When a company like FunWhole can release a modular model (Antique Store) with a piece count of 2847, printed pieces, that also includes a light kit, and is 100% comparable in quality and build sophistication selling for 129.00, I can't help but feel like Lego is, and has been exceptionally overpriced... I'm happy to finally see some healthy competition, and comparable alternatives.
There is NO WAY you are serious, Lego has always been expensive yeah but in recent years they have lowerd their quality and drastically raised their prices even more. They are by all definitions overpriced in almost every theme, esp when you compare them to actually good brick companies like Reobrix or Cobi
I agree overpricing or not should not be determined by the price. It's the ratio of how good the set is to how much it costs. For a lot of small to medium-sized IP sets, I still think they are overpriced.
That's what we call "the value equation" because it takes into consideration what you are getting for the price, not just the price itself. Buying a big set and getting 2x points and a GWP is a good value. It's just most folks don't have the $ or space to spend $1000/year on Lego, even though that's only $3 per day.
I do think it's important do differentiate "overpriced" from Lego's corporate perspective--how many units are moving how quickly and with what profit margin--versus "overpriced" from a fan's perspective. Fans are often justified in using that term if they mean a set isn't priced proportionally to perceived value. Things of course get subjective there: for some people, $500 for a box of little plastic parts and a paper instruction manual will always seem like outrageous highway robbery. Others may find it competely worth their money. You can also compare the price of some Lego sets to the things they represent: say, the typewriter or retro radio or guitar and amp. You can sometimes buy the real functioning object for a comparable price or a little bit more. Is Lego then overpriced? Take the Fender guitar and amp set: for a hundred bucks more, you can buy an entry-level Squier (a Fender brand) guitar and practice amp and a cable that you can spend a lifetime learning and playing, versus a Lego set that you might build in a hour and put on the shelf to gather dust. Sounds overpriced to me. Then you get into a thorny question that's hard to answer because we don't have access to Lego's accounting: when you compare Lego's sticker prices and price-per-part ratio to some of their competitors, Lego clearly appears dramatically overpriced. But since we don't know the specifics of Lego's expenses, we can't accurately gauge whether Lego is gouging us or not, vis-a-vis another brick company. But it sure feels like it. If Pantasy or Cobi can put out a set with better quality control and prints instead of stickers for a lower price (sometimes half that of a comparable Lego set), then is Lego overpriced?
_Are_ they comparable quality? Or is that mostly what we’re paying for by buying Lego? Every Pantasy review I’ve seen has commented that the part consistency was quite good, but not as good as Lego’s. At least some Cobi reviews I’ve seen have said similar. And certainly my experience with Mega Blox/Construx is similar - I’ve never built a Mega Blox set that didn’t have at least a few bricks or plates that were exceptionally hard to stick together, or wouldn’t stay locked, or had too little clutch, or had to be rotated to fit (like a 1x6 brick that simply wouldn’t fit until I rotated it 180°). I’ve only personally run into anything like this with Lego with white parts from a year or two in the 2010s that have very low clutch power. And in the 45 years and half-a-million pieces worth of sets I bought prior to 2021, I had exactly 2 missing parts, both from sets purchased in the ‘80s. Since then, Lego has definitely gotten worse about packing errors - over the last 3 years, I’ve had a sticker sheet and half a dozen parts missing from sets, 1 extra sticker sheet, 1 mis-molded part, and 3 instances where a completely wrong part was substituted. That’s still only about as many packing errors from a few hundred sets as I normally encounter from a single $50 Mega Construx set. But I haven’t bought any Pantasy or Cobi myself, so I can’t really judge whether the reviewers’ complaints were valid. And some of this is subjective. A friend who has bought a lot of Mega and Lego can’t tell the difference in feel/quality. I don’t think it’s just that they’ve gotten lucky and only received the very best Mega parts in every single box-I’m sure I’m just fussier about this particular thing.
It's cheaper, I don't really understand why it should be and must be lego "quality". Honestly, it's probably at least comparable, the print quality and molds for Lego sets get worse every year
@@natbarmore I've been collecting Lego for years, and recently built the FunWhole Antique Shop, and the Pantasy Sherlock Holmes set and they are 100% comparable in quality and build to Lego and about half the price.
And why do you think that is? Perhaps because it’s actually quite cheap to make them? Take out most things from equation and omg you can make a lot more profit for less the price
I disagree with your idea that because something sells means it's not overpriced. Like, imagine if they released some highly desirable figures such as Darth Revan, Queen Amidala, etc. and charged $30 a piece for them. They might sell because people want them, but that wouldn't make it not massively overpriced. Your logic just enables Lego to be greedy and push the limits of pricing.
Let’s be real, most people who say it’s overpriced really mean that they don’t want to pay that much for it! This is despite the fact that many will still pay that price.
