as a great investment choice.
As mentioned before, the last part of the book contains the price guide which shows you details of new and used prices and the growth rate of a lot of sets which are neatly divided into their respective themes. The information given uses real-time data from eBay and BrickLink which they also use on BrickPicker so it the info in the book will go out of date rather quickly. That is one of the downsides of a printed price guide is that they do go out of date and the info may not be as accurate.
Since I was an sports card trader/investor before I got into LEGO, I kinda knew what price guides were about since they were just filled with numbers but this book is different. It’s written by brothers who enjoy both building and investing in LEGO. I remember when they first started Brickpicker and reached out to me to help promote it. Since then, they’ve blown up with interviews with major media outlets, started their own eBay “competitor” with Brick Classifieds, and now with The Ultimate Guide to Collectible LEGO Sets.
The amount of insight given for the sets makes it a very good resource for both beginners and experts alike. I do like that it is just not numbers but also in-depth explainations of why the sets are great for investing. One thing I would’ve like to see in the book was the retirement dates for the sets so we can get a feel for how far the prices for the sets have grown since they have been off the market.
Overall, The Ultimate Guide to Collectible LEGO Sets, Identification and Price Guide may not be for everyone but for those who are interested in getting into the practice of investing in LEGO, the book might be worth taking a look into. The book is now available on is now available on Amazon at a slight discount.
Thanks again to Jeff for sending in a review copy.
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