250+ used lego sets

[umdbulldogs93]

Hello there!  I'm brand new to the world of lego selling.  Over the last six months, I have re-sorted over 250 lego sets (City, Chima, Star Wars, Bionicle, Hero Factory, etc.) and almost 43,000 pieces!  I was going to sell them by the set at my upcoming garage sale.  Can someone give me some guidance as to how to price them?  I have them in ziploc bags with their original instruction books, but not the original boxes.  Can I get 50% of their original retail prices?  This collection goes back many years, so I assume most sets are discontinued.  Please help!

 

[Ed Mack]

Looks like a lot of work.  Look on our price guide for a starting price point.  You will never sell these items at a garage sale for anything close to what you can on eBay, Craigslist, Brick Classifieds, Bricklink, BrickOwl or simialr marketplace.  

[Huskers1236]

I would use the Lego Lot Calculator under the Price Guide tab and input the sets you have by set number.  Make sure to click that they are "used".  This will give you a pretty accurate list of ebay prices for these sets.  You won't get those prices as your garage sale as you are going to have buyers looking for bargain basement prices, but it will give you a good starting point.  If a set shows that it's going for around $30 on ebay, I would probably list it at $15-20 at a garage sale as I don't have to pay any fees and I don't have to ship it.  You will have the best luck with the smaller sets as they are easily afforded by parents for their kids. 

[c_rpg]

Like Ed and Huskers already said: a garage sale is not going to get you anywhere near as much as what your sets are worth.

If you want to get rid of them really fast for a few bucks, then go ahead and sell them at a garage sale. But since you already put in the work of sorting them, you'd better sell them online. People at a garage sale are looking for a bargain.

Online, people usually search for something they specifically want, so they are already willing to pay a higher price.

[thoroakenfelder]

could also try craigslist, letgo, or offerup

[scatttcat]

wow! and I was getting a headache going through my old collection of like 75 sets ?

If you have even more patience and time, I would try somewhere other than a garage sale. Personally my plan is to rebuild my sets, take some nice photos and post them one by one.

However I have accepted this will take most of 2017 to finish and get fully organized, so I guess it is a matter of how quickly you want to move these.

[LegoMan1212]

Round together similar theme sets and bulk sell on Ebay, if you list it properly you should do ok.  Don't list too many in one sale, and try to keep the big ones separate and merge smaller ones together.  

Also would recommend spreading the sales out on Ebay if you have 0 credibility as a seller.  Sell small ones first to gain some feedback before you go big with larger sets.

[legorunner]

As @scatttcat noted, you'll likely need to build them to get top dollar on a marketplace like eBay. Sure, you can list them as complete with pictures of the bags, but buyers like to see the assembled set to know its complete. In my experience, I can get a faster sale at a higher price when I list sets with pictures of the assembled sets vs competitors with picture of the pieces in a bag. With a Bricklink store, as long as you have inventoried all of the pieces, you can list them without assembling them, but the sales will take a lot longer. 

At a recent neighborhood yardsale, people kept trying to buy all 15 of the LEGO polybags that I was selling for $3 each for $3 total. People like bargains! I made one sale then put the rest away...

Goodluck! 

[KShine]

Wow, that is an awful lot of work for someone to do, while not knowing the value of the sets.

Make a spreadsheet (or hopefully you already have one), and start searching the set #'s for values.

I don't believe that a garage sale is the way to go. Open an ebay account, or if you are looking for quick sales - just sell the sets at reasonable prices here (brickclassifieds).

[Zelgazra]

I'm with everyone else here... you've already done the biggest portion of the work required to sell them individually (top dollar potential). People in a garage sale are going to expect to pick them up in bulk quantities at bottom of the barrel prices. If you hold true to your pricing you won't sell anything, if you break under the pressure you'll lose out on a load of potential earnings. 

 

I'd do what others suggested already.... plug all the numbers into the Lot Calculator tool on here (dont forget to tick Used)  and get some values. Perhaps any that are sub $10 in value might be worth flipping at the garage sale in small bundles of 3 or 4 since the effort to list and ship such small sets is hardly worth the money earned on them. Anything of higher value is worth trying to list up individually.