Promotional Items and Polybags: Monster Fighters

As LEGO investors, I think it would be pretty safe to say that most of the time we are more focused on getting sealed and big sets in order to secure higher profits on each sale, but there are some other aspects to LEGO investing that can also turn out very profitable with a significantly lower amount of capital. Polybags and promotional mini sets on each theme that is released usually perform extremely well, and given their lower or none existing retail price they tend to reach great ROI in a very short time. There are several other aspects that make polybag and small set investing particularly interesting, but I will leave those for a future blog article currently in the works.

For now, I want to focus on analyzing some of the items in this category from one of the most talked about themes over the past few months: Monster Fighters.

If you take a look at the list of CAGR by theme in the homepage, you will notice that Monster Fighters currently places second in that entire list with an overall CAGR of around 41%, surpassed only by the Ninjago powerhouse. If you remember, on a previous blog article I commented that sometimes it is best to use the weighted CAGR measure to gauge a theme's popularity or plain investing performance, however since we are focusing on some of the smallest sets of the theme in this case it actually makes sense to take a look at the simple CAGR measure. You will see that a big part of the theme's very high CAGR actually comes from the great performance of the polybags we will discuss below (and The Zombies).

- 5000644 Monster Fighters promotional pack

Comments: This polybag was given away in the USA at TRUs locations as part of a special Halloween themed event. There is really not much as far as parts is concerned, basically what you see in the picture above (skeleton, web, glow in the dark spider, red gem, green crystal) and a sticker sheet featuring some of the MFs characters. Since this polybag was given out for free, anything you sell it for would net you almost 100% profits, that at this point would be around $ 15.

There are very few of these listed on eBay at any given time, and for the past 3 months or so the price has actually increased after 2 full months of 0 sales. Not really an interesting set, I would not expect this one to go up any further other than the normal fluctuations from month to month.

- 300200 Zombie Chauffeur Coffin Car

Comments: This is for sure a pretty good looking polybag. This one was available at LEGO Discovery Centers and later in some TRUs locations. Unlike the first entry of this article, this set actually included a pretty interesting minifig as the zombie driver. Being a zombie themed set was enough to make this particular polybag one of the most sold on ebay during the holiday season, and would have been a great companion for those who were able to acquire a Zombies set.

The number of these sold each month has declined a lot since the end of last year, but they still sell a pretty respectable number with May being the lowest (19) and February the highest (96). Price has remained very consistent at around $10, so you could really make some money by moving several of these.

- 30201 Ghost

Comments: Another very cool polybag that was exclusive to LEGO Discovery Centers and eventually found its way to Target stores. At the same MSRP of the previous one we talked about, this one included a ghost exclusive to this and the 10228 HH as well as one of my favorite "props" of the theme: the antique clock. Overall, its performance has actually been pretty close to 30200, currently selling for around $ 10, but keeping some higher sales numbers over the past few months.

- 40076 Zombie Car

Comments: The best performer of this whole bunch, this was an actual promo polybag given away by LEGO and S@H on qualifying orders in September 2012. We once again have a zombie theme set, specifically another driver, along with a cool looking car and a glow in the dark spider. This is one polybag that caught on the market and is selling for around $ 21 at this point. It actually peaked in the month of March at around $ 25, but it has since declined to its present level.
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As you can see, Zombies made an appearance in two of the three actual promotional sets and polybags, testament to their current popularity in our society. Other than that we had a very cool looking ghost set and a very disappointing TRU promo (in my opinion) that still sells for a decent amount of money considering what you get.

From the data above you can see where the MFs theme currently pulls the majority of its overall CAGR number, with the small sets presenting numbers as high as 180%. This promo sets from this set have been quite popular in the secondary market, unfortunately it seems it is now too late to invest in them. Still, they provide us with a very nice example that sometimes the good things also come in small packages!

Thanks for reading