A Vancouver Island man is selling a Lego minifigure for a whopping $7,200.
Matthew Fox from Black Creek, BC has been collecting Legos since he was a child. He says he once owned four of the rare figures. In recent years he has sold three of them at various prices in the thousands to fund the construction of his new family home.
He says he bought them when they were first released on the Ontario secondary market. The prices at that time were between 400 and 800 dollars.
“I just had this inkling that this man is going to be worth something because they were really cool to me,” Fox said.
“Not bad for a 10 year investment.”
Who is Mister Gold?
According to Andrew Cleary, founder of BrickEconomy.com, a number of factors have contributed to the high value placed on Mr. Gold minifigures.
Cleary created the site about eight years ago to track the value of Lego when people started seeing it as an investment opportunity.
He says scarcity is the main reason for Mr. Gold’s rise in value, as only 5,000 of the minifigures were ever produced. The fact that an interested buyer could not purchase a single Mr. Gold minifigure also added to its value. Someone had to be lucky enough to find the decked out figure in a blind bag for a minifigure series released in 2013.
That led to huge premiums in the secondary market, Cleary says. At the time of publication, Mr. Gold was selling for $1,000 on the secondary markets. Today it is valued at over $6,500, well above Fox’s asking price of Cdn7,200.
“It’s kind of a Holy Grail,” Fox said.
“It’s just one of those things that people seem to know about and really, really want.”
Invest in LEGO
The Lego investment phenomenon has grown over the past decade.
Researchers from Russia’s HSE University published a paper in January 2022 stating that Lego has high returns in the secondary market.
The study, which examined the average returns from 2,322 discarded, sealed Lego sets sold on the secondary market, found that Lego outperforms major stocks, bonds and even gold as an investment in many cases.
Charles Schell, associate dean of the Faculty of Management at Vancouver Island University, says that to appreciate in value anything needs scarcity and a secondary market – just like Mr. Gold.
“People invest in things that they find interesting and enjoy. We all have millennials who grew up with Lego who still enjoy it and see it as a good investment,” Schell said.
“But don’t confuse it with a well-diversified portfolio. There are better, safer options that offer more predictable returns.”
For Fox, collecting Lego isn’t just an investment, it’s a source of joy that he shares with his children.
“There’s creativity behind it,” he says.
“I can design, I can build, I can take two or three kits and put them together to make something that I think is bigger or better.”
