Is it worth to buy older LEGO City sets?

ersi

Do you think it is worth to buy older city sets for resell? they are all sealed
Here are photos, thank you for your opinion.

https://imgur.com/a/Ubj11tR

DB361

As always, it's all in what you pay for them. A quick look on Bricklink suggests some of them are surprisingly doing fairly well, but on the flip side all have been sold with substantial discounts here in the UK before they were retired. But the thing for me is that if you're having to ask on here whether or not it's a good idea instead of doing the sums yourself, the answer is probably not.

alaskaguy

ersi said:

Do you think it is worth to buy older city sets for resell? they are all sealed
Here are photos, thank you for your opinion.

https://imgur.com/a/Ubj11tR

I'd buy all those sets.....for my kid to play with. I'd pay 30% of original retail price.  50% if I wanted it bad enough. 

If you want to RESELL, you have to pay a lot less than I would, which would mean the person is practically giving them away (which seems unlikely - but if they are, put me in contact with them).

Since I know sets can be had for 30-50% off retail FROM a retail store, if you hit the right sale at the right time, that's my starting point for buying from some random person a set who may have changed hands god only knows how many times.  If you customers are going to top out at paying 50% of RRP, YOU as the random person should be paying 25% of RRP at most. 

ersi

He is selling them for 10-15€ / each, I think I will pass on that. I was not sure about how older city sets are doing, I will stay with themed ones 

alaskaguy

ersi said:

He is selling them for 10-15€ / each, I think I will pass on that. I was not sure about how older city sets are doing, I will stay with themed ones 

Is that a good price?  I don't know off hand what the RRP on this is, without looking them up. 

ersi

@alaskaguy
the price is too high for me to resell them

alaskaguy

I think that is true a good portion of the time, for most everything.  

But with Lego in particular - people think because it says "Lego" on it, it must be worth a ton of money.  The reality is, they're just a bunch of (mostly) plastic bricks, produced by the BILLIONS (19B/year), intended as toys for children.

Sure, there are some people out there that will pay insane amounts of money for a small number of sets...very small, relative to the total number of sets Lego produces and has produced.  But it's not every set, or even most sets. But many people want to pretend like, or think it is every set.  

Some people are more reasonable. I was at a flea market over the weekend. Guy was selling a city set for $15.  Looked unopened - I didn't bother to pick it up and see. I don't remember what set it was - but I looked it up on Amazon and saw it was $28.  

So his price wasn't bad. I venture to say it was pretty reasonable. But it was not really a bargain in my book, give it was at a flea market.  If it were a retail setting - maybe a different story.  Either way, it would have been a total impulse buy. If you want people to make impulse buys, you need to price accordingly.  If he had priced it at $10, I would have bought it.  But I didn't even want to put out enough effort to ask him if he would take $10 for it (and then have him offer $12 or $13 or whatever).  Meh..just not worth it. 

I don't think City sets fall into the "I really want it" category for most people. It's probably more "I can take it or leave it" - and things in that category are probably hard to profit on as a 2nd or 3rd hand random reseller, in most instances. 

CCC

Most City sets can be had new for 30-40% off at some stage. If you cannot beat that when buying new sets on the secondary market for resale, you might as well just buy at retail. Some City sets increase a little in price on retirement. Many remain pretty much at RRP +- 10%. Ones that get redone in similar form frequently will never increase much, as the new version will keep the prices down.

Remember it also depends how you will sell. If you are posting the set and accepting paypal you must take that into account.

If you have a set that a buyer will pay $15 all in and it will cost $5 postage plus another $1.50 in fees, if you pay more than $8.50 for it then you will make a loss. If you buy it for $7.50 and "double your money" selling it at $15 inc postage, you are really only making $1.

ersi

@CCC
 yes yes you are right, also all of the sets were really small, usually bigger retired sets can go higher