My One-Way Transition from Investor to Seller

[gregpj]

Top tip: Keep all boxes you receive sets in, and aim to buy sets singly, so you get more boxes.  I'd have a lot more boxes now if I didn't buy sets 5 at a time!

 

Not sure what other postal services do, but if Canada Post can prove you re-used a box, they'll deny insurance claims for damage. Things like double tape or different barcodes from previous shipments can help prove you reused a box. I imagine they can't do much about lost packages though.

 

I keep boxes that are good and didn't get damaged coming to me. Crappy ones get recycled.

[Gondorian]

Not sure what other postal services do, but if Canada Post can prove you re-used a box, they'll deny insurance claims for damage. Things like double tape or different barcodes from previous shipments can help prove you reused a box. I imagine they can't do much about lost packages though.

 

I keep boxes that are good and didn't get damaged coming to me. Crappy ones get recycled.

 

Sounds like a box protection racket (no pun intended) aimed at keeping makers of boxes profitable, to the detriment of the environment since reuse is better than recycling.

 

Maybe I should look into buying some boxes though.  I figured it would eat too much into my profits, but maybe I am looking for boxes in the wrong place.

[brickelements]

Does anyone else get the visual of an AA (wait can't use that acronym here) meeting?

 

Gondorian walks up to the podium and say:  "Hello, my name is Gondorian and I have a Lego buying problem" 

The room of people responds:  "Hello Gondorian.  What do you want to sell?  How much?"

 

You might be a lego investor if these visions like this are commonplace in your head.

[minicoopers11]

Sounds like a box protection racket (no pun intended) aimed at keeping makers of boxes profitable, to the detriment of the environment since reuse is better than recycling.

 

Maybe I should look into buying some boxes though.  I figured it would eat too much into my profits, but maybe I am looking for boxes in the wrong place.

Don't forget to consider potential increased shipping costs by using a less than ideal "free" box size. The savings you realize in shipping could more than pay for the box.

[gregpj]

Sounds like a box protection racket (no pun intended) aimed at keeping makers of boxes profitable, to the detriment of the environment since reuse is better than recycling.

Maybe I should look into buying some boxes though. I figured it would eat too much into my profits, but maybe I am looking for boxes in the wrong place.

Well I'd don't reuse crappy boxes, but who knows what other people do. I just use appropriate boxes, pack things well and use lots of tape to hold things together. This is my first season of selling more than a couple items and lots of compliments on the packing so far.

If this was a full time job, I think I'd just buy boxes and call it a day.

[lego13]

Probably someone already mentioned this but in case..

I would highly recommend to expand your business to amazon fba. I've been doing ebay alone and this year I ventured amazon fba and it really helped me unload lot of inventory. Beauty of amazon fba is you ship items upfront and amazon will deal with packing and shipping. Of course there are higher fees with amazon and fba combined but I think overall it's all worth it if you factor your time and shipping cost and higher price tag for fba items. If you have EOL sets then send them to amazon fba. It will sell higher than what's sold at ebay. 

[10230]

Not sure what other postal services do, but if Canada Post can prove you re-used a box, they'll deny insurance claims for damage. Things like double tape or different barcodes from previous shipments can help prove you reused a box. I imagine they can't do much about lost packages though.

That is insane from an environmental standpoint. Boxes that come just fine I will reuse if I can. Of course you have to remove previous barcodes - not because you want to hide the reuse, but because you obviously don't want them to be scanned. Leaving them on would be an issue for sure. Double tape - I don't see the issue. I even double tape new boxes sometimes to make sure things are sound. Did they really deny your valid insurance claim because of that?

[maestro]

Probably someone already mentioned this but in case..

I would highly recommend to expand your business to amazon fba. I've been doing ebay alone and this year I ventured amazon fba and it really helped me unload lot of inventory. Beauty of amazon fba is you ship items upfront and amazon will deal with packing and shipping. Of course there are higher fees with amazon and fba combined but I think overall it's all worth it if you factor your time and shipping cost and higher price tag for fba items. If you have EOL sets then send them to amazon fba. It will sell higher than what's sold at ebay. 

