How to see your brickfolio increase by 50% in an instant

[glenbart]

So this applies to members and guests from Europe, Australia or basically anywhere outside of the US.

As a guest visiting this site, it is possible you will view the price guide on brickpicker, think "that's not right" and then never visit the site again. I know because that is what I did, eventually the site won me round by providing a hub of all the latest lego news and the forum can fill a few void hours.

(From what I can gather) The reason the price guide is so out is because there is not enough accurate data and I imagine it also needs tweaking which is going to be a whole lot of man hours. I have often thought how I could help out with the U.K data but with so many sets out there it would be a full-time job, but I think I'd be good for a single theme, maybe every 2 weeks, finding out the average price of a set. Anyway, I don't think members or visitors to the site should be put off from the site because we can not have what we want being a fully operational death star...err, I mean price guide.

I have decided to change items in my brickfolio, instead of entering the purchase price, I have now changed this to "current value". It does become frustrating when I can not use my brickfolio to its fullest potential. I think this way I am going to find it much easier to decide what to sell when I'm in need of cash, I can see how many of each set I have and what price I'd put it up for. Then when I subtract that selling value I can see what my collection value is and whether I can sell more or should be selling less.

Just my thoughts, any views or ideas are welcome.

[waddamon]

Move to the USA where there is more data for more sales and it will be a very good measure of price.

[Bernard74]

Currently, the values in your brickfolio are the U.S. values converted to your local currency, not the EU/UK/AUS values from the priceguides. And, from what I can tell, it reflects december prices although the price guides are updated to mid-january.

 

Ed and Jeff have said that a future update to the brickfolio will enable to set it to reflect the market you are in, we just have to be a little patient.For the sets I am actually considering selling which are just a couple, I just check the priceguides (and ebay itself).

[StarCityBrickCompany]

Yes - I believe that the price guide is not an accurate guideline for a number of reasons (I gave up on that argument a long time ago).

 

Of course, misleading valuations over time (that have been believed by so many), have made them (for better or worse) closer to being accurate.

[Jeff Mack]

God only knows what the value of this thread is.  I appreciate the offer to help with something, but you just need to wait.  I am quite tired of listening to everyone that knows so much about whether the price guide is good or bad.  It is just a guide, we have said that more than enough.  Just like any car guide out there, it is just a guide.  If you go to a dealer ship, good luck saying "Hey Kelly Blue Book says my Pinto is worth this".  

 

Yes - I believe that the price guide is not an accurate guideline for a number of reasons (I gave up on that argument a long time ago).

 

Of course, misleading valuations over time (that have been believed by so many), have made them (for better or worse) closer to being accurate.

 

Please, feel free to create your own price guide.  I know you have beat it up too many times to count.  Please share your guide with the rest of us.  I personally would like to see it.

 

I just took a look, I am able to grab the data up to 2/26.   So in a few more days I should have all of Jan/Feb and will get everything caught up.

[Veegs]

God only knows what the value of this thread is.  I appreciate the offer to help with something, but you just need to wait.  I am quite tired of listening to everyone that knows so much about whether the price guide is good or bad.  It is just a guide, we have said that more than enough.  Just like any car guide out there, it is just a guide.  If you go to a dealer ship, good luck saying "Hey Kelly Blue Book says my Pinto is worth this".  

 

 

Please, feel free to create your own price guide.  I know you have beat it up too many times to count.  Please share your guide with the rest of us.  I personally would like to see it.

 

I just took a look, I am able to grab the data up to 2/26.   So in a few more days I should have all of Jan/Feb and will get everything caught up.

 

Exactly - this is a guide only.  When I'm actually getting ready to sell, nothing beats ebay sold listings (I use the link from BrickPicker).  I find it best to take a look at the last five or ten sealed sets (obviously I'm selling a sealed set in this scenario) and what they sold for.  I also look at individual sales if I think they are too low/high and check out shipping costs. 

 

I admit I like seeing my Brickfolio % increase, but during the holidays, for example, sets were increasing in value much faster than any price guide could keep up with.  I use the guide as a general update on whether sets are reaching 'sale' potential only. 

[asharerin]

If you want an accurate price guide then take the lowest bricklink price guide price for your set, add the lowest amazon price and average the two. This will give you an extremely accurate price at what your item is worth.

 

E.***. 10197 Fire Brigade NIB is $232 on bricklink and $270 on Amazon giving you $251. 

 

$251 plus shipping is the current market value of the set.

 

Very accurate, very easy, very fast. Savvy?

