Where is the Money? - Favorite LEGO Investment Themes

Perhaps the biggest part of LEGO investing is finding your "knitch" of LEGO that you feel comfortable and wouldn't mind being stuck with for a very long time. Popular choices of favorite themes (not for investing) are:

• Star Wars
• Ninjago
• Creator
• Monster Fighters
• Town Modular Houses

**Please Note: LoTR/The Hobbit and Super Heroes have been omitted because of lack of retired sets.**

But are these themes actually good investments, or are they just “cool” to have? Let’s look at the stronger performers of the themes.

Basic Set information:

Investment Set Information:

I hope you noticed several of the sets that were compared, such as the Green Grocer, the Zombies, Ice Dragon Attack, and the UCS Millennium Falcon. What makes these big names of investing so big? One big reason is because for three of the four, excluding the UCS Millennium Falcon, the sets were the first of the first, and the experiment. Really, it is because of their success that the themes are still around. Had they been a flop, the LEGO Group would have stopped producing theme. The UCS Millennium Falcon is just a monster of a ship, and outstanding, as well as iconic. Enough about individual sets, how about whole themes?

In the cases of Town Modular Houses and Ninjago, the sets that appreciated the most were the pioneers of the theme: the sets that TLG used to “test the waters”, similar to those of the CUUSOO theme. I recommend trying out different themes, right when they come out, because if the theme does “kick off”, you probably have winners. The Star Wars gainers are a different story. The three listed sets, Millennium Falcon, Death Star II, Imperial Star Destroyer, and Republic Attack Gunship, are amongst the larger of the theme. The biggest amount gainers from Star Wars have MSRP’s of at least $100, which suggests that larger sets appreciate more than medium to small sets.

Lastly comes Creator, which is one of the more successful “home-grown” LEGO themes. In this theme, we also see that the sets that appreciated the most were more expensive in comparison with the rest of the theme. This theme is often overlooked by many LEGO fans, but a good amount of winners come out of the theme, so I would watch out.

To summarize, the favorites of the LEGO investing world are more successful because of:

• Pricing
• Size of Set/Piece Count
• First of the first

I would try to pick up sets from the starting of the theme, especially CUUSOO, Super Heroes, and Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit, which are the newest themes.

In my next article, I will be going over less popular themes, and whether there are winners, or not.