​I only have 40 sets, 11 of them have retired. Still send to Amazon FBA?

[Gondorian]

I'm back bumping my thread because I'm selling again!

Turns out it wasn't quite a one-way transition because I've been buying more sets recently, but not in multiples like before, and only if they hit decent discount.  It's a slippery slope, I know!

[Migration]

I'm back bumping my thread because I'm selling again!

Turns out it wasn't quite a one-way transition because I've been buying more sets recently, but not in multiples like before, and only if they hit decent discount.  It's a slippery slope, I know!

how'd the job search go? Glad you're back.

[Gondorian]

how'd the job search go? Glad you're back.

Thanks for asking. I'm working from home on an online card game. It's long hours and not great pay, but I've never felt more motivated to work on anything. Since the work is so fulfilling, I don't need to get addicted to buying Lego for a buzz!  And the Lego selling (when I bother to do it) helps make up for the lost income from the other job that I couldn't stand.

[Gondorian]

Apologies for bumping my old post, but I figured I'd do a little update.

I've now sold just over 300 sets, at average of 100% ROI. Assuming I've held most for about 3 years, then that's something like 30% interest per year. But then there's the effort to list and pack and post that eats into that, but I've slowly got better and better at doing it all so I wouldn't call it work. It's become like a ritual and I'll have either football or WWE on in the background that I would have likely watched anyway. I've also taken to having the packages picked up from my house pretty much all the time which costs a bit more but saves time and mileage.

Overall, I guess it would still have been smarter to dump all the money I spent on Lego in the bank because I could take it all out now (not that I could have stopped myself spending, as I outlined in the original post), but there's a few good points to this mess I got into.

1) For each £500 that I liquidate, I'm getting £1000 in my bank account on average. Sure, the stock market has gone up these past years and I could have got similar return on the right stocks, but it's a lot better than just taking £500 out the bank. I've not had anything big to spend on (no way to get a mortgage right now as a self-employed contractor) so taking out in these lumps for profit ain't bad.

2) Being able to keep up such a high standard of delivery is something to feel proud of and boost my own confidence in myself, especially in terms of tackling something overwhelming. I have trouble looking far into the future and sometimes get overwhelmed by sheer quantity at times, and likely never thought I could get 300 sold. I still have about 600 left, but I know it's possible and the average size and value of each set remaining is coming down which means I will start farming out some sales to my wife to do on a separate eBay account. I've kept my stock organised and maintained good records, which is also something that does not come naturally to me.

In terms of the one-way transition, I have still been buying Lego sets for investment, but not many. It's hard to resist buying into what I believe will be a clear winner, even though I know to win on that set will take the work of organising/storing/listing/packing/posting. I don't think I've bought in the last two months though.

[Gondorian]

On 6/22/2014 at 4:01 PM, Gondorian said:

(Not sure if this is the right place for this. Apologies if it's not.)

 

 

The Investor Phase:

 

If you have savings, a decent job and a credit card that you don't need to pay off for a year, it's VERY VERY EASY to do this part.  You just check various places every day for deals and buy buy buy!!!   The lack of space in my house caused by stored Lego and my large credit card bill (0% interest until this October) are testament to this!

 

Like most BrickPickers I'm aware of, my approach was generally to buy on 30% discount or more and get at least one of each set for my personal collection and then multiples of sets I thought would do well at EOL.  Despite not really being a very organised person, I spent a fair amount of time logging all my sets and where they are stored, in anticipation for the day I start to sell them.  I have about 1000 sets, ranging from the small ones up to SSD (one of).  which isn't including minifigures and polybags.

 

 

The Turning Point:

 

I left my well-paid day job a couple of weeks ago (not by choice) and am going to try to be self-employed instead.  With no steady income and possibly needing to downsize our house, and the credit card to pay off in October, I NEED to start selling the Lego for cash and space.  If only I'd just left all the money in a savings account!  Ah well!

