Pick One of These Two Options to Avoid LEGO Investing Failure
A guide on storage and prep centers.
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Investing in LEGO sounds simple when you first hear about it.
Buy LEGO, hold LEGO, sell LEGO. Easy enough right?
That’s not the full story.
Your investing business runs into a giant challenge once your portfolio eclipses five figures:
Storage
LEGO sets take up a lot of space.
LEGO investing is as lucrative as it is partly because most people just aren’t willing to deal with storing them.
You are rewarded for being willing to deal with that headache.
There are two storage options I recommend:
A local storage facility
A prep center that allows long term storage
I do not recommend storing LEGO in your home but if you feel like you can do it safely, more power to you.
The risk of theft/fire/flood is just too high for me to feel comfortable with it myself.
In this post, I’m going to explain the logistics of those two aforementioned choices.
Storage Option 1: Local
If you don’t like the idea of other people handling your inventory, this is the choice for you.
You’ll want to your research and find the most secure storage facility in your area that has:
24 hour surveillance
Optional: 24 hour security
Optional: Multiple floors (so you aren’t on the ground floor, to avoid flooding)
Going this route requires a lot of work on your part, but it’s worth it.
I know several large investors that use a storage facility or lease a warehouse.
The logistics of using the storage facility go like this:
Receive LEGO sets
Box them up in preparation to send to Amazon
Transport them to the storage unit
Stack them neatly
Wait
Label and transport to your shipping provider
Sell
As you can tell, this is labor intensive. This is why I opt for the second option of a prep center.
Storage Option 2: A Prep Center
A prep center is a business that receives, stores, and ships all of your inventory.
That means you don’t ever see or touch the LEGO you buy.
If you are a seller outside of the United States, this is your only option.
Naturally, it is the more cost intensive option because someone else is doing the labor for you.
Is it weird that I have multiple six figures of LEGO stored somewhere across the country from me?
Yes.
However, these are businesses with reputations and laws to uphold. There isn’t a lot of risk by going this route.
There are a few key things you want your prep center to have:
Shipping/receiving address in a sales tax free state
Healthy reputation
Long term storage
If you are looking for one to use, test your top three choices and stick with the one that you like most.
Use this website when exploring your options.
Don’t expect other sellers or investors to share their prep center, do the work yourself.
Conclusion
Your choice will ultimately depend upon the amount of capital you are working with and the amount of time you are willing to spend.
Even if I wanted to use a local storage facility, the time required to do the labor doesn’t make sense for me.
The best part is that you cannot go wrong.
Investing in LEGO is a great use of capital regardless of how you do it.
This post is not financial or investment advice.
It is made for entertainment purposes only by a bum who gave up his job as a prestigious Aerospace Engineer to talk about parking money in sealed boxes of plastic.
Does your ROI from LEGO portfolio include fees from prep center as well?
What happens with the lego sets that arrive either very crushed or in extremely damaged boxes, how's that handled by prep centers? I don't mean return wise, I mean fresh from the retailers since, as we all have seen, not every set they send out arrives 100% pristine unfortunately