Just because people are buying does not mean it is not overpriced... The new Zelda set is a great example of this, it will sell because people have been craving that set for years but it is $50-80 overpriced... (I even pre-ordered it), but if there is already an established line of Zelda sets this current set at $300 would almost never sell. It is still overpriced. You need to take more into account then if set sell some (Lego only drops prices in extreme circumstances).
It's really sad that Lego has so many apologists for ripping people off ruthlessly. I used to love it as a kid but I'm priced out of it entirely now as are most people my age. It's not ok.
Fanboys should shop saying it's not overpriced. It is. Lego brick quality is mediocre at best compared to some competing brands. Those brands are cheaper, have better clutch and often fully printed instead of stickers (and better quality prints). It's ok if people want to spend that money on an overpriced brand. Just don't deny the reality it's overpriced. Lego these days is a bad parody of what it once used to be with all the garbage overly specific new parts replacing clever building techniques. Current sets hardly have normal versatile parts like plates and bricks anymore but all this nonsense not suitable for moccing.
Some sets are absolutely over priced. Comparing Obi-Wn’s starship versus Jedi Bob’s starship. Nearly same build, nearly same piece count. Bob is nearly twice the price. This is a money grab. But telling me what I mean when I say over priced suggests zero credibility on your part.
But it is overpriced as vendors or brands like FunWhole, Pantasy, Reobrix, Mould King, JieStar, Sembo (Senbao), Panlos (Huada Toys) proof every day. I can get basic brick boxes with bricks from Chinese vendor Qunlong for 20 €/kg, for 40 €/kg ( Pick-a-Brick wall with 5000 pieces) or for 60-70 €/kg when buying manually packed models from Bluebrixx. So it is very likely that all these companies pay less than 15 €/kg when buying bulk bricks from China. So everything above 25 €/kg is a lie to customers as there is this one vendor who sells it to me in local stores for 20 € ( and this is not some parcel order with shady customs papers to save import taxes and fees ... ).
For me, overpriced means, I'm not going to buy it despite it holding a decent value to me. The number is too high for me to be willing to pay. And so there's a mismatch. If you still pay it, then you can't argue it's over price as much. I didn't even watch the whole video, but this comment will pay my algorithm dues lol
Rivendell is one of the most expensive sets I’ve bought but I think it’s a good value compared to other Lego products. At the time I compared it to the batcave shadowbox and Rivendell seemed like a better value. It’s the nicest set I own. It was a better build than Avengers tower even though I’m a bigger Marvel fan than LOTR fan
Really? I think that's a terribly priced set. Looking at the layout, it's just a single building and an area off to the side. I could see $400, but $500 is just pure greed. Comparing it to another overpriced set doesn't change anything.
I think the issue is that LEGO is def charging way more than they should. Look at the alt-brick brands. You can get big sets from companies like Fun Whole and Pantasy at a very fair price. They use quality bricks, look great, and are fun builds.
Many sets are overpriced. And yes, Lego is an expensive hobby, i dont disagree. But there are sets that are not a good value for the asking price. And dont get me started on resellers who inflate the prices to crazy amounts on used sets...
This is one of the most irresponsible videos I've seen in a while. So you are basically arguing that something cannot be called overpriced if people are willing to spend the money or like the set? Congratulations - you've just provided an excuse for predatory marketing- and sales-tactics, which deliberately target neurodivergent people like those with a spending disorder or suffering from brand loyalty. You have made yourself part of the problem. A far better and much more objective and factual measure to determine whether something is overprized or not is calculating the cost of developing, producing, logistics, and a reasonable - note: REASONABLE - profit margin on top of that. In that regard, everything LEGO is offering is overprized. And we are not talking about the diminishing quality of LEGO, from color-consistency to cheapo-quality offerings like many, many stickers instead of prints. LEGO produces cheap in countries all over the world, a lot of their sets are produced in China. As a counter-example to prove the point: There's a company in poland producing sets in the brick-system stolen by LEGO over half a century ago. Their bricks are high-quality with a superb color consistency, they almost exclusively print in high quality instead of using stickers, they produce exclusively in the EU, and their sets have twice or even more pieces for the same price as LEGO offerings. So yes, LEGO IS overprized, and whoever argues otherwise can only be demed self-delusional.
But we don't live in a wonderland where prices are as low as production costs, this is the real world where every kid knows the price is set by supply and demand Lego sells gangbusters so by definition lego is not overpriced Lego is subjectively very expensive imo and it's a legitimate complaint but it's objectively not overpriced But hey, ppl tell me Capitalism is great and I suck because I lean leftwards :)
I tend to agree with you in principle, but it’s hard to adjudicate for a luxury good. What is a “reasonable” profit margin? How do we judge that? 1%? 5%? 10%? 20%? 0% (if you have a net profit, it should be paid out to workers)? Gross profit margin or net profit margin? Does it matter whether that is pure profit that just goes into the owners’ pockets or the profits are plowed back into the company? If so, does it matter whether the company then uses those profits for R&D or sits on them for a rainy-day fund so that if there’s a downturn they can afford to keep everyone on staff and not reduce wages even if it takes several years to recover? With essentials, like groceries, it seems relatively easy to adjudicate reasonable profit margins. But with a luxury good? And what if we found out that Lego is _currently_ operating with 5% profit margins? Then would you say that it’s reasonably priced, without any changes in actual prices?