 

 

The Seller Phase:

 

About 3 weeks ago, I sold my first set (on eBay).  Since then, I've sold another 11 on eBay (10 posted and 1 sold this morning).  Total money back in my pocket is about

Hmm. Looks like the one-way transition to a new forum system for BrickPicker majorly truncated my post and likely many more good ones by others

 

EDIT: Seems like it did it when it hit the pound sign (£). Other old posts in the thread are truncated at that point too.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Gondorian

[bagalux]

Very interesting to follow progress and reflections over such a long period of time, from the same person.

If you don't mind me asking:

• What are the most important things you've learned during the last 1.5 years (i.e. since you last posted in this thread before just recently)?
• What have been the biggest challenges?
• Have you noticed any major changes in the reselling market?
• Knowing what you know today, would you have advised yourself to get into LEGO investing/selling back when you did?
• What's your strategy going forward from here? Will you want to sell a majority of remaining sets ASAP?

Cheers

[Gondorian]

29 minutes ago, bagalux said:

Very interesting to follow progress and reflections over such a long period of time, from the same person.

If you don't mind me asking:

• What are the most important things you've learned during the last 1.5 years (i.e. since you last posted in this thread before just recently)?
• What have been the biggest challenges?
• Have you noticed any major changes in the reselling market?
• Knowing what you know today, would you have advised yourself to get into LEGO investing/selling back when you did?
• What's your strategy going forward from here? Will you want to sell a majority of remaining sets ASAP?

Cheers

I don't mind answering. These are good things to be thinking about for me anyway.

1. I'd say the most important thing is to know where your sets are and what condition they are in. I've spent a while reorganising and double-accounting all my stock and checking the condition over the last few months. If I list as very good condition then it needs to be that way and I need to be able to find it at short notice to have it packed and sent the next day. I don't often put photos on unless people ask or there is some visible issue, but I'm trying more to have sets that are for sale in easy reach to get more photos if there's a lull in selling. I'd say about 90% of my sets have sold with stock photos, just listed as very good condition (which they are) and I've never had complaints about the condition.

2. The biggest challenge has been to stick to my one working day dispatch time. If I know I'm going away somewhere, but have listed sets due to an eBay promo (e.g. a £1 max final-value fee), I bump up the prices to unreasonable levels and dispatch time to try to discourage people from buying, since you can't stop a listing temporarily and then restart with the promo. Only one person has ever bought when I've done this, and thankfully it was before I went away and I got extra money for the set! Another big challenge is to not worry about unreasonable complaints or things going missing.

3. I've not noticed any changes in the reselling market over the past two years really. There's certainly more knock-off mini figures which is likely pulling down the value of Superhero sets (I really thought these were winners when I stocked up but I have barely sold any in two years, mostly due to them not hitting heights that make it worth my time to sell them), but I have so many other themes that it's not impacted me. I think there probably are more resellers now and there was one month where the lowest price for most sets was much lower than before due to one seller seemingly trying to clear a lot in a short while, so I just took a break that month and I guess he cleared all his stock.

4. Knowing what I know today, I would have kept shares in Apple and Facebook and Amazon instead of buying Lego. But hindsight is a wonderful thing. I feared a stockmarket crash that should have happened but never did and I had spare money and liked Lego and got a thrill from chasing Lego bargains and spending money. I was not enjoying my job which took up most of my time and needed some addiction to keep the dopamine up and the Lego investing was it for a while. There are certainly worse things to get a thrill from and the returns from this have been great (as opposed to blowing money that you can't get back).

5. My strategy from here will depend on whether I end up with an office job again. While I work from home, I can keep going like this. I wait for eBay to offer me a promo and then I list about 40-70 sets (any unsold from last time and an extra copy of any I sold recently). If I go back to work away from home, I will have to put slower dispatch times and offload sets more slowly, but then I won't really need the money so desperately because I will only do that to get back to my decent salary I had three years ago.

