Recommended YouTube LEGO channels, blogs, websites, etc

[LegoSteve]

6 minutes ago, mlc3423 said:

You think if we setup a GoFundMe for Shane just to go away forever he might consider?.....What about you Jim?....LOL

When it comes to Lego Investing/Lego Club for me it's always been the same and will remain the same

 

When we were dissolving the business & splitting up assets he told me if I paid him $48k I could have everything and he would walk away. Of course that didn't happen but in retrospect maybe I should've.

[mlc3423]

19 minutes ago, LegoSteve said:

When we were dissolving the business & splitting up assets he told me if I paid him $48k I could have everything and he would walk away. Of course that didn't happen but in retrospect maybe I should've.

Probably a good idea you didn't.....I've never dealt with Shane but if he is half as bad as everyone says he is he more than likely would've just stabbed you in the back and wouldn't have walked away.....Something about the guy just rubs me the wrong way

[redcell]

1 hour ago, mlc3423 said:

 

When it comes to Lego Investing/Lego Club for me it's always been the same and will remain the same

You beat me to it.

[redcell]

1 hour ago, LegoSteve said:

When we were dissolving the business & splitting up assets he told me if I paid him $48k I could have everything and he would walk away. Of course that didn't happen but in retrospect maybe I should've.

He probably would have walked away from Brick Bucks and he'd now be the Wolf of Bricks.  

[LegoSteve]

13 minutes ago, redcell said:

He probably would have walked away from Brick Bucks and he'd now be the Wolf of Bricks.  

Nah. He was always camera shy because of his...you know. He had only made three videos when we separated and had no confidence in growing a YT channel from scratch. He couldn't even muster 100 TikTok followers and I got almost 15k in less than a year. I even suggested just deleting the channel and both of us starting from scratch. He wouldn't do it. In the end we agreed that I would keep the Patreon because I was always active on there and he would get everything else. Anyway, I'm very much at peace with everything because I no longer have to deal with him and I've done way too much sharing.  I'll shut up now.

[Bricklectic]

 

[Bricklectic]

Jim, maybe its time to start doing the TV interview tour? I find you telegenic and think you would do well honestly.

[LegoSteve]

23 minutes ago, Bricklectic said:

Jim, maybe its time to start doing the TV interview tour? I find you telegenic and think you would do well honestly.

Nah. No tours for me. I'd rather share countless screenshot and recordings of Shane and I chatting. He can only squeeze so much blood out of a turnup. He's sad now but in ten years when he's doing the same gimmick, he'll be beyond pathetic.

[ravenb99]

Why is Steve Jim????

[LegoSteve]

2 minutes ago, ravenb99 said:

Why is Steve Jim????

Because this was the handle I made back when I was a manager at B&N and I didn't want their lost prevention team to know I was reselling LEGO.  It was just a basic handle name.

[brickvoyeur]

12 hours ago, LegoSteve said:

Nah. No tours for me. I'd rather share countless screenshot and recordings of Shane and I chatting. He can only squeeze so much blood out of a turnup. He's sad now but in ten years when he's doing the same gimmick, he'll be beyond pathetic.

As an outsider here, I'd be interested in seeing more of the backstory. It's been quite a show watching the market fall apart and a few choice people really working hard to prop it up. It reminds me of the memestock investors still working hard to get people to buy in so their own money doesn't go down the toilet. 

It seems that you were interested in buying his half of the business, so why didn't you pull the trigger? What price would have worked for you?

[redcell]

1 hour ago, brickvoyeur said:

As an outsider here, I'd be interested in seeing more of the backstory. It's been quite a show watching the market fall apart and a few choice people really working hard to prop it up. It reminds me of the memestock investors still working hard to get people to buy in so their own money doesn't go down the toilet. 

It seems that you were interested in buying his half of the business, so why didn't you pull the trigger? What price would have worked for you?

Count me as interested too, but I realize that you've already shared quite a bit more than most would under the circumstances.  I'm curious about how you two originally got into business together.  If you had the channel at the outset, what did he do that would make him think he is entitled to $60k at the point of separation.  Was that aspirational or irrational or both?

[exciter1]

26 minutes ago, redcell said:

Count me as interested too, but I realize that you've already shared quite a bit more than most would under the circumstances.  I'm curious about how you two originally got into business together.  If you had the channel at the outset, what did he do that would make him think he is entitled to $60k at the point of separation.  Was that aspirational or irrational or both?

He had a previous post which goes over how they got into partnering together.

 

[LegoSteve]

37 minutes ago, redcell said:

Count me as interested too, but I realize that you've already shared quite a bit more than most would under the circumstances.  I'm curious about how you two originally got into business together.  If you had the channel at the outset, what did he do that would make him think he is entitled to $60k at the point of separation.  Was that aspirational or irrational or both?

