Bricklink/BrickOwl - Discussion, questions, & answers

[JDM]

anyone have an opinion / experience on whether Super Lots work for minifigs?  for example i want to sell all the figures from a spare 75104 - KR Shuttle:  Kylo Ren commands a decent price on its own but I don't want to be left with the other figs forever.  Do people buy a set of figures from one set?

[Lordoflego]

I'm not jumping into selling parts on bricklink, I can't get that organized, but I wouldn't mind having some rare pieces in my store. Are any bricks in the pictures rare? I can't even tell if the green in first picture is lime green or bright green which is very rare. Or the second picture, is it 1x 1 brick Maersk blue? What's the blue 2 x 4 above? Any help would be appreciated. 

[AirborneAFOL]

If theyre available at a retail PAB wall, no, theyre not rare.

[thoroakenfelder]

Probably medium blue not maersk. First pic looks lime green.

[randrace]

When I buy from Bricklink, I always look and see what common bricks (1x2s, 2x4s) the seller has that I might add to my order. Now that I'm selling, I've thought about buying some bricks from Pick-A-Brick to round out my store and maybe attract buyers to my "for profit" minifig parts. Does anyone else stock bricks that they are not necessarily making a profit on to attract more buyers? What size bricks sell well?

I'm 5 weeks into selling, and am not sure where to focus my energy as far as what to stock. My minifigure parts are selling, but other common pieces are not doing much yet. I have a ton of blue and tan 1x and 2x bricks and tiles from Pirates Chess I thought would fly, but no interest yet. I also parted out three 75135 Jedi Intercepters which, in retrospect, was not the best use of my time or money. I have 20,000 pieces listed in 1,200 lots; I'm forcing myself to cool it when I hit 25,000 pieces.

[vincevaughn]

3 hours ago, randrace said:

When I buy from Bricklink, I always look and see what common bricks (1x2s, 2x4s) the seller has that I might add to my order. Now that I'm selling, I've thought about buying some bricks from Pick-A-Brick to round out my store and maybe attract buyers to my "for profit" minifig parts. Does anyone else stock bricks that they are not necessarily making a profit on to attract more buyers? What size bricks sell well?

I'm 5 weeks into selling, and am not sure where to focus my energy as far as what to stock. My minifigure parts are selling, but other common pieces are not doing much yet. I have a ton of blue and tan 1x and 2x bricks and tiles from Pirates Chess I thought would fly, but no interest yet. I also parted out three 75135 Jedi Intercepters which, in retrospect, was not the best use of my time or money. I have 20,000 pieces listed in 1,200 lots; I'm forcing myself to cool it when I hit 25,000 pieces.

Different people look for different things and follow different "profiles"

- The MOC guy needs a specific color of a specific piece and needs a ton of them.  And on common bricks this absolutely can be used to hook a fish.  Joe MOC'er needs 200x 2x4 bricks in white.  He obviously doesn't want to order from multiple stores and eat multiple shipping charges.  So he plugs it in.  Not many stores have quantities that large so that narrows the pool quite a bit.

- Collector has a wishlist of parts to complete his misc sets and needs.  The store that has the most of his 90 unique lots; quantity of one...gets the sale.  This is especially true of vintage used pieces that are not common.

In any case usually once something draws them to your store then they look around for A: other things they want and/or B: things that are a good deal/cheap.  Because the shipping charges are there regardless, so might as well maximize.

I look at it like a fishing net.  The bigger more diverse the net you can throw out...the more fish you haul in.  It looks like you are doing pretty good.  The pieces will sell eventually just be patient and focus on increasing your net size.  I would set incremental goals.  Like have 50k pieces for sale by next month and so on to wherever you see the endgame for the store (i.e. how insane do you want to get.  A 200k part store and a nice monthly income? A 2 million part store that needs your attention full time? A shop that rivals the population of the United States in Minifigures?).  Also think about the various types of customers and what drives their sect of the LEGO ecosystem.  Then try to think like them and meet their needs.  Look at MOC's and see the pieces that people need a lot of or a few of.  Note the popularity of colors.  Something I did was go back and watch all of JangBrick's Bricklink unboxing videos on his Youtube channel to try and understand the forces that drive LEGO users and what they look for.

