Stop Buying Crap #8 – LEGO
Posted by Cap on May 16, 2006 |Stop Buying Crap #1 | #2 | #3 | #4 | #5 | #6 | #7 | #8 | #9 | #10 | #11 | #12
More LEGO Than Your Closet Can Hold
It’s embarrassing to admit, but I use to be a real LEGO nut case.
Found the above boxes in one of the more accessible closet in the house. There are a lot more stored away somewhere. I have probably 50% of the products LEGO pumped out between the year 1992 to 1996 (and quite a few of the Star Wars line-up in 1999).
If you’ve ever bought or have seen the price tag of LEGO products, you would know that they’re quite expensive.
Without exaggeration, I can probably sell my LEGO sets for thousands of dollars. It’s wild that LEGO can have such high elasticity; just check eBay for some ridiculous prices on hard-to-find sets.
So, don’t ever buy your kids LEGO. If they want to be creative, buy them a coloring book. Your wallet will thank you.
P.S. Turns out, LEGOLAND at the age of 22 = boring.
Related Links:
- Buying Lego on the Cheap – Raising4Boys.com
16 Comments to “Stop Buying Crap #8 – LEGO”
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May 16th, 2006 at 7:09 am
I’m going to have to disagree with you on this one – LEGOs are anything but crap. First, you need to think of all those extra LEGOs as toys you don’t have to spend money on for your future kids/neices/nephews. I guarantee $100 of LEGOs will last a heck of a lot longer than an X-Box – the fact that you still have all those LEGOs sort of proves my point. (As does the high re-sale value – LEGOs depreciate far less than, say, a new car).
Also, sets like the (admittedly expensive) LEGO mindstorms are essentially brightly-colored engineering tools – they’re extremely powerful as teaching materials. I don’t know a better way of teaching engineering to an 8 year-old.
Last, the very nature of LEGOs means you don’t need all those different sets – once you have a decent base set up, you can build the rest on your own – what better way to teach frugality? Best of all, you can steal extra bricks from the neighbors’ kids and use them for yourself. Ok, maybe that’s not the best lesson to teach. But the previous point still holds.
Downside: too much exposure to LEGOs can affect the mind in strange ways, such as causing an otherwise responsible adult to spend the first hour of his workday composing response to a blog post, even though he’s completely swamped and will now likely have to stay in the office late.
May 16th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Oh no, I’m not saying that LEGO are crap. I know thats the title of the post, but you’ll notice that I never specifically said LEGO are crap/sucks/etc.
I still love my LEGO, I kept them all so that my future kids can enjoy them. That’s the surface reason but deep down they’re mine and no one is going to touch them!
Most of my stop buying crap post deals with excessiveness of anything—mostly examples that I can find from my own reckless spending—and well, I definitely have an excessive amount of LEGO.
But yeah I agree w/ your points, and you should be able to agree that for toys, these are some pretty expensive ones (then again, aren’t all toys expensive?) I suppose at least these are reusable.
Don’t fret about the downside, at least you didn’t take all your LEGO boxes out of the closet, stack ‘em on the floor so you can have a picture for a blog post about LEGO.
May 17th, 2006 at 6:30 am
Ahhhh, yes…Legos. We are a Lego house as well. My 6 year old son got a collection from another relative a few years ago (who, I am thrilled to say, did not know the value of what they were giving up and neither did we at the time). They are primarily Star Wars sets (including some of the original ones). Of course none of them are “new in box”. My husband recently suggested selling that at our yard sale, to which I responded “Are ya nuts?!”
I agree with ya, Cap, that these things are exorbitantly priced. My son wanted the Millennium Falcon about a year and a half ago, and it became the “big gift” for Christmas at $99.99 (if I remember right). Cha-ching! Good thing he loved it!
May 17th, 2006 at 1:50 pm
Oh yes – I definitely agree that LEGOs are muy expensive. Especially the Mindstorm line, which I salivate over. The Technic line is pretty nifty, too, but let’s face facts. No matter how cool a LEGO forklift is, I spend my days dreaming of leading an army of LEGO robots only to be betrayed and deposed by my charismatic plastic second-in-command, not of loading freight.
I’m sorry – what were we talking about again?
May 18th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
Cha-ching even more Lisa. Did you know that the Millennium Falcon has retained its original value? You can most likely still sell the set for $100, and new-in-box ones goes for $180-$200 on eBay. This is the re-released edition in 2004 too! But yeah, both it and the original 2000 release are out of production and “hard” to find. I should have swiped a few from the toy store.
Tell your kid not to miss lose any pieces & keep the instruction manuals :) Just in case he gets tired of them all one day. If that’ll ever happen.
George, I’m not sure but I’m itching to blow $250 on a certain new toy for some reason.
August 27th, 2006 at 5:59 pm
I’m a latecomer to this series, but I have to leave these two points with you.