As I mentioned in the past, Shane likes to troll YouTube and Instagram so he can copy business.  Before my YT channel was rebranded to Brick Bucks, it was called FBAA Millionaire.  I purposely made the channel hard to find and I would have people occasionally reach out to me and ask me questions about reselling.  When I moved from Ohio to Kentucky I stopped making videos but I was still encouraged to continue making more.  Around 2018 Shane reached out to me and we chatted and exchanged information from time to time.  I had open heart surgery on March 16, 2020, the day when everything shut down because of Covid.  I had a lot of complications from my surgery so I couldn’t work for a year.  Because I had a lot of time on my hands, I was diving deep into LEGO ROI spreedsheets and sent a few to Shane.  He asked if we could be business partners and relaunch my YT channel.  He was not the first one who asked me to be partners but because he worked at Microsoft and he said that he knew how to do everything, I thought it would be a good fit.  Not long after he would say things like. “I was researching how to do X” or “We need to purchase something from Income School to do Y.”  I thought to myself, you had told me that you already knew how to do this. SMH.

2 hours ago, brickvoyeur said:

As an outsider here, I'd be interested in seeing more of the backstory. It's been quite a show watching the market fall apart and a few choice people really working hard to prop it up. It reminds me of the memestock investors still working hard to get people to buy in so their own money doesn't go down the toilet. 

It seems that you were interested in buying his half of the business, so why didn't you pull the trigger? What price would have worked for you?

It’s interesting when I hear you say, “It's been quite a show watching the market fall apart and a few choice people really working hard to prop it up.”  At this moment I’m quite happy with what is going on with LEGO reselling.  Many fly by night resellers are exiting the space and I couldn’t be happier!  I think the future is very bright for LEGO reselling but that doesn’t mean that you can just keep doing what you’ve been doing for the last ten years.  When it comes to getting top dollar reselling LEGO sets, I believe Q3 is the new Q4.  The problem is Q3 doesn’t have as much sales velocity as Q4 so you need to adjust for that.  The name of the game now is exclusive sets.  There are some top picks that don’t involve exclusive sets but excuse the expression, you have to know what you’re doing.  The zombie sets are one of the biggest threats to LEGO resellers and I’m certain LEGO knows that now.  You need to account for that as well.  The days of buying a bunch of Batcave 6860 and hoping for the best 18 months after it retires just doesn’t cut it anymore.

As for the second part of your post, again, he had only recorded three videos himself. There were well over 100 videos of me, and I knew I could start a new channel relatively easily. My main goal out of all of this was to just get away from him as quickly as possible and I wasn’t too concerned with receiving my fair share of the company.  You think he’s annoying from a distance, try dealing with him on a daily basis. LOL.

The choice was either to buy him out or dissolve the company, and then both of us restart from scratch. After we couldn't reach a deal during a video chat, we agreed to dissolve the company and talk more in detail about the next day because it was getting pretty late. The next morning, I woke up to a very lengthy message from him explaining why I should buy the company. I laughed because he was clearly more interested in selling Brick Bucks than I was in buying it. If I recall, I may have offered him $20k, and he said no.

Again, he's no business genius. That email I attached makes him sound like he knows what he’s talking about, but when you google ‘How to sell a business,’ he pretty much paraphrased the content in the first search result. I told him that everything he contributed to the ‘business’ I could have easily received from UpWork or Fiverr at the time. There was nothing special about what he was doing. Yes, he worked for Microsoft, but he only worked in ad sales placement at the time. Nothing more. Anybody could do what he did on YouTube, and plenty of people are now.

I’d be surprised if he was still buying LEGO in somewhat large quantities. He had that warehouse for his book business, but I think that might be gone now. He hated dealing with his book business, by the way. In the past, he presented it as some great thing on his YouTube channel, but he would always ***** to me about it. Lol. I saw on one video a while back that he mentioned he was sending Speed Champions to FBA. That’s a big pivot from his original business model if that’s the case.  He would often reference the California gold rush business model, why spend time mining for gold when you can just sell the picks and other equipment.  Also, if Shane is some LEGO investing genius, why isn’t he buying LEGO at a significant discount from that place overseas that everybody with $100k is now doing?  Again, I’d be surprised if he was still buying much LEGO.

In the past, his wife commented on a YouTube short saying that they would never show Shane’s inventory after a bunch of commenters kept pressing them to do so. I would’ve shared that screenshot in this post, but they must’ve taken that video down.

Personal note: I’m certain this thread has caused some attention and there are a few onlookers.  I’m very aware that many of you have personal scorn for me.  Some will talk **** about me on here but when I talk to them on the phone, they act friendly as can be and that’s ok.  I understand that I am not ‘one of the boys’ on here and I’m fine with that.  I hope I at least get a little bit of credit for the times I have made it a point to tell people on YouTube that I would not be here if it were not for Brickpicker.  I have said that numerous times and it is true.  I have not acted like I am the one who discovered reselling LEGO reselling.