Almost none of what you said is true. Except that it’s probably overpriced for you, since you are greedy and self entitled thus you think you need to be able to own everything that you wanna, instead of working for it but then again you don’t wanna work for the minimum payment that is legal in your country?! So what gives ?
Lego has been fortunate that after most of their significant patents expired, not many companies jumped in to compete, and the ones that did had clearly inferior products. They pretty much remained untouchable, and able to continually test the market with their pricing (early comparisons were made with Playmobile products also being molded ABS though the play experience was different - weight and detailing were the benchmarks). When the 'collector/investor' market began to emerge and the prices of older models began to climb, and Lego began marketing directly to adults, that's when other companies really took notice. Add that Lego was now being manufactured in China, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Malaysia (lower cost/higher profits), and it was only a matter of time, and that's where we are now. Toss in that adult MOC designers are beginning to submit designs to the emerging competitors, and it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.
The prices increase, while the quality and quantity of what you get decreases, thats the definition of overpricing. I hope you at least got paid for this braindead opinion.
Dude wtf The quantity increased by a lot and via that the price per brick went actually a bit down Also the complexity increased by a lot And by that also the quality overall Not sure if you are trolling or wtf
@@IvanAntolic Yes, you are getting more small inexpensive, common and cheap pieces. If getting 100 1x1 studs more justifies the 20+ percent price increases for you, then you are either rich, delusional or a corporate shill. Go cry about it.
The issue has gotten much worse over the last 5 years. There are still really well priced sets say the Ninjago City Gardens $350 with over 5,000 pieces and 20 MiniFigures. Then you have the UCS AT-AT $850 6,000 pieces and less than 10 MiniFigures. Doesn't have the same value. Maybe if it had more MiniFigures or was $200 cheaper.
@gbrow1604 Piece count can be a bad indicator at times. Is the Rivendell set really a $500 set the same value as the $350 Ninjago City Gardens. Similar sizes, pieces, MiniFigures Why the $150 difference?
You missed one elephant here. You say in your tile people say LEGO is overpriced - not a particular set. I think people complain about LEGO prices because they think these plastic studs are really cheap to produce and could have been sold much cheaper - as you see the KO brands do. Now, I don't think cheap chinese bricks are of comparable quality (never tried them and I won't), but are you telling me that LEGOs manufacturing hasn't been able to reduce the price of these bricks when produced by the billions? Of course they have, hence LEGO group being as big as they are. LEGO is OVERPRICED compared to production cost. Paying 500 dollars for half a kilo of pressed plastic. Please. That is where overpriced come from - not the supply/demand discussion this video is doing.
I just got myself Green Grocer and Book Shop from one of these Chinese manufacturers. They ARE of comfortable quality. Actually they are THE SAME quality. The only two differences are: no "LEGO" on the pins and no alternate faces on the minifigures. You won't see the differnce if you don't look too close.
Expensive does not equal overpriced sure, but that Skiff set is most definitely overpriced and a pretty bad example. Otherwise yeah the 500$ large display models are completely justified
I think they're all around 20% overpriced. Rivendell for example is a great set and is worth hundreds of dollars. But $500 is ridiculous. There's not enough mass in the set to justify that. $400 would be fair
Cost vs value is a personal choice. I think the Deku tree is overpriced, my opinion, yet I'm getting it because I've loved Zelda since I was in my early 20's and I'm almost 60 now.
