LEGO 10185 Green Grocer: Ripe for the Picking?

The age old question in the LEGO investment world is should I buy a "new" LEGO set, one that has no track record or growth data to examine, or should a LEGO investor look to older LEGO sets that have appreciated well, but may have their best growth days behind them?  Both have possible advantages.  The newer sets can be bought easily at a discount from the retail price and can be found in mint and sealed condition with little issues.  The older sets are proven commodities that have appreciated over several years and have shown to be investment winners.  Both have disadvantages as well.  Newer sets are an unknown commodity and a positive return on investment is not guaranteed.  Retired sets are more expensive and may be past their investment prime.  This leads us to our topic LEGO set, the 10185 Green Grocer, which, by all accounts, is considered an older and retired LEGO set.

I usually try to recommend newer LEGO sets to LEGO investors because they are more cost effective and readily available to the buying public.  But every once in awhile, I come across an older and more expensive LEGO set that has shown positive growth and has great potential, even after being retired for years.  I wrote about one such set, the 10184 Town Plan, in another one of my Evaluation Corner articles.  Another such set is the 10185 Green Grocer.  The Green Grocer is a Modular Building and was released in 2008 for $149.99.  It has 2,352 pieces and 4 minifigures.

Let's take a look at the LEGO.com description of the Green Grocer:
Expand your LEGO® neighborhood or start a new one with the Green Grocer! Designed in a modular style, this colorful and lively building features a grocery store and classic apartments that can be built, rebuilt and rearranged to suit your own LEGO town. Detailed architecture includes realistic interior, courtyard access, a roof terrace and fire escape, lots of windows and doors, and much more! Build a street layout by combining Green Grocer with 10190 Market Street and 10182 Café Corner! Top 3 floors lift off to reveal inner rooms! Grocery store features a blue and white awning, cash register, bins for bread, vegetables and fruit, refrigerator and tiled floor! Apartments have lots of details like bay windows, fireplace with tools, grandfather clock and windows that open to the fire escape! Stairs lead up to the apartments and to the roof terrace! Roof terrace has chairs, umbrellas, grill and flowers! Check the mailboxes for letters! Fire escape ladders move up and down! Access the courtyard behind the building! Street features lampost, fire hydrant and light fixtures! Includes 4 townspeople minifigures, plus a cat and rat! Measures 14" (35cm) high and 10" (25cm) wide!

Being one of the seven “Über” popular Modular buildings is a very positive attribute of this set.  The Modular Buildings, especially the retired Modular Buildings like the 10182 Cafe Corner and 10190 Market Street, are one of the most popular LEGO themes in existence.  Along with popularity, amazing growth has been shown by all three retired Modular Buildings, especially the older 10182 Cafe Corner and 10190 Market Street, which have been around another year or so longer than the 10185 Green Grocer.  Take a look a the chart below:

Take a look at the two graphs below showing the strong and steady growth of the 10182 Cafe Corner and 10190 Market Street over the past 21 months:

  The growth of these three retired Modular Buildings is just amazing.  What is even more amazing is that the 10190 Market Street was a better investment than the iconic 10182 Cafe Corner.  Along with the 10179 UCS Millennium Falcon, the 10182 Cafe Corner was considered by many LEGO investors as one of the two greatest LEGO investments of all time.  The 10190 Market Street was never considered in the same league, to be quite honest, by most LEGO investors and collectors.  But with an increase of over 1000% from retail and a CAGR of 64%, there are few LEGO sets, if any, that can compare with that sort of growth.  So how does this relate to the 10185 Green Grocer and its future investment potential?  Well, for one thing, the 10185 Green Grocer was the third Modular Building released by LEGO.  It was released a year or so after the 10182 Cafe Corner and 10190 Market Street and was retired about a year or so later.  So it is possible that there could be some potential strong growth in the next year that was similar to the growth of the10182 Cafe Corner and 10190 Market Street during the same investment time period after EOL(End of Line).  Why?  Because I assuming that the LEGO “completists” will want to collect  every Modular Building set and an older and retired set like the 10185 Green Grocer is one of the seven existing Modular buildings needed to do so.  Also, the Green Grocer was retired before the huge potential of these Modular Buildings were realized, so many LEGO collectors passed on this set, but might entertain buying it now, even a high prices.  A final reason for possible interest in this set is the Green Grocer is an attractive and well done LEGO set and many AFOLs with extra disposable income would love to add it to their collection.

The one thing that strikes me about the data is about 21 months ago, the 10182 Cafe Corner had a value of about $588 and the 10190 Market Street had a value of around $560.  The current values of those two sets are $1122 and $1069 respectively...almost DOUBLE(approximately 91%) in 21 months!  The current value of the newer 10185 Green Grocer is around $562.  If you extrapolate that type of growth to the 10185 Green Grocer in 21 months, a value of $1073 is produced.  Now, I'm not guaranteeing that if you buy a MISB 10185 Green Grocer for $600 right now that it will appreciate to $1000+ in a year and a half, but history indicates that there is still that sort of potential with the 10185 Green Grocer.  Maybe the 10185 Green Grocer will never reach that lofty price.  Maybe the 10185 Green Grocer is not as popular as the earlier Modular Buildings.  Maybe there were more Green Grocers produced and they are less rare.  Maybe the LEGO secondary market crashes.  Maybe people get tired of the Modular Buildings and buy only Ninjago sets.

Maybe...Maybe...Maybe...Maybe the 10185 hits $1200 in 21 months...

In conclusion, I would like to leave you with an example of a similar situation I encountered two and a half years ago.  The 10182 Cafe Corner was selling for $550-$600 for a MISB set and I did not have one.  I wondered what all the hub-bub was about with this retired LEGO set?  To me, anyway, it was a rather gaudy-looking set that was unattractive to a LEGO STAR WARS aficionado like myself.  But I took the chance and picked one up for $575 with free shipping on EBAY.  Needless to say, I have doubled my original investment.  I also bought a retired NIB(New In Box...not mint)10190 Market Street for $400 at the same time and that has exceeded my expectations as well.  I would like to think that the 10185 Green Grocer has a similar growth pattern over the next year or so.  These retired Modular Buildings are a rare commodity and getting rarer all the time and many LEGO fans want the complete set.  The 10185 Green Grocer might not hit the $1000 mark, but even if it hits the $800-$900 level in the next year, that is over 30% return on investment.  Not bad in my book...or any investor's book for that matter.