Brick Price Report: Best LEGO value Series – Sept 2024

Look we love LEGO, you love LEGO. Everyone loves LEGO and with LEGO moving towards a new form of plastic to make it even more environmentally friendly the reasons you feel guilty for buying more are reducing more every day. But LEGO isn’t cheap and we are in a cost of living crisis so who is looking out for you with the financial reporting you really need.

Starting today we are adding a new feature that we will published on a semi-annual basis a report that lets you know the price per brick comparison for different LEGO series and licensed LEGO so you know what sets you should be investing in to maximise your LEGO Stonks.

Methodology

Being our first Brick Report we did collect a larger than expected data set looking at a random selection of currently available sets.

For each series where possible we choose representative sets in a small (less than 200 pieces), medium (around 500 pieces) and large (1000 pieces) categories. Given that not all LEGO pieces are the same size (some small botanical flowers were small sets but had many pieces) we had to also rely on a relative size/time to construct to a secondary qualifier for the classifications.

With all sets selected we averaged the number of pieces per series AND averaged the price across those same sets to give us an “ideal set” in that series. From there we were able to calculate the price per brick of this ideal set.

Being our first Brick report we did limit it to sets that are currently available and used the AUD price per the online LEGO store meaning that some sets we have selected may be longer running and more popular than others. Moving forward we have recorded the set names and intend to ensure subsequent reports will use ‘current’ sets for the next time period.

Results

With the Price per Brick (PPB) available we were able to plot the following which shows the big winners and the big losers for each series. We have included the number of bricks that the ‘ideal set’ contains as well as the price per brick as in some series the number of sets to average from was limited, so for example for NASA the price per brick was quite low but the average set size was quite large.

As mentioned this is only our first Brick Report but we are hoping to be able to give more analysis and show trending prices with more regular updates every few months. However we are still able to get our initial price baseline that we can draw from with future changes.

Big Winners

If you are looking for bang for your buck right now the best brick return for your dollar is the LEGO Botanical (flower) sets with a PPB of only 10c. This series was definitely helped by the intricate nature of the sets with the smaller sets including a large amount of small pieces relative to other series.

The next best return for your dollar is the NASA related sets. While many sets we will cover next were heavily impacted by licensing the NASA sets including the rovers, NASA Technic Sets and larger sets such as the Artemis launch pad + rocket represented the best value with a PPB of 11c. However, the number of sets available in this series was limited with only sets falling under Large or Medium available. Meaning that while you will save more, you are also spending more.

Spending more to save more was a trend carried over to the LEGO Modular Building sets under the Ideas series. While the set sizes were always of a larger variety the price per set remained relatively consistent (around $350 AUD). These larger sets and larger price also meant a low PPB of only 12c.

If you want to know where to save look for the LEGO Icons series of non-licensed sets. But if you do need licensed LEGO to complete your life Fortnite was a big winner due to the range of sets beating Lord of the Rings and surprisingly Harry Potter.

But if you really the big savings you want to pickup Brickheadz who come in at only 12c PPB regardless of licensing.

Big Losers

While it makes up for it somewhat with having a large variety of sets including small and medium Marvel licensed LEGO topped out the charts in this report coming in at 22c per brick. The number of Marvel sets outnumber DC (who were also high) but we actually believe that Star Wars only avoided the top slot due to the extreme piece count of the large Star Wars sets.

Disney and Nintendo were definitely on the higher end too coming in at 17c PPB each but Nintendo may have been raised by the new exclusive Zelda set which was close to 22c PPB where other Nintendo sets were lower than the 17c watermark.

What we were truly surprised by was the LEGO City sets also breaking the 20c mark but we believe this to be due to a large difference between the Small/Medium sized sets carrying a PPB closer to 13c where the larger sets went as high as 31c.

Final Thoughts

This is only our first report we realise the amount of analysis we have is fairly limited but with the cost of living we want you to make the most bang for your buck when it comes to LEGO. While this should not direct you away from the sets you love maybe it might steer you towards some ranges that you may otherwise skipped over to get that endorphin kick.

Our approach is very much a finger in the air approach to check the weather with some sets and series having slightly deceptive results such as the Dungeons and Dragons set which is brought down by only having 2 sets available (we will be covering the new LEGO D&D Minifigs soon). But if you are looking for the top 4 sets for $ to plastic (soon to be renewable plastic) goodness they are:

1. LEGO Ideas – Viking Village $209.99 @ 9.9c PPB
2. LEGO Icons – Eiffel Tower $999.99 @ 9.9c PPB
3. Hogwarts Castle + Ground $259 @ 9.7c
4. LEGO Fortnite Supply Llama $59.99 @ 8.6c PPB
5. LEGO Technic Snow Groomer $15.99 @ 8.9c and Bull Dozer @14.99 @ 7.6c PPB and

You should not be surprised that these are all on the larger size for sets but the overall best value (and kinda cool looking one) in our sample set was the the LEGO Botanical individual flowers which came down to as low as 5.3c PPB due to the number of small pieces.