[redcell]

20 minutes ago, LegoSteve said:

 

In the past, his wife commented on a YouTube short saying that they would never show Shane’s inventory after a bunch of commenters kept pressing them to do so. I would’ve shared that screenshot in this post, but they must’ve taken that video down.

 

It's funny that you would mention that because it's always stuck out to me that he's never done any content (at least that I've seen) where he shows any of his actual inventory or warehouse operation beyond a handful of sets put up in the background of his videos.  I've always figured that there was a good bit of puffery going on there.  

[brickvoyeur]

24 minutes ago, LegoSteve said:

It’s interesting when I hear you say, “It's been quite a show watching the market fall apart and a few choice people really working hard to prop it up.”  At this moment I’m quite happy with what is going on with LEGO reselling.  Many fly by night resellers are exiting the space and I couldn’t be happier!  I think the future is very bright for LEGO reselling but that doesn’t mean that you can just keep doing what you’ve been doing for the last ten years.  When it comes to getting top dollar reselling LEGO sets, I believe Q3 is the new Q4.  The problem is Q3 doesn’t have as much sales velocity as Q4 so you need to adjust for that.  The name of the game now is exclusive sets.  There are some top picks that don’t involve exclusive sets but excuse the expression, you have to know what you’re doing.  The zombie sets are one of the biggest threats to LEGO resellers and I’m certain LEGO knows that now.  You need to account for that as well.  The days of buying a bunch of Batcave 6860 and hoping for the best 18 months after it retires just doesn’t cut it anymore.

I actually had the same sorts of thoughts and posted them a bit ago. But unfortunately each time the market bounces back some, it fails to reach the prior heights. It's up to everyone to decide in the end if the juice is worth the squeeze. 

Personally I've become incredibly picky with set choices and price point. I essentially look at every set and put them in a spreadsheet with a rating, and what discount I'd need in order to purchase them. I truly miss doing no prep work and just sweeping shelves. 

On 12/1/2023 at 11:24 AM, brickvoyeur said:

Can we all just be honest at this point? Lego continues to release an incredible array of sets in increasing quantities each year. Many of them so similar enough to something that retired in the past 24 months, that it stifles the upward mobility of the retired set. 

Add in all the excess resellers and stock, that sale window shrinks as the price takes longer to take off, risking that similar remake hitting before it gains any legs. 

Consumers have to choose between buying a likely discounted set from Walmart, a RRP set directly from Lego that often comes with freebies, or an uppriced aftermarket set. This all in a time with rampant inflation gobbling up disposable income, and prices for necessities unlikely to come down now that they have been normalized. 

Your selection choices simply must be sets that are desirable enough to make people want them, and unique enough to not simply be replaced right around the corner. Your buy in needs to be low enough that you can still make money at RRP if it stagnates due to a remake or reseller quantity. Then you need to use your birthday wish that Amazon doesn't have hordes of it in stock. 

I miss the days of stacking carts and counting my profits as I loaded them in. Now I have to think, and that takes away from that endorphin hit I used to get buying stuff. 

 

[cladner]

51 minutes ago, LegoSteve said:

As I mentioned in the past, Shane likes to troll YouTube and Instagram so he can copy business.  Before my YT channel was rebranded to Brick Bucks, it was called FBAA Millionaire.  I purposely made the channel hard to find and I would have people occasionally reach out to me and ask me questions about reselling.  When I moved from Ohio to Kentucky I stopped making videos but I was still encouraged to continue making more.  Around 2018 Shane reached out to me and we chatted and exchanged information from time to time.  I had open heart surgery on March 16, 2020, the day when everything shut down because of Covid.  I had a lot of complications from my surgery so I couldn’t work for a year. 

i'm glad you made it through your surgery.  live to sell another day is what i always say!  excelsior!

[Pseudoty]

1 minute ago, cladner said:

i'm glad you made it through your surgery.  live to sell another day is what i always say!  excelsior!

Yeah you can really see how much healthier you look in your videos, good for you Jim.
 

Shane is also a member here and I haven’t seen him post since people were wrongfully attacking him for his appearance that is beyond his control. Perhaps he will chime in…

[brickolodon]

LEGO Marketplaces 101 for beginners...all in one. 

 

[severalads]

13 hours ago, LegoSteve said:

I hope I at least get a little bit of credit for the times I have made it a point to tell people on YouTube that I would not be here if it were not for Brickpicker. 

Thanks for sharing Jim!

I probably wouldn't be a lego reseller and certainly wouldn't be on Brickpicker if I didn't find your YT channel in 2020. As a total beginner at a time, I found your videos very helpful!

4 years later, still reselling and following your new channel!

[mlc3423]

16 hours ago, brickolodon said:

LEGO Marketplaces 101 for beginners...all in one. 

 

He's actually one of the few YT guys i don't mind besides Jim and a handful of others.....Videos for the most part get to the point and he doesn't seem to get carried away like Shane and some of these other goofs who think Lego is the greatest thing ever and every sets a winner and blah blah blah

[Tonka858]

whatnot is great if you have alot of figures