[Ed Mack]

Bite my tongue....Anyway...Jeff has stated that the non-US Brickfolios will be getting converted to their native eBay prices shortly.  Besides not enough data, there are programming issues that needed to be addressed as well and they are being fixed.  Countless times we have stated the Brickfolio is a work in progress and needs some tweaking.  After the Brick Classifieds and new Daily Deals page, Jeff will take a look at upgrading the Brickfolio to the third version.  These are major upgrades that take months, if not years to implement properly.  

 

As Jeff said, the Brickfolio is just a guide.  There can be multitudes of variations(box, no box, mint box, poor box, missing pieces, etc...) of a "new" or "used" LEGO set that can affect price and members need to put their thinking caps on and figure it out for themselves.  The Price Guide is based on the average of their most recent eBay sales, with outliers removed.  Various words are filtered out as well.  It is not perfect.  There are over 10,000 LEGO sets and we only check the ones that people ask us to.  What makes it difficult for Jeff and I is that we are Americans and we don't always know what non-US data should be.  We must leave it up to the members to point out issues and possible pricing errors.

 

A few other thing of note with the Brickfolio.  Jeff and I were talking about including the MSRP price of recently released sets(that don't have any sold data) into the system(until we get data).  Many members will complain that their $250 Sea Cow has zero value for example, so hopefully this deals with that issue.  Also, some sets sell for more money on eBay than at current retail prices because people sell these sets internationally to countries that don't have LEGO retailers and they get top dollar.  One last thing, data from very old sets is sketchy at best.  There are not a lot of sold listings for the most part, especially MISB ones.  For the most part, old LEGO sets from the 70s, 80s and early 90s have less value than one would think, but that is the case.  

[Ed Mack]

If you want an accurate price guide then take the lowest bricklink price guide price for your set, add the lowest amazon price and average the two. This will give you an extremely accurate price at what your item is worth.

 

E.g. 10197 Fire Brigade NIB is $232 on bricklink and $270 on Amazon giving you $251. 

 

$251 plus shipping is the current market value of the set.

 

Very accurate, very easy, very fast. Savvy?

And when our data gets updated in the next couple of days, you will see approximately the same number.

[DoNotInsertIntoMouth]

God only knows what the value of this thread is.  I appreciate the offer to help with something, but you just need to wait.  I am quite tired of listening to everyone that knows so much about whether the price guide is good or bad.  It is just a guide, we have said that more than enough.  Just like any car guide out there, it is just a guide.  If you go to a dealer ship, good luck saying "Hey Kelly Blue Book says my Pinto is worth this".  

 

 

Please, feel free to create your own price guide.  I know you have beat it up too many times to count.  Please share your guide with the rest of us.  I personally would like to see it.

 

I just took a look, I am able to grab the data up to 2/26.   So in a few more days I should have all of Jan/Feb and will get everything caught up.

 

Heh you mean the price guide isn't going to tell me exactly what my set will sell for and the profit I will make on the exact purchase price that I bought it for in the exact condition?!?!?

 

Oh wait - I just realized its called price "guide" and not Price "will absolutely wipe your butt for you and order new toilet paper afterwards". 

 

I kid - I kid.

 

In all seriousness, anyone who looks at the price guide and thinks its wrong and leaves - good riddens. People who don't spend enough time to think about it before criticizing it are probably not going to be the best people to have on here anyway.

 

I mean - everyone has a different interpretation of what it should be anyways right? We have people going on all the time about what it should or shouldn't be, where the data should come from, why it says more than a retail price when its still available, etc.

 

The fact is  - it is a guide because unless you are some omnipotent being, there is no way to know it to an exact number. 

 

Also - instead of putting something down or yelling for updates, find a way to use it in its current state. I used to not fill out my Brickfolio - NOW its an inventory system for my investment sets. I keep track of them in there and I check to see what stuff is growing at about what rate. Once something starts to slow down, I pull it out of my Brickfolio and put it in my Ebay store. 

[iahawks550]

 

 anyone who looks at the price guide and thinks its wrong and leaves - good riddens.

I got a good chuckle out of that.

 

As far as the price guide, it's good data. It may not be data to tell you how much your sets are truly worth, but it's data to tell you how your set is performing, or demand for the set.

 

I

[gregpj]

My favorite part of the data for sets is the chart that shows the growth over time. It is an extremely valuable tool for the exact reason DNIMM said.

The brickfolio is extremely useful to see your collection in different ways not possible with a basic excel spreadsheet that I'm sure many people cook up with a few basic formulas.

