How to Sell a Used LEGO(R) Collection

If you are selling a bunch of LEGO bricks, and need some ideas, this guide is for you!!

The Ebay Bulk LEGO(R) Market

Lego buyers on Ebay are often parents with kids, and may only be reminded about legos when they stumble over them in the middle of the night- not the most positive image when you are trying to maximize your LEGO sales. Your job as a seller is to convince them of the fun and exciting times their kids, and probably the buyer themselves, will have once they buy your legos.

Typically bulk LEGO mixed lots are sold by the number of pieces, number of pounds, or number of minifigures. If you take time to market your bulk lot well and maintain a good feedback rating, you should be able to expect higher prices for your listings. Each minifigure (LEGO person) will add money to your final value on top of the $ per piece. Use the keyword minifig in your title (including the count), as well as the keywords piece and pieces in your title with the actual number of pieces.

LEGO buyers, particularly the resellers who buy some of the larger bulk lots to resell on Ebay, are picky about the weight and quality of what they receive:

Weight

For the successful LEGO seller, a scale accurate to at least .1 pounds is required. Mine is accurate to .01 pounds and has a capacity up to 50 pounds at that accuracy. It also can display in Pounds/ozs/ kilograms/ Grams for shipping and international purposes. You can find a high quality scale on Ebay from several specialized scale sellers. Compare the value of LEGO to buying a steak at the butcher shop- your buyers want to know that they are getting exactly what they paid for.

Quality

Age, condition, and obvious LEGO brand of your bulk lots will improve your selling prices, as well as drive repeat customers to your Ebay store. You should remove all non-LEGO-brand building blocks, as well as any random toys like toy cars, action figures, wooden blocks and so on. It goes without saying that anything else, like nails, food items, or other junk should be removed by you, if it was ever present in any of your legos. This is your quality control, you need to inspect, in detail, before you ship. Your reputation and income depend on it!

Also, even with LEGO brand bricks, there are certain pieces that are better not shipped. Dirty, muddy, sun-discolored, bitemarked, broken, faded, worn- if these adjectives apply to your Lego Bricks, throw those pieces away. Use your judgement here- vintage lots from the 1960's and '70's may be more valuable if they remain complete sets, even if the condition is poor. But generally only collectors want vintage legos- it is typically a different market segment than the crowd that buys bulk legos.

Your Ebay Listing

In the description, make sure to emphasize that you have inspected to 100% LEGO brand pieces. Hardcore buyers will vehemently hit the back button from a hint of Non-LEGO-brands. Put your buyer's doubts at rest and help them make the buying/ bidding decision easy. If you have any of the LEGO building instructions : Take pictures of the instructions all spread out; this shows the volume of LEGO bricks available in terms of sets or nearly complete sets, and it shows that you mean business when you say 100% LEGO brand, they will be able to verify for themself that all the instructions shown are LEGO brand.

Another way to gain trust from the buyer is closeup pictures of the LEGO you are selling. There is nothing quite like a sharp crisp closeup of LEGO bricks and parts that clearly shows the distinctive slanting LEGO logo on top of the LEGO studs. More experienced buyers will also be using the closeups of your pieces to judge quality of the whole lot- there are some colors and designs of building bricks that are not manufactured by the LEGO Group, seeing only the true LEGO colors and pieces is a great confidence builder for your buyer in what they will receive.

Also in the description, list any sets by number that you are able to figure out from the set instructions, and whether they are complete. Buyers really like it if you have time to assemble the sets to verify their completeness. If possible, based on your knowledge or onlines sources, cross-reference the set numbers with the set description and number of pieces. There are even online set building instructions available to help you. Depending on your selling style, you can list the New In Box Store retail price of each set so the buyer sees what a tremendous deal they are getting from you. Many buyers will search listing descriptions for a specific set number, so use this search to your advantage.

Definitely use the relevant LEGO themes as keywords in your title, and if there are any Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pirate, Space or other themed sets included that you can figure out, put those keywords in the title. This will help buyers tremendously, because many are searching for a specific theme or style of LEGO. Be careful not to keyword spam, your keywords should be related to the content of your auction or listing.

This is way more info than I had when I started selling LEGO on Ebay, so I hope it helps the newbie Bulk LEGO seller to get off and running. Here's to your future success!