TIE #081: Has Amazon Ruined LEGO Investing?
The answer depends on who you are and how bad you want it.
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As many here know, Amazon is my platform of choice for selling LEGO investments.
It has the most liquidity and your profit margin ends up being better than any other alternative (most of the time).
Over the last decade, if a new seller wanted to come along and sign up to sell on Amazon they could get approved to sell LEGO pretty easily.
It was a simple application process that required you to place an order on the LEGO website before applying.
However, this changed in late 2024.
Out of nowhere, many sellers lost the ability to sell LEGO (who had already applied) and everyone else lost the ability to apply.
Sellers like myself (likely due to the sheer volume of LEGO I’ve sold and the history of my account) escaped without issue.
I had hoped that this was a temporary change for Q4 in an attempt to prevent fraud and abuse by bad acting scammers pretending to sell LEGO but just sending people boxes of rocks instead.
Yet, we are nearly to Q2 2025 and these limitations continue to persist.
Several newsletter subscribers have contacted me asking me what I would do if I was in their shoes, so I’ll tell you here:
I would do everything in my power to show Amazon I’m a trustworthy seller
That means selling anything and everything I can, even if I break even doing so.
I would place a heavy emphasis on selling toys. Retail arbitrage, online arbitrage, you name it.
Not only would I do that, but I would prepare for a world in which Amazon never opens LEGO back up (I doubt this happens but you never know).
That would mean selling investments on other platforms like eBay and Walmart (new Walmart guide is now live in the paid member Discord).
This is what I would do.
There is no guarantee that Amazon loosens these new restrictions, but I would give it everything I had in an attempt to find out.
I’m the type of person treats business success like life or death. I am willing to do more than 99% of business owners with similar businesses.
Hell, if Amazon just never let me sell LEGO again, I would still invest in them.
I would continue to take profit on other platforms because I love this business so much.
If that is you, then stick it out.
If it isn’t, then there is no shame in walking away.
Generally speaking, the world rewards you if you take your lumps and continue to push forward.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been rewarded handsomely for patience and persistence.
The most successful people I know never gave up.
They pivoted, circled back, tried new things, but they never fully gave up.
When this situation eventually swings back the other direction, you’ll be ahead of everyone else who tries to come scrambling back.
Like always, the choice is yours and I can’t make it for you.
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Amazon re-gated me and sent back all the FBA LEGO inventory I had already sent in. I had been selling LEGO for better part of a year with no returns or customer complaints.
Liquidating via WalMart now but the way Amazon handled that made me lose all trust in them. Congrats to anyone who avoided the issue or is already a big seller…personally I’m done with Amazon if that’s how they treat their selling “partners”.
Amazon used to gate the Toys category every Q4 unless you met a sales threshold. At least then they gave you a warning and it was a reasonable amount to gain access. It’s a shame they pulled the rug out on so many sellers recently. I didn’t get hit, and I guess it’s due to the age of my account or something. But could happen any time. Platform risk in a nutshell.