As a Star Wars fan, there are absolutely sets that are overpriced, and I've bought some that were not worth the extra $20 LEGO tacked onto them. Now supposedly, the prices of sets are not based on IP Tax or the part count, it's mostly based on the initial target when making a new set and then it's estimated weight when finally packaged up. So it's not the 10 cents per piece model we so often like to use and then rounding to the nearest $5 or $10, it's all about how heavy that box ends up being. There are also other factors. How many new molds have been made for a minifigure or a particular windscreen, or weapon, or whatever? What new parts were specifically made for the set or theme, and is there a lot of reusability with them? The molds have to be paid for one way or another, and if a new part only appears in one set, and it's only ever going to be in one set, well it's got to be offset by either the budgeting of sets from the rest of the theme, or the one set's got to have a higher price. It's also important to look at just how many big pieces there are in a set. Anything that has an area of 8x8 and larger requires better quality control, and if you're buying the Millennium Falcon, the AT-AT, the Venator-class Republic Cruiser, there's a lot of larger plates that need to be produced in large quantities with significant quality control. Is it all there? I have definitely noticed a decrease in quality of the plastic, it disappoints me, but not as much as say having half of them not even getting enough plastic to fully fill the mold or have them come all warped and unusable. And what about printing? While I would prefer printing all the time, it's just not always economical because printed parts need to be sorted separately at the factories, meaning they're taking up more space that could be used up by a recolor instead. Similarly with minifigures, if there's front and back torso, duel molded arms and legs, front and back head, arm printing, front and side leg printing, and hair or a helmet with printing, too, you are also paying for all of that. Do minifigures really need to be so detailed? Nope, but for something like the Mandalorian line of sets, LEGO has made it a habit to where if you wear Mandalorian armor, you're getting the full treatment with arm printing, you even get something special on the back even if it's just going to get covered up with a cape or a jetpack, and even the legs have toe printing for scuffs on the boots or whatever. It's insane the amount of detail that goes into some of these minifigs. Now imagine you have three or four minifigures getting that same treatment in just one set. You're paying for all the quality control on that, too. I still don't think that LEGO Star Wars is always justified in their prices, in fact I do think that Disney may have renegotiated contracts to get more of the percentage of profits than Lucasfilm once had before the acquisition, but there's always a reason for the pricing being what they are. The only way to change the overpriced conversation is to speak with your wallets and not buy sets that feel like they are not worth it. I love my Star Wars sets, but there are limits to which that love can extend, and I'm not buying stuff that's more than $10 over that 10 cents per piece ratio unless I feel it's justified, and even then, I'm still waiting until there's a Double VIP thing going on and a Gift with Purchase to help offset some of those prices, too, and really feel like I get what I'm paying for.
I try not to say “overpriced” when I talk with Lego, though that thought definitely came up when I looked at the Battle on Peridia Star Wars set (that said, idk how they price minifigs, so maybe that’s a factor?). I know it’ll sell, but it’s hard for me to justify that price..which is a bummer considering my wife wants it.😅I think you did well touching on the different possible causes of using that word. The other moment were when they revealed the Captain America/Batman/Wolverine buildable figure sets at around $10 more than the Spider-man ones, because I have can’t see why that jump happened. Expensive, yeah. Which then..the current price is admittedly jarring for me as someone more coming back to the hobby with my kids. My old experience was with smaller sets, notably Bionicle, where it felt like an allowance was enough to get something. I’ve definitely been drawn into looking at mech sets.. those oddly have been hitting a point where I’m like “yeah, i could see the value in that..” but maybe that’s just my nostalgia for building figure sets.👀
Considering Chinese produce some of the same sets of the SAME quality (yes, they are) that are at least 3 times cheaper - it is totally overpriced! Unless you think paying for THE NAME and labeled pins is OK.
Tried to be open-minded to your argument and evaluated over-priced vs expensive. But at the end of the day, Lego doesn’t have any real competition, so they price as they want. If there were 4-5 other larger manufacturers that offered competitive sized products, designs, etc, and Lego was 35% higher, hypothetically, then I get your point. And yes, there are other vendors of these types of “toys”-but they’re not real competition. This is where we need a metric, such as cost per piece, to evaluate Lego prices against itself. Example. Rivendell vs UCS sail barge. Both $500 sets. But there’s absolutely no way the sail barge is on par with Rivendell on design, piece count, build experience, etc. In this case, I say that sail barge is way over-priced, by comparison to other Lego sets. The lack of real competitors is what hurts us here. But Lego does price egregiously. And they make a ton of money.
Lego influencers will likely suffer first if a massive pullback on Lego spending happens by consumers. Maybe Lego does a blitz of advertising with them hoping to convince shoppers to buy when they are already becoming conservative or Lego decides to cut the excess spending quickly knowing some real economic pain is coming and they need to preserve their margins. Panicking? Not yet, but there are signs that Lego has pushed too far with the consumers on prices. Any Lego influencers who financially depend on creating this illusion that it's ok to blow $1000 - 2000 a month on Lego will definitely be sweating. They are getting these sets for free to be shills, so of course they are not in touch with the reality of prices to regular consumers.
Probably because it’s getting really boring that greedy self entitled kids cry about how something costs a lot as if they need to own everything, yet they don’t wanna be paid minimum that is legal in their country and advocate for even less play
A lot of lego definitely is overpriced, look at the recent hellicarrier and a lot of the star wars theme but this doesnt mean every set and every theme is. Animal crossing, creator 3 in 1, lego art and minecraft are my favourite themes for pricing- usually give really good value for what they offer, and a good half of marvel and even disney actually have a really good price to them. So yeah not as a whole but some sets absolutely are.
