How To Spend 100 Dollars

I recently went to the store and could not believe some of the clearance deals they have on LEGO sets. Before this trip I purchased Jabba's Palace and spent about the exact same amount of money. However, I nearly doubled the amount of bricks for my buck compared to the single set. I will break down each purchase for you with excel graphics. NOTE: I was going to do the excel bit, but for some reason this site wont let me copy and paste pictures and it doesn't leave excel cells in the right format. See Attached if you're really interested.
Purchase 1 Set ID Set Name Price Paid Retail Pieces Price per Brick 9516 Jabba's Palace $101.72 $119.99 717 $0.142

So I made this purchase in March 2013 and I was brand new to the investing game. I saw it on sale at WalMart and Immedtialy purchased it because it was on sale and there was only 2 on the shelf so I assumed that those were the last two EVER!
Since then, I have seen many more around, but overall I am still fairly happy with this purchase. It has quite a few minifigures and my friend had the old one (4480) that we played with quite a bit in our preteen years and that one did fairly well from an investing standpoint.

On to Purchase 2; Purchase 2 Set ID Set Name Price Paid Retail Pieces Price per Brick 3816 Glove World $14.82 $19.99 169 $0.088 6865 Captain America's Avenging Cycle $9.62 $12.99 72 $0.134 6865 Captain America's Avenging Cycle $9.62 $12.99 72 $0.134 44005 Bruizer $6.87 $12.99 62 $0.11 76001 The Bat vs. Bane: Tumblr Chase $29.66 $39.99 368 $0.08 76009 Superman Black Zero Escape $6.34 $19.99 168 $0.04 76009 Superman Black Zero Escape $6.34 $19.99 168 $0.04 76009 Superman Black Zero Escape $6.34 $19.99 168 $0.04 76009 Superman Black Zero Escape $6.34 $19.99 168 $0.04 9677 X-Wing Star Fighter and Yavin 4 $7.40 $9.99 77 $0.10 Total $103.36 $188.90 1492 $0.07

Now these items were on clearance and I was floored at how low some of them were. I immediatly drove my scooter two blocks home and got the SUV to bring these back to my apartment. I will highlight a couple of the key components of this purchase comparison.

1) Money Spent Number of Bricks.
I spent nearly the same amount on both purchases. However the first purchase containted 717 pieces and 9 minifigs at $0.142 per brick.
The second prucase included 1492 pieces (more than double the first) and 26 minifigs at an overall of $0.07 (including 2 Captain America, 4 Superman, 4 Lois Lane, 4 General Zod, Sponge Bob, Sandy, Patrick (covered in chocolate ice cream), Batman, Gordon, Bane, and more).

2) Clearance Deals The highlight of the purchase was the 4 Superman Black Zero Escapes that I was able to pick up for 70% off each. You just can't pass up a 20 dollar set when you can get it for $6.34 after tax. Those were $0.04 per brick Astounding!

3) Unorganized
The store's inventory was really unorganized. I walked around a lot and I found LEGO sets in the LEGO isle, clearance LEGO sets in 3 different isles, clearance LEGO sets along the back wall, and clearance LEGO sets on the end caps. Every time I turned around there was another surprise. This disorganization was really helpful because I feel like there are probably a lot of people that would have bought one of those 4 Superman sets at 70% off if they had been in the LEGO isle. (Usually that's where people look for LEGO sets ).

4) Location
A city/town size of 20,000 is just about right for this. The population is big enough to move inventory at a decent pace, but small enough that there are probably not many LEGO investors looking for the deals I am.

I did go back two days later and they marked the prices down even further on a few items. It turned out that I missed the mark down by one day, but with a few of those sets there was only one left so oh well. I picked up one more Captain America's Avenging Cycle for 6.87 at 50% off and one more X-wing Star Fighter for 5.28 at 50% off.

I will be going back this week to see if I can get the last Captain America's Avenging Cycle for 70% off. I also passed up a firefighting set that was normally 40 dollars and was marked down to 13.98 so I'll see if that's still there. I am probably going to make this a weekly endeavor considering how close the location is to my apartment. I have decided that I will only purchase sets at 70% off unless I want multiples at which point I will purchase at 50%. And if I really want it. Like with the Sponge Bob sets, I will buy them for 30% off. I don't know about you guys, but I am never paying retail again.