5 Ways To Build A Lego Collection On A Budget

I wasn’t hugely into Lego as a kid but my partner was and has made the most of the chance to get back into it now that we have children too!

Rekindling a childhood love of Lego PLUS having a grown up budget to buy it has been a bit of an explosive (expensive) combination at times.  I’m sure that what we don’t spend on family holidays (as we don’t travel much), we spend on Lego. But we’ve also found a few cool ways to build our collection in a much more cost effective way than buying new sets from the standard retailers.  

Now that we have a good amount of the main pieces in different colours we can be much more creative and the kids are kept entertained for longer. My four year old has amazing fine motor skills and I’m sure a lot of that is down to him playing with Lego from a young age (supervised of course – those pieces are small!).

Here are our favourite ways to build our collection on a budget…

Buying secondhand collections by weight on eBay

The ideal scenario for buying really good value secondhand Lego is when a parent sells it on eBay once their child has grown out of it.  

They want to get rid of it quickly and can’t be bothered to research what pieces are worth or list higher value items individually.

Because genuine Lego is such good quality, you can usually buy it secondhand without noticing any difference compared to buying it new. Of course when you buy in bulk you may not get complete sets, or the instructions, but if you know a collection does contain certain sets, you can get the building instructions online.  

When we buy secondhand Lego we clean it before using it.  The “belt and braces” method involves:

• putting it in a bucket with a chlorine-based disinfectant for about an hour, then:
• putting it in a large mesh laundry bag (with tiny holes obviously) and washing on a cold wash 

Do not ever put Lego in a dishwasher as it will be too hot.

The problem with getting Lego secondhand is that there is often a certain amount of fake Lego in there, maybe 5-10%.  

Sometimes people put stones or weights in a collection to make it heavier so it’s definitely worth doing your due diligence on the seller (e.g. check the reviews).

How do you know if you are getting a good deal?

The value of Lego varies so much depending on what it is, but as a general rule prices range from about £8 to £20 per kg. It will often be more if it has a lot of minifigures in it or pieces from popular themes.  

My partner recently picked up 11kg of Lego for £80 and was very happy with that, particularly as it had a few valuable minifigures in it.  

I would never expect to see Lego sold by kg lower than about £5 because if you are selling it you can get £3 per kilo from Music Magpie hassle free.  

If you did start to fall down the Lego collector rabbit hole or were worried about being ripped off then Brick Economy is a handy website for checking the current secondhand value of sets and minifigures. You can even create a virtual version of your collection to track its value, but I’m getting side tracked here as this is about growing your collection on a budget…

Buying sets without the minifigures

Because some sets have such valuable minifigures in them, some dealers will buy the sets new, hold onto the minifigures to sell separately, then sell the set without the minifigure(s) at a significant discount. 

This is a good option if you like getting sets that are new in every other respect (i.e. all the pieces in their original unopened bags) so have the same “fresh” building experience but are not interested in the minifigures (or already have them or similar).  

Again you can find these sets on eBay.

Using the Pick-A-Brick sections of Lego Stores

Most dedicated Lego Stores have a Pick A Brick wall where you can fill a standard cup for £7.99 or a large cup for about £14.99 – and you get a 75p discount if you bring your cup back.  This is great if you want to create your own builds and want a lot of a particular piece.. 

The items available change frequently and Lego don’t put this information online themselves.  If you want to know what is currently in your local store you can try the website PABFinder. Here people post pictures of the latest pieces available in certain stores, but it isn’t up to date for all stores. There are Facebook groups and Flickr pages where people do this too. 

Downloading free designs to make new builds with your existing pieces

If you have managed to build up a decent collection (for example by buying secondhand in bulk) then instead of buying new sets you can download free build instructions and use your existing pieces.

Lego themselves have these on their website, but for more variety you can use Rebrickable which has thousands of original designs.  You can also log your actual collection on Rebrickable and it will tell you what other builds you can make with those pieces, which is ideal if you have a few sets already as these are easy to add.

I’m guessing most readers of this post aren’t deep Lego enthusiasts yet, but if you did fall deeper down the Lego creator hole and also want to create a side hustle out of it, you can sell your own designs on Rebrickable too.  If my kids were older, and interested, and I wanted to encourage them to be more entrepreneurial then I would definitely encourage them to do something like this.

If you are a few pieces short of a build then you can also buy individual pieces on the Lego site and on BrickLink.  It will vary in terms of which is cheaper, so if you want to get the cheapest price then check both for a particular piece.

Using TopCashback

If you are buying Lego new through the Lego site then you can get up to 5.95% cashback by going through TopCashback.  If you are not already a member you can get a £10 joining bonus by using this referral link.

Final thoughts on building a Lego collection on a budget

Of course, even if you use these methods, Lego is still expensive. We justify the expense because it lasts for generations and the more you get, the more creative you can be with it.  Although it is plastic, because it lasts so well and holds its value so well, it rarely ends up in landfill.  

For our family it has been a great investment because it keeps the kids entertained after school (while we are still working).  They are too young for homework, and because we have a large collection now they are happy to spend hours playing.  This means we can keep them at home for those last couple of hours of our work day, and they can relax and decompress rather than being in after school care.

We are now sorting our collection (by piece type, not colour!)  to make it easier to build new things, so that our living room has become a bit of a Lego studio. 

We spent years building our collection the expensive way and have only really started using these tips in the last year or so. I wish we had started this way! Hopefully this blog post will help others enjoy the process of building their collection much more affordably.

If you have other tips, please comment below.