1. I agree that coloring books are great, but Legos give your kids a whole different set of learning skills. I loved them when I was a kid and hope to help my children build their learning skills with them. If you’re worried about the price, go to garage sales! MANY times I’ve bought whole bins of Legos for $5 or $10. That’s only the cost of a couple coloring books. :)
2. If you go to Legoland, ask for a “Shopping Pass.” This makes it FREE! You get one hour to do everything you can–for an adult that means see the cool structures. When you leave, you check your time at the office and they cancel your credit card payment. Definately worth the stop.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I think collecting certain items is ok if you do it over a period of years and not in one month. Collections are a small way of making people happy. It’s fun to show it off. And after time if you get sick of it you can sell it all on ebay for tons of cash.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:33 am
Man I just agree with the second guy. you cant change what you meant pal, you regreated it and he explained the good points and you were “oh i didnt mean that” bla bla bla the bottom line is lego rules im 21 have a hot girlfriend and play lego infront of her I have the whole collection of lego city. expensive but will always hoild for years to come.
May 22nd, 2007 at 12:36 am
hi! good Lego
June 25th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Guilty. However mine get to inherit my set of Legos so additions to it will be minimal.
When I’m ready to stop playing with them myself that is.
August 5th, 2007 at 6:29 am
Okay, dont ever stop buying… lego is not crap. and ill continue to buy.
I am a happily married woman. yes, girls love lego too! and i saved all my lego from my chilhood. I LENT it to my little brother ten years younger than me and we would paly together. even when i was 19 and he was 9, it was our common ground… Then I asked for it back when i moved away. i let my nieces and nephews play with it. i continued to buy them add ons, as gifts (for me to keep and them to play with) i would get mad if somone would sneak home with a little structure stuck in a pocket. hmmmm, what happened to such and such a piece. i’m missing a person and a horse for example… i passed my addiction on and my nephew loves lego
now i have twins under two, and i am training them with the BABY LEGOS. so that when they are old enough they can play without fear they will swallow my collection. (I cant wait for the chance to play with them again).
LEGOs will forever be a part of this family. some pieces in my collection are from my first sets and a child, some 20 to 25 years old. but can you tell which are old and which are new. although the boxes are gone, it doesnt matter, i will never want to sell on ebay
September 18th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
hi can i have it!!!!
September 20th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
Hello. I have always loved legos but when I was young, my little lego heart was broken when my mom knocked over one of my lego castles after I built it. I think I was a traumatized by that and stopped asking for legos all together. Besides My friend had a friggin huge collection at his house which I was never able to compete with because of the expense. regardless I ended up falling in love with legos again after highschool, vowing to build my own collection of City Legos. I now have tons of the new sets that have come out and still building. I am also thinking I might just invest more money in those cool boxes of legos and start building scupltures like all those other crazy fokes out there. By the way I am majoring in animation so thank god for stop-motion!
October 4th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
Oh my gosh, my sister and I loved Legos. LOVED Legos. I wanted every space set out there, including the large one with the space shuttle and a tram. I never got it due to the cost.
I used to build Lego homes for my Barbies. It came as no surprise to my family that I am now an architect.
Also the Legoland in Denmark allows you to go for free the last hour they are open. Plenty of time to go on one ride and see the cities while enjoying an ice cream. Not sure if the one in Carlsbad does that though.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:35 pm
prepare for a long post…
i remember the topmost box from my childhood days… i think i had the exact same thing… and i also remember being frantic about losing my wizard’s wand… lol.
legos are good if you have a lot of time on your hands (especially with the advanced models with 500+ pieces… that’s not even mentioning mindstorms) it helps finger dexterity, exercises your eyes, and keeps your brain working on how to do the instruction…
when i was a kid (7, maybe?) i used to sit the whole day and build and disassemble childhood masterpiece upon childhood masterpiece… until that day my mum, out of frustration, threw on the floor the best spaceship i made (worked on it for a week) which used more pieces than i could remember, had a working docking bay complete with small, unmanned fighter jets, and a detachable roof for the “bridge” with people manning the consoles inside…
i cried my eyes out for an hour… then went back to building something else… then, for no apparent reason, the addiction stopped, and my pieces all but disappeared…
last month, after almost 15 years, i bought a bionicle (the small one that costs $5)… one month just added a bigger bionicle and a snowmobile technic on my headboard… i’m worried that my inner child might catch up, considering every time i pass by Target, it’s the lego aisle i go to first…
hey, is that darth vader’s tie fighter at the upper-left bottom?
December 24th, 2010 at 10:36 pm
I have always been an avid supporter of lego products. Back in the 90′s, I had a 32″ television box chock full of them. I sold them all to buy a car, and have regretted it ever since. I’ve, since then, started reacquiring lego sets, and have well over 10 thousand dollars worth all over my house. Everything from explorers, to city, to star wars. I even have the complete set of exo-force legos and the wild west ones. Fort legoredo is so awesome. I will never tire of them. building sets, following the instructions, and creating a world all your own is what they’re all about. My kids have sets of their own, but mine are mine! My children may be able to play with them when I die, but until then, they think I’m going to be buried with my lego collection! lol