Side-note: It's worth trying being self-employed or having no income at all for a while, living off savings (or Lego reselling) for a while. Even if you have a wife and three kids! Once you've done that, the fear of losing your job security and income is not as big in future. I would have quit my office job much sooner if I had known I would not keel over and die without it. Almost all the biggest "success" stories I hear seem to come from people who hit rock bottom or just started with almost nothing. The effort to get back to parity (or just survive) drives you forward and then you don't lose that momentum when you hit "normal" - you keep going up. If you've only ever been at normal, then you can get stuck and don't have the momentum.  Two of my biggest idols are Tony Robbins and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson - both started with so little, but they had good attitudes and determination and commitment. I think I've generally had a good attitude but have never been particularly self-disciplined to be able to stick to specific goals/projects. This Lego selling has helped a lot with that kind of thing, as I'm more of an Ideas Man who starts lots of projects and never takes them anywhere.

Edited April 5, 2017 by Gondorian

[KShine]

My advice is:

 

Edited April 5, 2017 by KShine

[yellow1x16]

Thanks for keeping this topic running. One of the best on this site. Single handedly kept me away from the current Amazon sale going on.

[BrickLegacy]

The original post was gold.  Sad to see that it was truncated.

[seapotato]

Nice to hear an update. Sometimes I can't resist the sales but my buying has definitely slowed down.

[Voltron]

It's always good to hear "real life stories" from members who started years back. I personally gain alot more from these sort of topics as it really does drill down the true reality of lego investing, and also enforces the point  to not get too carried away (something which i have done in the past).

It's very easy for anyone with spare cash to buy buy buy. But anyone who wants to get into lego investing should really contemplate the following:

- Do you really understand / appreciate how much time it will take to sell the set you bought in under 10 seconds from amazon, as it will be alot longer than that when it comes to selling time.

- You will be sacrificing alot of your precious time for this "hobby". Sure you will make money (or you hope to :p), but it will take up alot of your "free" time (nothing is ever free...) unless you manage your time properly. 

- If you are an "active" person who changes jobs / travels alot etc, storing sets and getting time to sell will be a hassle.

- Its easy to make a plan and say you will wait 3 years before you sell, but name me one person in this world who has managed to plan their life that well, most peoples lives change drastically in 1 day let alone 3 years.

 

I've personally cut back investing immensely this year as I want to concentrate to sell my bad investments. Some examples of my mistakes were:

- Star wars TFA sets I bought too early + not enough discounts

- Random city sets bought at 50% off, seemed like a good idea at the time  due to price but i bought too early + no demand due to sets being rehashed frequently and not "iconic" enough to be good investments.

- Minifigures. Bought loads when they were in 3 for 2. Problem is most are duplicates and only way to make money is selling individually. I can't be bothered with the hassle so will probably sell as a joblot one day.

 

Only sets I've bought this year are lincoln memorial / flat iron architecture sets,  Sith Infiltrator / Battle droid carriers / ectos during the SAH 50% sale. 

I was contemplating buying stuff during the current SAH VW beetle promo, but i honestly don't see the point. Even with the beetle, I can get most sets cheaper elsewhere. It's also a guarantee nowadays that there will be a some sort of 3 for 2 or sale at tesco / Asda/ Argos etc, so I rather save my money and wait. There's definitely no point buying sets before imminent retirement now aswell (unless you qf) as most sets are advertised as "retiring soon". 

[Val-E]

Yes, the continued policy of tagging retiring soon sets will mean that it makes little sense to buy for investment prior to that, especially for exclusives/ ideas.

We saw with Doctor Who and Ecto that the best time to buy was in the full mark down sale and anyone who bought sooner probably bought higher and got a worse CAGR.

[brickvoyeur]

The biggest rule that I have stuck to is to only play with house money. My selling started with 5 sets I picked up at Walgreens for $5 a piece. I ended up flipping them for $50 a piece.(4x 75015, 1x 75002). I paid myself back that $25 investment and started buying used sets in bulk. Hit the jackpot that year right after Christmas with a large bulk of used sets for $400. Ended up selling them for $2500 after splitting.

At this point that $25 investment has turned into 30k (MSRP price, not current value) of sets sitting in my basement that didn't affect my normal household budget. To this day I still don't break that rule (have a separate account for investing). I've taken money out of the Lego fund for home remodeling and various other things... but still not spending anything outside of profit money for Lego sets. Keeps everything grounded, has saved me from many bad investments because money wasn't available in that account, and it takes away the wife's ability to complain about the purchases I make. Taken me 3 years to get to this point, but I couldn't choose a safer route here.

