The small plastic mask is light blue, the size of a thumb – and quite valuable. Their material value is likely to be in the cents range at most. But Nikita Shimkus is sure: “I would get over 200 euros for it on the Internet. Some collectors even place search ads on Ebay to find exactly this part.”
Why is the mask so popular? It was actually supposed to have a completely different color, but it ended up in circulation due to a production error – and is now a rarity. A secondary market has emerged for such rare Lego parts and special sets of plastic toys, especially on the Internet, where astronomical prices are sometimes paid. Which is why some market participants have discovered Lego as a veritable investment opportunity, an investment comparable to art, whiskey or luxury watches.
Nikita Shimkus has also been collecting Lego bricks since he was a child, but today playing takes a backseat. What is more important to the management consultant is the attractive return on the toy. During the pandemic years, Shimkus even temporarily made trading Lego bricks his full-time job, which at least enabled him to pay his rent in Manchester, UK.
As part of his business studies, he also researched collectibles and investments in Lego. “We found that Legos correlate to a very low extent with classic investments such as stocks or bonds,” he tells Finance Forward. “They are more resilient to economic downturns and are therefore particularly suitable as a portfolio addition.”
A toy as portfolio diversification – that may sound strange, but it is no longer a niche phenomenon, as a viral post on X.com showed in the fall. Trading on the Lego secondary market takes place primarily via online platforms. The largest of this type is called Bricklink and has grown rapidly over the past few years in terms of both listed items and members. The most sought-after items there include, for example, an “Iron Man” figure for around 14,000 euros or a replica of the Statue of Liberty for just under 4,000 euros.
In 2018, scientists looked into the phenomenon for the first time. Victoria Dobrynskaya and colleagues from the Moscow School of Economics published a paper entitled “Lego: The Toy of Smart Investors.” They conclude that Lego can achieve an average return of at least eleven percent and beat major stocks, bonds, gold and alternative investments. But how does trading in plastic stones work – and what are the risks?
As with Shimkus, the line between hobby and pure profit-making is blurred for many other collectors, explains Luke Strauer, founder of the Lego investment app Brickfact. “The classic is always that you buy the same set twice: one for building and one for investing money. One is then supposed to cross-finance the other.” But only a few collectors would act purely rationally when choosing sets – there is always a touch of nostalgia.
It is precisely this ambivalence that is likely to be a central point of market dynamics. Because who will buy the rare Lego sets at a multiple value in a few years? If the bet with the Lego trade is to work out, buyers need collectors who are willing to pay for the sentimental value of the bricks.
In order for this to be successful, you have to take a few things into account when purchasing. “Licensed Lego sets are doing particularly well,” explains Strauer – i.e. sets that are released in cooperation with big brands such as “Star Wars”, Lamborghini or Marvel. According to Strauer, exclusive minifigures are also suitable. What is important, however, is that these rarely occur – and it is not easy to recognize this in advance. The packaging also makes an enormous difference. A look at Bricklink also shows this: whether a set is worth 1000 euros or just 70 euros can be determined solely by the presence of a sealed original packaging.
The life cycle of the stones also needs to be taken into account: After a set has been on the market for a while, at some point the so-called EOL (short for “End of Life”) occurs, as product discontinuations are called in the scene. Retailers often empty their warehouses shortly beforehand with the help of discount campaigns – a particularly good time to buy, according to market insiders. As soon as a set has been removed from the range and is therefore limited, its value increases again.
Nevertheless, the cult plastic business can be quite difficult. If you want to be successful, you have to invest a lot of time. As Shimkus’ research also shows, it’s not enough to just buy things indiscriminately. He and his co-authors examined over 10,000 Lego sets – in contrast to the previous work of Dobrynskaya and Co., including many that are traded less frequently on large platforms. It turned out that on average the return was below that of stocks. If you want to be more successful, you have to put together your Lego portfolio very selectively. And it can take a while to find the right parts. “I sometimes bought kilos of Lego just to get a part like this rare mask,” says Shimkus.
There is also another hurdle: storage space. One or two sets can still be easily accommodated, but if you really want to invest a lot of money, things will quickly become tight. “In fact, trading in Lego is not that easily scalable,” says Strauer. “For larger sums, you may have to rent storage space – this results in your own KPIs such as the price-to-space ratio.” For large investors, the investment could quickly become an operational nightmare due to the low value density of Legos.
But the financial scene has already reacted to this. In addition to expensive wines, designer handbags and luxury cars, the Swiss collectibles platform Splint Invest has also been listing Lego sets in its portfolio since last year. “We asked our customers what assets they would like to see on our website,” says co-founder Mario van Bergen in an interview with Finance Forward. “One of the top three answers was Lego.” Since then, the company has released a total of eight Lego collections for investors to invest in. According to van Bergen, the new offer was extremely well received – in every round, the investable parts of the sets were sold out within a few minutes.
Splintinvest now wants to store the sets for between two and five years. According to van Bergen, the team then hopes to achieve annual net returns of between eight and eleven percent from the sale. The company currently manages more than 155,000 euros in assets in Lego bricks.
With all the investment euphoria, however, the question arises as to whether the targeted returns are still realistic in a few years. As the desire to collect increases, there will also be a correspondingly larger selection of curated and well-preserved sets. Is there a risk of the market overheating?
Lego expert Nikita describes it like this: “We are currently observing a low supply of packaged vintage sets on the market and therefore high profits – in ten years it will probably be exactly the opposite.” Then, he estimates, the returns for similar sets are likely to be significantly lower. Also because the secondary market is becoming more and more competitive. But he still expects a plus.
After all: the global Lego fan base is still growing. The Danish company continues to tap into new customer groups that could result in greater collector interest in the future. In addition to the so-called AFOLs (short for “Adult Fans of Lego”), as the adult Lego aficionados are called in the fan community, the toy giant is now also specifically targeting a female target group. At the same time, interest is also growing in new geographical markets: in China, for example, Lego opened more than 60 percent of its new stores in 2022.
Overall, the Lego investment market remains adventurous for everyday investors. To be successful, you need, above all, good product knowledge and a lot of time. Especially in the current interest rate environment, there are certainly easier investment options to achieve a solid return. However, for enthusiastic collectors who want to rekindle their joy of colorful bricks, Lego could be a suitable option to diversify their portfolios – fun factor included.
This text first appeared in Finance Forward, the magazine for the new financial world, which is created in cooperation between “Capital” and OMR. Like stern, “Capital” belongs to RTL Deutschland.