That's my .02 cents.  Keep in mind I will be opening my BL store within the next 2 months so I could be way wrong

[Phil B]

9 hours ago, randrace said:

When I buy from Bricklink, I always look and see what common bricks (1x2s, 2x4s) the seller has that I might add to my order. Now that I'm selling, I've thought about buying some bricks from Pick-A-Brick to round out my store and maybe attract buyers to my "for profit" minifig parts. Does anyone else stock bricks that they are not necessarily making a profit on to attract more buyers? What size bricks sell well?

I'm 5 weeks into selling, and am not sure where to focus my energy as far as what to stock. My minifigure parts are selling, but other common pieces are not doing much yet. I have a ton of blue and tan 1x and 2x bricks and tiles from Pirates Chess I thought would fly, but no interest yet. I also parted out three 75135 Jedi Intercepters which, in retrospect, was not the best use of my time or money. I have 20,000 pieces listed in 1,200 lots; I'm forcing myself to cool it when I hit 25,000 pieces.

Be careful with pricing common, popular bricks at a loss. Let's say you buy 200 white 2x4 bricks as a loss leader, and they cost you $0.20 each. You list them for $0.15 to attract people to your store. Then someone comes in and places an order for just 200 white 2x4 bricks. What do you do now? Buy more white bricks at a loss? You don't want to end up as the Kmart of BrickLink.

When I opened my store, I noticed that the common bricks typically sold full available quantity. So this is IMO a very likely scenario. I personally would put common bricks in my store at a premium, provided that you have a wide range of non-common pieces. That way people spend the extra dollar on the common bricks because they know they get the special pieces they want in the same order and save $5-$10 on shipping that way.

Edited March 6, 2017 by Phil B

[Vinetu]

1 minute ago, Phil B said:

Be careful with pricing common, popular bricks at a loss. Let's say you buy 200 white 2x4 bricks as a loss leader, and they cost you $0.20 each. You list them for $0.15 to attract people to your store. Then someone comes in and places an order for just 200 white 2x4 bricks. What do you do now? Buy more white bricks at a loss? You don't want to end up as the Kmart of BrickLink.

When I opened my store, I noticed that the common bricks typically sold full available quantity. So this is IMO a very likely scenario. I personally would put common bricks in my store at a premium, provided that you have a wide range of non-common pieces. That way people spend the extra dollar on the common bricks because they know they get the special pieces they want in the same order and save $5-$10 on shipping that way.

That is exactly what I do now, and I learned that lesson the hard way :-)

[thoroakenfelder]

If you get parts with poorly applied stickers, doyou just remove them and sell the parts as plain? What if the stickers are starting to detach?

[lego rules]

9 minutes ago, thoroakenfelder said:

If you get parts with poorly applied stickers, doyou just remove them and sell the parts as plain? What if the stickers are starting to detach?

If the set / sticker is rare, take pictures and list with sticker.  Otherwise, remove, clean and list.

[donbee]

If the set / sticker is rare, take pictures and list with sticker.  Otherwise, remove, clean and list.

There's a technique to safely remove and reuse a sticker?
And people will buy it?
I guess it makes sense, just wasn't intuitive for me.

[lego rules]

7 minutes ago, donbee said:

There's a technique to safely remove and reuse a sticker?
And people will buy it?
I guess it makes sense, just wasn't intuitive for me.

The question was about removing the sticker and selling the part.  The sticker is obviously garbage at that point.

[TomOOO]

Stickers can be removed while the glue is still "soft" which invariable means you can reposition your own mistakes, but generally all old sticker (someone else's mistake) the glue is hard and removing the sticker results in garbage as Lego rules says.

[thoroakenfelder]

I got some of the stickered parts from 7753 Pirate Tank. they're pretty out of whack and some of them have dirt and hair under them. It doesn't look like there's a huge demand for them. So, I might as well just scrap the stickers.

I was just wondering if parts sell faster/easier if there's no sticker at all. For the specific pieces in question, I'm not sure it matters one way or the other, but I do feel like a crap sticker is going to keep them in my inventory a lot longer

[Phil B]

I have bought bricks with stickers on them before when I needed plain bricks (and then just hidden the stickers inside my build), so as long as you price your stickered bricks on par or slightly below the same "plain brick" price you should find people who buy them.

Some bricks are worth significantly more with sticker than without (The turntables from Sponge Bob's Bikini Bottom set come to mind) - they likely won't sell faster than a plain brick, for which there is always demand, but taking a sticker off might reduce the value of a part by a factor 5-10x in some cases.