I think it's great just as it is. Thanks Jeff and Ed. The majority do appreciate your efforts.

Sent from my iPod touch using Brickpicker

[Ed Mack]

My favorite part of the data for sets is the chart that shows the growth over time. It is an extremely valuable tool for the exact reason DNIMM said.

The brickfolio is extremely useful to see your collection in different ways not possible with a basic excel spreadsheet that I'm sure many people cook up with a few basic formulas.

I think it's great just as it is. Thanks Jeff and Ed. The majority do appreciate your efforts.

Sent from my iPod touch using Brickpicker

Jeff and I are talking about better graphs with the next upgrade...also ones that show up to a 3 full years.  

[Guest brickcrazyhouse]

no matter if 10 price guides say an item is worth say $100 if you can only get someone to pay $80 thats what its worth.

[eyebrow40]

When you click on your item in your brickfolio you can see the current value in the EU. So what i am doing is to check the value of every single set every two months.

At the end i can see the total amount of invested money and the current value of all sets. I know that means a little work, but i am ok with it. 

 

Here's a screenshot of a part:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[glenbart]

Move to the USA where there is more data for more sales and it will be a very good measure of price.

BEST ANSWER: 50 brickpoints awarded.

Most of the other answers relate to what you cannot use your brickfolio for outside of the U.S to the point where you are explaining it's use but are not aware that members outside of the U.S are unable to do any of this.

[abri123]

BEST ANSWER: 50 brickpoints awarded.

Most of the other answers relate to what you cannot use your brickfolio for outside of the U.S to the point where you are explaining it's use but are not aware that members outside of the U.S are unable to do any of this.

Take it for what it is...a guide, and one that is FREE. I use it in conjunction with ebay completed data as it gives me a good idea.

 

I am grateful for this site, and more so because it is free, but I know that my 2507 Ninjago sets don't sell for anywhere near the Brickfolio price in UK, but that's because Ninjago is more popular in the US, and sells for more there.

 

I therefore just use common sense in figuring out what my collection is worth, or what I can get if I sell, but don't expect an exact answer, and like the 1st part of what  DoNotInsertIntoMouth said earlier.

[Veegs]

BEST ANSWER: 50 brickpoints awarded.

Most of the other answers relate to what you cannot use your brickfolio for outside of the U.S to the point where you are explaining it's use but are not aware that members outside of the U.S are unable to do any of this.

 

Wait, can we award BrickPoints at will!!??

[Noodlenut]

This thread (and many others) remind me of this cartoon by Dan Piraro:

 

[TheOrcKing]

This thread (and many others) remind me of this cartoon by Dan Piraro:

Huh, so that is what the last five Commandments were.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TAtRCJIqnk

[TheDarkness]

When you click on your item in your brickfolio you can see the current value in the EU. So what i am doing is to check the value of every single set every two months.

At the end i can see the total amount of invested money and the current value of all sets. I know that means a little work, but i am ok with it. 

 

Here's a screenshot of a part:

 

Bildschirmfoto 2014-03-02 um 20.05.45.png

 

This is how I do it. 

[Jeff Mack]

If you want an accurate price guide then take the lowest bricklink price guide price for your set, add the lowest amazon price and average the two. This will give you an extremely accurate price at what your item is worth.

 

E.g. 10197 Fire Brigade NIB is $232 on bricklink and $270 on Amazon giving you $251. 

 

$251 plus shipping is the current market value of the set.

 

Very accurate, very easy, very fast. Savvy?

 

 

After the recent update, we came in at $247.69  That is pretty close to what you have considering its from a totally different marketplace.

[redeemed763]

In my experience the biggest problem with the brickpicker price guide has nothing to do with its programming, it is the sellers on ebay. If they choose to list an item as brand new, complete, in box but in the description indicate that it is for the set only - no minifigs, there just isn't a good way to weed that out. They are trying some shady methods to get the most recognition and hits but these practices have always led to skewed data. After all, there is no way that people were selling "Attack of the Wargs" for an average of $30 one month on ebay, but that is what the price guide spit out once since they were all listed as brand new, but all the minifigs and wargs had been parted out. 

 

As the Mack's have repeatedly noted, there are also a lot of sets can skew the price upward as well as downward and as long as there is a lot of data, the law of large numbers tends to balance things out. It is very easy to determine from the layout of the guide if there is sufficient data or not, after all, they show how many have sold and you can see all the past and current auctions as well.