I think when people are talking overpriced, they are talking about them selling bad sets (smaller than they should be with bad stickers and no prints) for more than we want to pay. I for one loved the price to piece ration in the Medieval Town Square - but I hated the amount of stickers (however, given the price I can't complain that much - however when I look at something with a lot of stickers and huge prices ... I am cringing a lot ) . Still I would have paid slightly more for a fully printed medieval town square. I for one consider the Lions Knights Castle priced a bit higher than I would pay, but at 30% discout, I got 5. I am eyeing rivendel, but I am not sure if I would get more than one here. Sauron's eye tower too. A set that I might not even get at 30% off is the Zelda Deku Tree ... I love the set, but even at 250 I find it's too much for what it offers (I am still to see this live to decide, but it's unlikely I would like to get it). Starwars sets, I only purchsed them at 75% off (got that vade vs Kenobi set with the fancy yellow robot at around $10 - and even then I found it a bit too expensive for what it was worth to me).
When I got back into Lego with Blacksmith in 2021, I knew I'd never have the budget to get Castle, Star Wars, and City, so I settled on mostly preindustrial: castle & some pirates. I love LOTR, so those big sets will fit in great with my theme. With the Bricklink Designer Program, I'm saving almost my whole budget for all the castle stuff in rounds 3 & 4. I thought Mountain Fortress BDP was a bit pricey, but upon building it, I can say it's "better than the pictures" and that seems to hold true for almost every big set. I got Lion Knight's when there was 2x points and a good GWP. A great value. The bigger the set, the bigger the deception the pics are.
@@Nphen I clearly agree, the bigger sets are wonderous. And some of them have a lot of value packed in them. I think I will have to stop buying non castle sets (I am starting to strain my budget a lot ). I think I will just finish off the last years harry potter "collection" and then focus only on castle and the occasional ninjago dragon / big temple and dreamzz.
@@octav1600 I got Dreamzzz Stable of Magical Creatures at Costco for $55, then $45. Goes with the fantasy theme, might be fun near Mushroom House (now BDP Mushroom Village). I have Monkey Kid Heavenly Realms, and Team Hideout (not built yet) to one day make a "Monkey Kid Mountain" along with some of the Ninjago temples. Great to get tons of swords & weapons from a clearance Ninja box. BDP gonna have me going broke for rounds 3, 4, and 5 next year!
Expensive is NOT overpriced. It is just that a lot of people use these words interchangeably. Lego is expensive. Some sets are overpriced and some have good value. Anyway, back to what I always believe - Buy later when there is a discount. Do not fall for the FOMO trap (which, in the Social Media Age, is a minefield).
But it is overpriced. Every brick LEGO makes is overpriced, especially in recent years with quality falling off. My old pieces from the '80s and early '90s weren't as bad as those today which have visible mould holes. There are fewer prints and more stickers even in expensive sets. Piece counts have become huge, but most of the pieces are tiny, bloating the sets and rendering the 'PPP' ratio moot. In this way, they can charge more for less. The LEGO Group knows they can overcharge for their product and people will buy it regardless because of nostalgia, endless licensing, and FOMO (hello, GWPs?). The LEGO Group did not need to raise their prices in 2022 but did it anyway at a time when many were really struggling to keep food on the table. Sets like Rivendell are beautiful but unnecessary. It's £430 in my country and a bog-standard loaf of bread is about £1. So, do I buy Rivendell, or do I buy a loaf of bread every week for the next 8+ years? What has more value? For the record, I don't think Rivendell is overpriced but it is far too expensive and big. On the other hand, the Deku Tree is both expensive and overpriced; so disappointing for those of us who've wanted LEGO Zelda for years. LEGO used to make waves of little sets, a few medium ones, and maybe a big one, but now for many popular themes, it's just one gigantic monster set with a monster price tag that only the super-rich can afford. People have every right to complain about being priced out of their own hobby. LEGO's competitors make more-or-less the same quality bricks with a much lower price-point. With this in mind, if LEGO dropped their prices a little, they could charge more than the competition and still make a killing. Rather, they raise the prices further instead out of greed. It's the same with all big companies. They don't just want a piece of the pie, they want the whole pie and then some. It's crazy that you defend the price of the new Sarlacc when even ultra-rich RUclipsrs like DuckBricks who can afford everything under the sun decry sets like this as too much. So yes, LEGO is absolutely overpriced.
When I can't afford a set, I sell sets I have in my backlog to get money for that set, or I make that set a priority for the whole year since my birthday is around Christmas. A good example this year is the Orient Express from last December. I have loved rtrains years before I was into lego and always wanted a display train in my bedroom now I have enough in my yearly budget to get it for my birthday this year but I also want to get the Icons Corvet since my grandpa was a big car guy and he passed away this spring and the corvet was the last lego set we talked about last August. So I am split do I empty my budget and get both big sets or do I get the Corvet only and do the train some time in 2025 because if I pass on it for Christmas I will be able to get 2 smaller sets I have wanted all year the animated series batmobile and Spiderman mask.
