BrickLink Discussion Forum

Sourcing suitable Lego at a good price here is not easy either, nearly everyone
expects a high price, can’t blame them but it makes it difficult if you want
to resell.

In Announce, Teup writes:

In Announce, runner.caller writes:

In Announce, Teup writes:
Money = time = space. If you want to earn more money, you need either more time
or more space. You can work long hours at a low profit rate, or you can crank
up your profit rate by growing your store which enables higher prices. My strategy
has always been to go nuts on space and save time

You bring up a good point about time.

I'd say the best % return on paper would be from cheap used bulk with figs
and listing every possible piece.

I recently acquired 60lbs for $330 that included approx. 125 figures.

Now, if I were to take the time to list EVERYTHING I could, the unrealized gains
would be huge. A couple thousand dollars maybe, but it would take me a super
long time to list and even longer to realize those gains + I don't have the
space to do all the parts.

I already flipped one architecture set to ebay out of that lot weighing around
2 lbs for approx $80 after fees and shipping. I'll do this with all the bulk
from this lot eventually and probably 2X to 3X on just that as an immediate realized
gain and this will leave the 125 figures as "free" that I will then add to my
BL store.

The % gains are not there, but I can process way more lots if I sell off the
bulk in 2 or 3 listings and then add 100 or so figures to my store vs taking
the time so sort, store, list, pick, pack, and ship 24,000 pieces over the long
run.

Just different strategy, I also know a lot of sellers that do very well with
parts and having a huge variety.

Ah, that makes sense, I was talking strictly about parting out new sets. Those
will usually be 2x or 3x almost by definition, as I think that roughly gets
you an hourly pay of something in between €15-€25 which is an acceptable "career"
for people. If we'd have sources all over the place that give us 5x, pretty
soon the prices will just drop until we settle at the 2x-3x level again.

But as for used, yes, a whole lot more work is involved there, so it makes sense
that you can have 5x there - and probably still end up with that same hourly
pay as you would for parting out a new set at 2x (with the benefit of course
that you have much more cool and unique things to draw customers with).

I think it depends on where you live whether you can source used stock at an
acceptable price, though. Here it's pretty hard. I get the impression that
in America it's common for people to not really be aware of what they have
and just dump it for cheap, while in the Netherlands everyone thinks they're
suddenly an expert or somehow have hidden gems in their attic that the world
was waiting for, even though they don't know anything about Lego. The same
way all Americans know "don't eat yellow snow", all Dutch people know "don't
sell your Lego cheap"

Author:

Teup

Posted:

Jan 19, 2022 06:08

Subject:

Re: Typical profit margins

Viewed:

99 times

Topic:

In Announce, runner.caller writes:

Author:

StickyBrickit

Posted:

Jan 19, 2022 04:53

Subject:

Re: Typical profit margins

Viewed:

116 times

Topic:

In Announce, runner.caller writes:

Some good points about time management. I think this is key with reselling Lego...max.
gains could be seen by parting out every piece and listing individually but to
run this as a full-time business and your sole income would take an enormous
amount of time to build up the stock levels (acquiring, sorting, checking, storing
and listing) so your hourly rate would be very poor, especially to start with.

Probably best thought of as what's the best hourly rate method that can be
achieved in a reasonable amount of time? Say 1-2 years to have a working store
with a livable wage. I don't think individual parts would get you there that
quick.

Author:

Sadler_Bricks

Posted:

Jan 19, 2022 00:36

Subject:

Re: 10k bricks milestone

Viewed:

36 times

Topic: