Brokering Bricks: The World of Lego Investing
As a kid I adored Lego. I think fondly of all the time I spent playing with my collection and all the creations I made.<p>As I entered my early teen years my collection had grown considerably and it was taking up a lot of space, and I was spending less and less time with Lego. I knew a younger kid down the block who was in the peak of his Lego phase and I donated my entire collection -- around five or so 30 gallon trash bags.<p>A couple of years after that, when I was just shy of 17 years old, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin&#x27;s Lymphoma and had to take some time off of school to go through chemotherapy. Naturally I had a lot of time on my hands. For some reason I _really_ wanted to play with my old Lego, but I didn&#x27;t have any around anymore.<p>I found some of my favorite sets on eBay and was able to purchase them albeit for quite the markup. It was great to get to experience those older sets and fulfill that spat of nostalgia. On the other hand, it was a huge bummer. I was obviously on a limited budget and every set was 2-4x what they were originally.<p>I understand Lego can&#x27;t possibly keep producing every set forever, but this kind of speculation described in the article seriously ruins the experience for a lot of people. It&#x27;s not a simple supply and demand situation if people are hoarding sets and creating artificial scarcity.<p>Lego is big enough as a company to put these people out of business, they would just have to occasionally re-release older sets that are ludicrously overpriced in the second-hand market.<p>Lego holds a really special place in my heart as I&#x27;m sure it does for a lot of the people mentioned in the article, I&#x27;m just not sure if they are aware of the consequences of their behavior on some of the less fortunate that want to experience Lego for what it is meant for -- playing.