Shane O’Farrell wasn’t looking to get rich selling Lego. All the 35-year-old from Teaneck, New Jersey, wanted was to reconnect with his childhood in Ireland, where the humble Lego Fort was one of his favorite toys.
Twenty years later, he sees the kit selling for hundreds of dollars more than it did in 1996. Retail price: $85it was a lightbulb moment for someone looking for a side hustle.
O’Farrell quickly jumped into the lucrative market of buying and reselling popular Lego sets online — the same set he loved now sells for $2,405.
A seasoned service engineer, he’s one of many investors putting his hard-earned money into the plastic building blocks: Lego’s resale value is up 11% a year, outperforming stocks, bonds and gold. Research in 2022.
“I started investing in stocks and realized the 8 percent return I was making in the stock market wasn’t going to get me there. It wasn’t going to get me where I wanted to be,” O’Farrell told The Post. “It’s going to take decades.”
In the past two years alone, he’s made nearly half a million dollars selling toys.
“The time it takes is so short, it’s a way to earn extra income on top of your full-time job,” O’Farrell said.
Plastic Portfolio
“We’re talking a 400% return on investment in a year and a half.”
Shane O’Farrell
He is very enthusiastic about his part-time job and also shares tips for potential investors on his YouTube channel. Brick Bucks.
What’s needed is a standard-sized inventory-storage unit and a keen eye on the company, said Mr. O’Farrell, who reads Lego’s annual financial and trend reports and keeps track of when sets are being discontinued to help gauge their future value.
When Lego stops selling certain models, the stores open up for dealers like O’Farrell. These days, it’s LEGO Star Wars TIE Fighter Pilot Helmet model.
“Before it was phased out in 2021 it was $60, and then a year and a half after it was phased out it was $350,” O’Farrell said. “That’s a 400% return on investment in a year and a half.”
Lego’s collaborations with big franchises like Star Wars, Harry Potter and Marvel don’t necessarily translate into higher resale prices, he said.
Instead, scarcity is key: Sets sold only in one store tend to be perfect for retirement demand, as they will likely be produced in small numbers.
There’s even a market just for the minifigures in the sets — so popular that robbers recently broke into a store in California and stole $100,000 worth of minifigures.
Recently, O’Farrell has noticed a surge in demand for Lego minifigures. $460 Barad-Dur Set From The Lord of the Rings.
“Some people were selling just the minifigures from the set for $250,” he said of the towering Eye of Mordor model.
As time goes on, Hobbit-sized figures like Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee and Gollum will likely become even more valuable.
“The waiting game”
O’Farrell said it’s easy to resell Lego because “they increase in value over time” – you just have to be patient.
“You just buy the goods, put them in a warehouse somewhere and wait for the price to go up,” he says. “It’s a lot less work.”
“It’s like running a wine cellar,” said YouTube personality David G. (who declined to give his last name for privacy reasons and goes by the name DG Bricks).
“I’m buying what’s available now and then storing them safely for future customers a few years from now. It’s a waiting game,” he told The Post.
A 27-year-old Chicago-based freelance videographer has sold $20,000 worth of Lego sets in his lifetime.
Of the estimated 1,000 sets he’s invested and held onto over the years, he’s only made one without making a profit: a $12 Disney “Frozen” set that he resold for $10.
Still, DG doesn’t call LEGO economics an investment cheat code: it requires a huge amount of knowledge to make a profit.
“That incredible return on investment raises a lot of questions,” he said. “You have to buy at the right price and obviously pick the right set. Not all sets appreciate at the same rate, or even at all.”
From plastic to fabric
But DG believes Gen Z and millennials could be an ideal market to tap into, especially since new data shows that demand for adult toys has surpassed that of preschoolers for the first time, hitting $1.5 billion in sales from January to April.
“Young people like me have plenty of time, but what we lack is a lot of money,” he said.
“I think that young people just entering the position will accept that trade-off — more work in exchange for a higher return on their investment.”
As Currently the world’s most valuable toy brand — Barbie isn’t far behind — and in fact, more and more people are putting their money into plastic bricks.
Johnny Cangemi, a 26-year-old fintech employee in the Wall Street area, has been an avid Lego builder since he was 5, but he’s just starting out as a seller.
He bought the Lego “Star Wars” Grogu set a year and a half ago and plans to hold onto it for five years before reselling it.
“I truly believe that making things and being creative as a child helps you develop spiritually, and I still remember how that felt,” Cangemi said.
“I’m glad I had this opportunity to grow up as a kid without a cell phone, and now I can grow my bank account.”