It is 100% is as someone whos bought barad dur and legend of zelda or even sets worth the piece count like the medieval village still over priced we’re talkin about our hard earned money that goes towards our survival and means everything in this world we have set up so yes definitely overpriced fact is lego makes millions I make dollars im gonna support my finances before them any day
I had a conversation over this with lego. My two arguments were more affordable = more sales & Many Nock offs for cheaper Their response was better Quality, & they thanked me for the input. Personally, it's still just plastic formed in a mold repeatedly Example The $20 plastic chairs at Walmart cost $0.10 C ea to manufacture What is the actual markup of plastic value on Lego?
IDGAF what the price is. If it’s junk, it’s junk. Lots of whiners out there, need more money, go get some in the market, tons of other people’s money and you can take some for yourself. It’s what I do, and use that money to buy WTF I want… I only want endless copies of the Medieval Blacksmith in order to build more for my Black Falcon village… and Forestmen and Wolfpack figures… the Viking stuff has been good, small though… a lot to fix there… I’ve got to always fix everything that they make… good video! Later my fellow AHOLs!
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this topic. Probably these same people are the ones that complain Lego is producing too many different sets and they can’t keep up or afford all of them. Really?! Do car collectors complain that car makers are releasing too many models every year and they can’t keep up? Of course not. It’s such a bizarre way of thinking. Some people aren’t happy unless they are grumpy I guess 😂
thank you! I wish more people could say this plainly like this (without weirdly being jumped on). This is how capitalism works! Lego is a toy company that exists to make money selling toys! I think this attitude has come from market "training" because consumer standards have been pushed lower and lower by the economy and the market itself with sites like Amazon, Temu, Ali Baba. If you compare your lego sets to most any other toys, especially knock off legos from said sites, or junk from the dollar store than of course they appear "over priced" but there's no reason for me to even mention what the qualitative differences are, they're so obvious. Lego is Lego, everyone knows what that means, that's why we see one of those banger sets and we just make it happen anyway. It's a treat to enjoy the Lego designs, rebuild and reuse every tiny brilliantly engineered piece, not a pokemon to collect and then toss weeks later. If it's life cycle was expected to be days or even months it would be a very different product and we wouldn't be here obsessing over it and talking about it, it would be long gone as a company.
Lego is expensive but usually a good value. Especially if you only buy large sets for 2x points, and/or a good GWP that you want and can use. Compare Lion Knight's Castle to a $400 vintage castle from the 80's. Those old castles are tiny. I love the feeling of thinking back to when I was a kid, but those vintage sets are not worth it to me. What has happened is that rent, car prices, food, and insurance are all overpriced. This is due to financial manipulation that's been going on for decades. Rich people get cheap loans and then buy up homes and raise the rent. I got back into Lego hoping to *avoid* political discussions, but the problem today in the West is neoliberal austerity capitalism that prioritizes speculators over families and even rational investors.
Lego is expensive, yes, but you don't have to buy every set. I follow the news, see what is coming and save money for it. I can't buy a lot, but what I buy is making me happy😊
lego is a premium product, a buck can only get a kid just 10 pieces but relatively, legos always been this way, so its not really overpriced. the only things that are overpriced are the star wars sets because people will shill it either way XD
I agree they are not overpriced but "strategically priced". What do I mean by that? Sets are priced based on the research they'd done and not based on the set. The design and parts count are secondary. For example: research data shows adults are more likely to buy modular sets. So, they priced it accordingly. Star Wars demographics are mostly men, adult and even middle-aged. So, they priced sets accordingly. You can see it across any theme, even Dreamzzz line. Ninjago is slowly creeping up as the OG fans enter the workforce. Yes they have cheaper sets but there's also an increase in the number of larger sets. Harry Potter/Marvel/Mario are all slowly pushing the ceiling as the fans are getting older. How else can you explain why LOTR only got large sets and not play sets? So yeah they're not overpriced but simply strategically priced. And soon Star Wars line will only get UCS sets all year round, each starting from $500 at least and don't expect it to have 3000 pieces but rather like a 1000 piece diorama...simply because us fans will be middle-aged by then and have a huge disposable income as all middle-aged men do, according to Lego's data 😅
While you're technically correct, it's really semantics. Overpriced is synonymous with unaffordable in the common vernacular (thanks, modern education institutions). I personally can't justify LEGO at its current price, for mass produced injection molded plastic.
You are 100% right. People who just throw that quote about a Lego set being overpriced have no clue and they are saying it because they can't afford anything. But there are ridiculous prices on some stuff that is just dumb. The 4+ sets. The city sets. I find it hilarious that the stuff that is supposed to be for young kids are the stuff that are THE most overpriced.
