Emily Brown
Bitcoin? No thanks. The New York Stock Exchange? Not for me. Lego, on the other hand...
The colorful bricks might not seem like they fit alongside those other investment opportunities, but Shane O’Farrell, from New Jersey, would argue otherwise.
The 35-year-old has managed to make a staggering $500,000 in the last two years from investing in the kits - and it all begins with a bit of nostalgia.
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Though O'Farrell lives in the US now, he spent his childhood in Ireland, where he often entertained himself with the Fort Legoredo Lego set.
Little O'Farrell would have had no idea at the time that the price of the kit would increase by hundreds of dollars over the next two decades - but a now-adult O'Farrell saw the opportunity and jumped at it.
Back in 1996, the Fort Legoredo lego sold for $85. Now, O'Farrell sells the same set for $2,405.
O'Farrell began buying and flipping popular Lego sets online, stressing to the New York Post that it was the money-making opportunity that made the most sense to him while trying to invest his money.
“I started trying to invest in stocks and realized the 8 percent a year that I’m making in the stock market is not really going to work," he said. "It’s not really going to get me where I want to go. It would take decades.”
With Lego’s resale value growing by 11 percent annually, outpacing stocks, bonds, and gold according to a 2022 study, it seems the building sets are the way to go.
To make the most of his sales, O'Farrell reads finance and trend reports released by Lego as well as keeping an eye on when the company is set to retire certain sets.
One example is the Lego Star Wars TIE Fighter Pilot helmet model, which sold for $60 before being retired in 2021.
O'Farrell snapped up the set, and within a year and a half of it being retired, he was able to sell it for $350.
"You’re talking about a 400 percent return on investment in a year and a half’s time," he explained.
Despite O'Farrell's success in the Lego-selling business, he still works a full-time job as the time it takes to flip the kits is 'very minimal'.
"I can do it on top of my full-time job and create a supplementary income,” he explained.
O'Farrell even has time to share tips for other people hoping to follow in his footsteps through his YouTube channel, Brick Bucks.
The Lego-selling business does require a bit of patience, but O'Farrell pointed out you could simply 'buy the stuff, put it away somewhere in storage and just wait for the price to go up'.
The key, of course, is knowing which sets to buy.