Arizonans: The Iranian National Guard wants you to vote for Hobbs! Another great reason to VOTE BIGGS!

People seemed to be interested in my comments yesterday (to @mattvanswol about Bricklink. So I thought I would drop some more info - hints and tips - in case it can be useful. Sorry for the length - I have a hard time "netting it out". About Bricklink (from a user) 1. Bricklink is THE site for buying and selling used Legos. Some sellers sell new Legos too, but I generally avoid buying these. 2. Bricklink was once fully independent (you can read the story of the founder on the Bricklink website – he was doing SaaS before SaaS was cool!) but it is now owned by Lego. As a buyer, this is a good thing. As a seller, it seems to have added a minor layer of additional bureaucracy but… not enough to prevent the value of the site. 3. Buying is super easy. You just set up an account (with an associated PayPal account) and then find things you want to buy! The site is pretty obvious to use for buyers. 4. Selling is a bit harder – and can take a lot of time (more on this below). Becoming a seller is a little more difficult – you need a rating which means before you can sell anything, you will have to buy something and get the seller to give you a positive rating. Also, I think the site could use some usability work on the seller side. 5. Shipping cost matters! As a buyer, be aware: shipping is NOT included in the stated prices and can be substantial, particularly on larger sets. Before you (or, more importantly, your child) get your heart set on a particular set, be sure to have the seller send you a quote WITH shipping to your address. Among other things, this means it is likely that the Lego kit will NOT come in its original box. I really wish the Bricklink software people would add a filter for the geography of the seller! 6. Are Asian sellers safe? As a US buyer, I avoid Asian sellers. This is likely biased of me, but at one time, there was a lot of Lego counterfeiting going on in Asia, particularly for the popular large Star Wars sets. But this was years ago, and I suspect that now that Lego owns the site, they have ways to prevent most of this. But – it’s always a good idea to check both the rating of the store and the pricing guide for the kit you plan to buy. If the store has mixed ratings and the kit is not priced around the market averages, it may be a place to stay away from. Also the cost of shipping is again a factor... If the seller is on a different continent - shipping will be more expensive. 7. Selling can take a lot of time. Parting sets is a must! I got started selling because over 15 years, I had managed to invest thousands of dollars in Legos for my son. But understand that if you choose to resell sets, it can be a SERIOUS time investment. When you represent a kit as “complete” (meaning all the pieces are included, as well as the instruction guide), it MUST be complete - and clean! (sticky or smelly pieces are a total turnoff). This means you need to “part out” the set. You do a LOT of sorting. The “ingredients” to every set are in the instruction guide. If your child (like mine) has spent years creating their own sets by mixing pieces – and dumping all the kits together into their Lego drawer, you have a bigger task ahead of you. Even as adults, pieces go missing (at our house this is mostly because – if it falls on the floor, a Golden Retriever will eat it). If you find sorting Lego pieces soothing, great. (for me, it was like knitting). But if this sounds like prison work…… just dump all the pieces into a giant container and take it to your favorite charity donation site. Someone else will be overjoyed at the treasure you have left them. Replacing the missing pieces. Once you have “parted” the set, if you have missing pieces, you either need to be honest about this (the set is "Incomplete" - in which case, the set will be worth a lot less), OR, you need to replace them so you can sell the set as complete. You do this by purchasing individual pieces from other sellers – mostly the bigger stores. Here again, you need to work a bit to try to find a store that has all (or at least most) of your missing pieces because stores generally have purchase minimums (these are posted on each stores site) and – again – shipping costs can be a major part of the cost. If a missing piece costs ten cents but the shipping is a dollar fifty………… you see the problem. Determining shipping costs to the buyer. Shipping is also a time-sink when you sell something. It means a trip to the post office to find out how much it is going to cost to ship it to the prospective buyer. A tip here – IF you can fit the kit in one of the prepaid 3-day priority mail boxes, this is generally the cheapest way to ship the set – cheaper than buying a package and boxing it yourself and sending it parcel post! The “large” priority box, even at $34, generally is a price performer! 8. A final point: Bricklink is GOOD for the health of Lego. Another mom once accused me of undermining Lego (the manufacturer) by participating in the used Lego market (this was clearly before Lego bought Bricklink). On the contrary, the used Lego market creates VALUE for Lego's business of selling new kits. Because people can sell their used kits, they are more likely to be able to afford new ones. Small children whose parents can’t afford to be doling out what new kits cost – can get their kids started on the used kits. These parents are still going to splurge on new Legos at birthdays and Christmas, believe me! And these kids grow up to become Lego lovers who buy multi-hundred dollar Ferraris and Death Stars as they get older. And their moms buy Lego Van Gogh paintings and flower kits. It actually expands the market of Lego lovers – who buy new Legos! I hope this was helpful!