I can understand licensed IP sets being more expensive, but I remember looking at 4+ sets and duplo sets at one point and being reeeeaaaally perplexed by the cost for the number of pieces. I guess an argument could be made due to amount of plastic, but it still felt extreme for sets you would want to use to help younger kids playing with Lego? But in the pursuit of being frank, most of my personal experience with Lego was the Bionicle line, when Lego was in a different spot and was selling canister sets for like..$7 back then (though they do go up in price slightly over the years), with the G2 stuff being approximate the cost of the older large Bionicle sets, understandably due to piece count and size. The mech sets they’ve done feel about a right price for me given minifigs and whatnot they have (plus being a style of Lego I personally am instinctively drawn to 😅)
Thank you ! Every bigger set , here come the videos crying out about the price. I'm sick of it too. Sorry, economics and the capitalistic world is what it is. Live with it and stop whining. Good video.
Well, by definition if it does well on the market it's not overpriced. it can be overpriced for some people but clearly it's not overpriced for a large number of customers, so many customers in fact that Lego is the largest toy maker in the world But it is very expensive The complaint I do find weird is that lego "got" too expensive, which is bs, its as expensive as it has ever been
When a company like FunWhole can release a modular model (Antique Store) with a piece count of 2847, printed pieces, that also includes a light kit, and is 100% comparable in quality and build sophistication selling for 129.00, I can't help but feel like Lego is, and has been exceptionally overpriced... I'm happy to finally see some healthy competition, and comparable alternatives.
The glazing is crazy
As someone who owns multiple $500 display models the smaller-medium sets are 100% overpriced in certain themes like Star Wars
There is NO WAY you are serious, Lego has always been expensive yeah but in recent years they have lowerd their quality and drastically raised their prices even more. They are by all definitions overpriced in almost every theme, esp when you compare them to actually good brick companies like Reobrix or Cobi
I agree overpricing or not should not be determined by the price. It's the ratio of how good the set is to how much it costs. For a lot of small to medium-sized IP sets, I still think they are overpriced.
That's what we call "the value equation" because it takes into consideration what you are getting for the price, not just the price itself. Buying a big set and getting 2x points and a GWP is a good value. It's just most folks don't have the $ or space to spend $1000/year on Lego, even though that's only $3 per day.
This is completely overpriced
I do think it's important do differentiate "overpriced" from Lego's corporate perspective--how many units are moving how quickly and with what profit margin--versus "overpriced" from a fan's perspective. Fans are often justified in using that term if they mean a set isn't priced proportionally to perceived value. Things of course get subjective there: for some people, $500 for a box of little plastic parts and a paper instruction manual will always seem like outrageous highway robbery. Others may find it competely worth their money.
You can also compare the price of some Lego sets to the things they represent: say, the typewriter or retro radio or guitar and amp. You can sometimes buy the real functioning object for a comparable price or a little bit more. Is Lego then overpriced? Take the Fender guitar and amp set: for a hundred bucks more, you can buy an entry-level Squier (a Fender brand) guitar and practice amp and a cable that you can spend a lifetime learning and playing, versus a Lego set that you might build in a hour and put on the shelf to gather dust. Sounds overpriced to me.
Then you get into a thorny question that's hard to answer because we don't have access to Lego's accounting: when you compare Lego's sticker prices and price-per-part ratio to some of their competitors, Lego clearly appears dramatically overpriced. But since we don't know the specifics of Lego's expenses, we can't accurately gauge whether Lego is gouging us or not, vis-a-vis another brick company. But it sure feels like it. If Pantasy or Cobi can put out a set with better quality control and prints instead of stickers for a lower price (sometimes half that of a comparable Lego set), then is Lego overpriced?
_Are_ they comparable quality? Or is that mostly what we’re paying for by buying Lego? Every Pantasy review I’ve seen has commented that the part consistency was quite good, but not as good as Lego’s. At least some Cobi reviews I’ve seen have said similar. And certainly my experience with Mega Blox/Construx is similar - I’ve never built a Mega Blox set that didn’t have at least a few bricks or plates that were exceptionally hard to stick together, or wouldn’t stay locked, or had too little clutch, or had to be rotated to fit (like a 1x6 brick that simply wouldn’t fit until I rotated it 180°). I’ve only personally run into anything like this with Lego with white parts from a year or two in the 2010s that have very low clutch power. And in the 45 years and half-a-million pieces worth of sets I bought prior to 2021, I had exactly 2 missing parts, both from sets purchased in the ‘80s. Since then, Lego has definitely gotten worse about packing errors - over the last 3 years, I’ve had a sticker sheet and half a dozen parts missing from sets, 1 extra sticker sheet, 1 mis-molded part, and 3 instances where a completely wrong part was substituted. That’s still only about as many packing errors from a few hundred sets as I normally encounter from a single $50 Mega Construx set.
But I haven’t bought any Pantasy or Cobi myself, so I can’t really judge whether the reviewers’ complaints were valid. And some of this is subjective. A friend who has bought a lot of Mega and Lego can’t tell the difference in feel/quality. I don’t think it’s just that they’ve gotten lucky and only received the very best Mega parts in every single box-I’m sure I’m just fussier about this particular thing.