Edited April 5, 2017 by brickvoyeur

[Gondorian]

Thanks for the replies and encouragement. Mhd747 has shared a lot of wisdom above. And brickvoyeur's idea of only playing with house money is a good one and the returns from that initial $25 are astounding, but don't overlook the time that goes into it! That's a precious resource too. Speaking of which ...

I've been thinking more about this and am sure I could not have stopped myself from spending so much years ago, but I reckon I'm in a better place now with a little more self-control and not feeling so down that I need a thrill of bargain hunting and imagined profits as an addiction. It also helps to know how much work is involved in realising the profits. It kind of takes the shine off that bit, which then makes the bargains look less good. I'm also getting a bit disillusioned with Lego due to having no space for finished sets to go (whether built by instructions or our own creations) and no time to do anything with them. We have too many opened sets and any Lego time seems to be spent tidying up! I found it really hard to sell my only Town Hall, clinging onto the dream of having a row of modulars one day, but I decided to let it go because I knew deep down I would never open it and never find the space to put it. I've since sold both my Fire Brigades as well and not bought any of the newest modulars. So there's another aspect of the buying addiction shattered! Yay!

So since there's no longer the same kind of addictive pull and I can think more clearly, I can now remember and try to stick to a golden rule I set for myself about 10 years ago which I guess I forgot: never do anything purely for money. The daft thing is that I had some spare money 4 years ago and I bought Lego mostly to try to make more money off it (with minor expectation to keep some of the Lego for myself). I didn't even need the money, yet I still did something just for money!

Obviously, I have got other benefits from doing all the selling, as I outlined in my previous post yesterday, but I don't think doing any more buying to make money from it can be justified to myself. I have a strong belief that I should put time into things that deliver value first and foremost, with money flowing from that (hopefully). If I get really good at Lego investing, then what value have I given the world other than helping people find retired sets in very good condition sealed in box? When I consider each bought set to take at least one hour in the future to liquidate (more like three hours when you factor in buying/storing/logging/listing/packing/posting) then each purchase is a commitment to throw away that time in the future. Time I can't afford to throw away when there's value to be delivered in this world!

I hope this post was useful or I wasted time trying to deliver value for you guys! Don't get me wrong, I think Lego investing can be a good source of extra income if you have the time available to put into it, but it needs to be down to your individual philosophy as to whether you want to give up that time. I don't want to any more, so buying any more sets is just going to make things worse in terms of time for me.

[Guest TabbyBoy]

Thanks guys for your great posts. As you're aware, I stopped investing last year and I now confirm that I'll never get back into it again as the competition is just too much, the fees are too high, packing is expensive, it's too time consuming, too many scammers and demand is just not what it was. Even though I made thousands of £s profit last year, I'd have made a lot more if I just did a little overtime and moonlighting which would've been a lot less work, stress and risk. Even Bitcoin made good money with some risk, but no work whatsoever. My "excess" funds for 2017 have now gone into a stocks/shares ISA with a little left for Bitcoin when it drops again.

Would I get into LEGO investing if I started now? Certainly not! It's a HUGE amount of work for peanuts at best.

@Gondorian.... How come you're still a private eBay seller? I was selling less than you when eBay threatened to close my account unless I changed it to a business account. The problem with a business account is higher fees, email spam, and NO offers like free listing or FVF discounts, no benefit whatsoever - so I closed it! I'll open a new private account next year perhaps if I have anything left to sell. Local word-of-mouth sales and "mail-shotting" previous eBay buyers with my stock list has worked out well with... no fees!

I have a list of over 1,000 repeat LEGO buyers which I may pass on at some point when I'm finally done and out of stock.

Don't worry, I love the product and I'll always have a personal collection.

[Gondorian]

I guess 300 sets in 3 years is not considered enough to be a business seller.  I also go long periods with nothing on there and it's never in multiples when they are on there. Maybe that's the kind of thing they look for, I don't know.