I could not think of any scenario where someone would pay MORE for a brick with a (in your words) "crap" sticker, i.e. one that has peeled and/or looks frayed, over the same brick without sticker, in the same condition.

[Zelgazra]

3 hours ago, Phil B said:

Some bricks are worth significantly more with sticker than without (The turntables from Sponge Bob's Bikini Bottom set come to mind) - they likely won't sell faster than a plain brick, for which there is always demand, but taking a sticker off might reduce the value of a part by a factor 5-10x in some cases.

To back up this statement, I just purchased a few bricks with stickers attached from a 7783 Batcave. Paid about 16 euros for the 3 large panels, which is quite a bit more than the parts alone. In my case that's still quite a bit cheaper than buying a new sticker sheet though!  

[donbee]

The question was about removing the sticker and selling the part.  The sticker is obviously garbage at that point.

Ahh. I c

I read "list sticker" rather than "list with sticker"

Because the op was about "poorly applied" stickers.

[RedBaron]

This may be a stupid question, but does anyone know how drop shippers find their customers?  It is mildly annoying that I am supplying inventory for a store other than my own.  They pay my price which is fine, but do not do any of the work or take any of the risk involved.

[SpaceFan9]

I've I.D-ed one of my drop shippers, due to a return.  It was an epic transaction: customer bought a Christmas train polybag thinking it was the minifig scale train, and then was irate that they paid so much for 30-some-odd bricks.  Thankfully, they returned it in the condition I sent it.  They even included in the return package the full email transcript of the return request discussion.  It was very enlightening.

This particular drop-shipper sells on the Walmart.com marketplace.  I do feel a bit sorry for their customers.  They are paying through the nose, and a simple search on Google would save them lots of money.

[donbee]

This may be a stupid question, but does anyone know how drop shippers find their customers?  It is mildly annoying that I am supplying inventory for a store other than my own.  They pay my price which is fine, but do not do any of the work or take any of the risk involved.

I imagine they're mostly Amazon and other non-auction market places. Places where "toywhiz" and such sell. Like Walmart, ratuken, Barnes, etc.
they charge so much, they can afford to drop ship, if they get a sale.

[Phil B]

1 hour ago, SpaceFan9 said:

I've I.D-ed one of my drop shippers, due to a return.  It was an epic transaction: customer bought a Christmas train polybag thinking it was the minifig scale train, and then was irate that they paid so much for 30-some-odd bricks.  Thankfully, they returned it in the condition I sent it.  They even included in the return package the full email transcript of the return request discussion.  It was very enlightening.

This particular drop-shipper sells on the Walmart.com marketplace.  I do feel a bit sorry for their customers.  They are paying through the nose, and a simple search on Google would save them lots of money.

Did you make a new customer? Sounds like prime opportunity.

[SpaceFan9]

1 hour ago, Phil B said:

Did you make a new customer? Sounds like prime opportunity.

No, I didn't. The original purchaser was Grandma, who meant well but was misguided.  Mom handled the return, and she didn't strike me as someone willing to pay $20+ for a poly bag.  

Here is a profile of my most regular customer.... a drop-shipper: https://blog.doba.com/meet-rupesh-sanghavi-his-nook-is-books/

[minicoopers11]

14 hours ago, RedBaron said:

This may be a stupid question, but does anyone know how drop shippers find their customers?  It is mildly annoying that I am supplying inventory for a store other than my own.  They pay my price which is fine, but do not do any of the work or take any of the risk involved.

Most are Amazon, I think. Drop shippers buy from me on Bricklink and eBay. "It's a gift...do not include invoice or price info" is the dead giveaway.

[LegoMan1212]

2 hours ago, minicoopers11 said:

Most are Amazon, I think. Drop shippers buy from me on Bricklink and eBay. "It's a gift...do not include invoice or price info" is the dead giveaway.

Thus how the middle man was created.  Also, plenty of risk.  You could simply not honor the request and they would be SOL or have to pay a higher price somewhere else.  In a way, it's sort of like hedging for scalpers too when they promise packages to events at prices and then have to go out and find it so they can deliver

Jokes aside, I believe a very effective way to create business through this would be to slip in a business card so the consumer can come directly to you next time.

[justapilgrim]

Even if it was a generic "fulfilled by Bricklink, next time buy direct"