Looking for advice on selling large collection

Sithinious

Hello. I’m looking for some advice, but first a bit of background. I’ve been collecting LEGO for a large portion of my adult life, and have dozens of sets, mostly Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. My wife and I moved to England from the U.S. a little over a year ago. 

Our house here is much smaller than what we had in America, I have no room to display my LEGO builds here so my collection has been sitting idly in our loft since we arrived. 

I’d like to (reluctantly) sell my entire collection, and was looking for advice on the best way to do so. I’ve seen ads online for people selling bulk LEGO by weight. This seems ok for basic LEGO bricks but a very poor way to sell a collection with many specialized sets. 

I have the manuals for every set, but the pieces are mixed so selling by set is out of the question. I’d like to sell it as all or nothing. 

Where should I be looking to sell? eBay? A specialized site? I know shipping will be expensive. 

Any advice will be most appreciated. Thank You. 

560Heliport

My only advice is, don't sell it all! Keep at least one set, whichever is your favorite. 

CCC

Sithinious said:

I have the manuals for every set, but the pieces are mixed so selling by set is out of the question. I’d like to sell it as all or nothing. 

It depends what you want, balancing price vs your time. To get the best price, sort out the sets and sell them as sets. Much quicker but slightly less value is to take all the minifigures out and sell them in themed batches. Then sell the parts as bulk.

Shropshire

You could first try to show/articulate what's in the collection and price expected on the Marketplace section on here - see what the feedback and appetite is before heading to EBay. Many sales are made successfully on here, just scroll down to the Marketplace section on main forum page.

For me though, unless catalogued/evidenced I'd struggle to spend more than price/weight (except as CCC says on identifiable specific items) on something like this where it would otherwise be hard to assess how complete everything was plus the time you want to save yourself is time I would need to spend for me to sort it out after delivery. So I do feel myself that the more effort you put into sorting out / identifying specific complete sets etc before listing the more you'd get overall than selling as a bulk. But by all means share some pick, maybe how you store/organise it may give confidence.

I am not doubting its completeness, merely pointing out that for me I'd have to weigh up how I'd assess that, how I'd know the hard to replace elements are there and how much time it would take on my side to separate it all into sets to trade or build.

teal93mr2

The once-thriving marketplace on this site has been mostly dead since 2018, or I would recommend here.  Best bet is eBay as complete sets or FB marketplace in small lots.

todler

The other alternative is to say what area of the country you are living in and you may have someone on here able to come and have a look and advise, or make you an offer.
eBay is good if you know what you are selling. 

pvp3020

Sorry to jump on this thread but I find myself in a similar position and am looking to sell a large portion of my collection. Like the OP's collection most of the pieces are mixed up, but I'm in the process of sorting into sets to ensure completeness.

I've been wondering where best to sell them? eBay seems the most likely place. What are peoples' views on BrickLink or catawiki?

I've been keeping boxes since about 2014, but due to space limitations most of them have been flat-packed. In many cases this has necessitated un-gluing the edges. What effect on value does the box have, especially if flat-packed? Is it worth keeping them?

Any and all advice very much appreciated!

NateMN2020

One thing I will say, you get many buyers on EBay who scam and take advantage, saying they didn’t get something when they did, or that it wasn’t as advertised. Ebay almost always sides with buyers. From my experience I’ve had much better transaction success on Bricklink, even if things don’t sell as fast as you may like. Also they have lower fees.

Sithinious

Thanks very much for the answers, much appreciated. I see I have some work to do getting everything together and organized for sale.