A business that is growing slowly, but surely. In his cellar, the exact location of which he does not want to reveal, Julien keeps his loot. Here, great wines – in fact, he never drinks alcohol – or other secret treasures… His pleasure lies elsewhere. “There are lots of Lego pieces sorted by color and shapehe describes. Everything is sorted so that construction can be done.”
But in the middle of all these pieces that the fan uses to play, we also find new products, still in the box, straight out of a Lego store. “Obviously there are a lot of boxes that are not openedexposes the fan. They are either for my personal consumption or for resale. It's to pay for my Lego consumption… Afterwards, it's the game, he smiles, It’s a bit like the stock market: sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t!”
If many French people will give Lego at Christmas – the brand with small bricks is the world number one in toys – the small brick has in fact also become a form of financial investment. And this resale market can pay off big. Two thirds of Lego purchased in France are for children, the rest for adults.
And for Julien, it’s working pretty well this year: “I must have earned at least 2,000 euros over 2024. You sell them dearly when you haven't opened them at all and haven't damaged the box. You have to keep them for several years and you have to watch for the best ones. promotions… In general, on Lego, it's 25% to 50% and close to what will come out of the catalog.” In short: you must therefore have a box which is no longer sold by Lego and, therefore, potentially sought after by enthusiasts.
To find his way, he writes everything down in a table on his computer. “I have the year of purchase and the purchase price. For example, the sale price on an old fishing store that I bought for 110 euros, I resold it for 320. I had bought it in 2018 and I sold it six years later, in 2024. On average, it’s over four or five years, but there’s no business that’s better than that.” And among the collections that particularly work, there is the franchise Star Wars : “You reach both Lego fans and fans of Star Wars. In general, you rarely lose money with this combo.”
The practice is known by Lego management, which does not take responsibility. “It's not something we're comfortable answering, because there's a bit of a form of trying to overvalue the boxes and that's not particularly what we're trying to do. encourageexplains Camille Thorneycroft, representative of the brand in France. However, it remains a marginal phenomenon on some emblematic boxes. There are more than 850 references in the Lego assortment and the rarity of certain boxes remains limited.”
Of these 850 references, 40% are renewed each year, this means that some are no longer produced and may one day, therefore, become rare and expensive…
