How long before you begin parting out sets? Is it paying off?

[tacsniper]

I am still a rookie at this game and so far I've been doing alright with just selling sealed sets. However, when I run some numbers on Bricklinks, it seems parting out some sets can be very lucrative. However, I have to factor in the time it takes to sort out the pieces and the amount of time I will be sitting on bricks and cost of storing these bricks. Does the opportunity cost out weights sitting on some exclusive sets/modulars?

So I want to know how long were you in this investing game before you dive into selling parts? How well have you been doing? What tips you got for the newbies in picking the right sets and general advice?

Thanks in advance!

[golong]

I started investing about 10 months ago in large exclusives.  In the last few months I started to look at ways to make more short term gains (I intend to hold my larger sets for several years) to help fund the purchase of larger sets.

I have done this primarily in 2 ways.  Firstly by buying joblots of minifigures then selling them individually and secondly by splitting sets.  This is not fully parting out sets but splitting the set into parts and then selling the parts.  Both have worked well for me.  Neither is lucrative but both make a decent profit. It takes time but I enjoy the work and it may take a few weeks to sell all parts of the set.

You then see which sets work best and repeat.  Good sets may, for example, cost £50 and sell in parts for just over a £100.

[legoray01]

Only advice on this I can give is to try a few sets first.  I had some damaged box sets that I started with first.  The numbers made it look better but by the time I got through packaging, listing time, etc.  It was not as lucrative as I hoped or did it bring the quick turn around. 

The one thing I noticed was the more active parts buyers for my stuff were from Europe (just an anomaly - during my test maybe).  The part sets I used were all star wars and maybe the market is saturated with those so it also was less attractive to buyers. 

After I did this once it seems like I won't be doing it again.  Maybe the price of entry, maybe I am doing it wrong but in the end I am going to have to rethink my strategy on this.  It has not lead to the profits I hoped and not nearly for the effort I have committed. 

If you have a better experience or approach this differently I would love to hear the results.

 

[ZULU]

There's a lot of content on this site answering your question. 

My advice is simple: if you plan to part out, you need scale and time. It's going to take patience to get to critical mass where you sweet orders from MOCers at higher margins come to your shop. And in order to be that professional part-outer, you have to love the brick in all its aspects:  love the sorting, cleaning, inventorising, assembling orders...

More advice on getting started professionally: 

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ask+clutch

 

Great tutorials & general vids. You'll see at the end (vid 136 or so, that even Clutch admits parting out used and new parts isn't really viable. Lessons from the master)

[Mindbender]

I had to do a double take when I saw your avatar. Copy cat.

Edited April 18, 2015 by Mindbender

[justafrog]

My advice is simple: if you plan to part out, you need scale and time. It's going to take patience to get to critical mass where you sweet orders from MOCers at higher margins come to your shop. And in order to be that professional part-outer, you have to love the brick in all its aspects:  love the sorting, cleaning, inventorising, assembling orders...

​^That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Except that I avoid cleaning by dealing in new.