It's cheaper, I don't really understand why it should be and must be lego "quality". Honestly, it's probably at least comparable, the print quality and molds for Lego sets get worse every year
@@natbarmore I've been collecting Lego for years, and recently built the FunWhole Antique Shop, and the Pantasy Sherlock Holmes set and they are 100% comparable in quality and build to Lego and about half the price.
And why do you think that is? Perhaps because it’s actually quite cheap to make them? Take out most things from equation and omg you can make a lot more profit for less the price
I disagree with your idea that because something sells means it's not overpriced. Like, imagine if they released some highly desirable figures such as Darth Revan, Queen Amidala, etc. and charged $30 a piece for them. They might sell because people want them, but that wouldn't make it not massively overpriced. Your logic just enables Lego to be greedy and push the limits of pricing.
I mean Im glad you have the money and are happy to shill but for a lot of us it is way overpriced.
its bad enough warhammer is now easier on my budget
Let’s be real, most people who say it’s overpriced really mean that they don’t want to pay that much for it! This is despite the fact that many will still pay that price.
Just a heads-up: your audio and video aren't synched. Looks a bit like an old dubbed Kung Fu movie :)
Just because people are buying does not mean it is not overpriced... The new Zelda set is a great example of this, it will sell because people have been craving that set for years but it is $50-80 overpriced... (I even pre-ordered it), but if there is already an established line of Zelda sets this current set at $300 would almost never sell. It is still overpriced. You need to take more into account then if set sell some (Lego only drops prices in extreme circumstances).
It's really sad that Lego has so many apologists for ripping people off ruthlessly. I used to love it as a kid but I'm priced out of it entirely now as are most people my age. It's not ok.
Lego is soooo overpriced!
It is overpriced for the quality that keeps getting worse it is overpriced ESPECIALLY considering the competition
im sorry, but 30 dollars for a car is overpriced and dumb
Fanboys should shop saying it's not overpriced. It is. Lego brick quality is mediocre at best compared to some competing brands. Those brands are cheaper, have better clutch and often fully printed instead of stickers (and better quality prints). It's ok if people want to spend that money on an overpriced brand. Just don't deny the reality it's overpriced. Lego these days is a bad parody of what it once used to be with all the garbage overly specific new parts replacing clever building techniques. Current sets hardly have normal versatile parts like plates and bricks anymore but all this nonsense not suitable for moccing.
Some sets are absolutely over priced.
Comparing Obi-Wn’s starship versus Jedi Bob’s starship. Nearly same build, nearly same piece count. Bob is nearly twice the price.
This is a money grab.
But telling me what I mean when I say over priced suggests zero credibility on your part.
But it is overpriced as vendors or brands like FunWhole, Pantasy, Reobrix, Mould King, JieStar, Sembo (Senbao), Panlos (Huada Toys) proof every day.
I can get basic brick boxes with bricks from Chinese vendor Qunlong for 20 €/kg, for 40 €/kg ( Pick-a-Brick wall with 5000 pieces) or for 60-70 €/kg when buying manually packed models from Bluebrixx. So it is very likely that all these companies pay less than 15 €/kg when buying bulk bricks from China. So everything above 25 €/kg is a lie to customers as there is this one vendor who sells it to me in local stores for 20 € ( and this is not some parcel order with shady customs papers to save import taxes and fees ... ).
For me, overpriced means, I'm not going to buy it despite it holding a decent value to me. The number is too high for me to be willing to pay. And so there's a mismatch. If you still pay it, then you can't argue it's over price as much.
I didn't even watch the whole video, but this comment will pay my algorithm dues lol
Rivendell is one of the most expensive sets I’ve bought but I think it’s a good value compared to other Lego products. At the time I compared it to the batcave shadowbox and Rivendell seemed like a better value. It’s the nicest set I own. It was a better build than Avengers tower even though I’m a bigger Marvel fan than LOTR fan
Really? I think that's a terribly priced set. Looking at the layout, it's just a single building and an area off to the side. I could see $400, but $500 is just pure greed. Comparing it to another overpriced set doesn't change anything.
I think the issue is that LEGO is def charging way more than they should. Look at the alt-brick brands. You can get big sets from companies like Fun Whole and Pantasy at a very fair price. They use quality bricks, look great, and are fun builds.
Many sets are overpriced. And yes, Lego is an expensive hobby, i dont disagree. But there are sets that are not a good value for the asking price. And dont get me started on resellers who inflate the prices to crazy amounts on used sets...
This is one of the most irresponsible videos I've seen in a while. So you are basically arguing that something cannot be called overpriced if people are willing to spend the money or like the set? Congratulations - you've just provided an excuse for predatory marketing- and sales-tactics, which deliberately target neurodivergent people like those with a spending disorder or suffering from brand loyalty. You have made yourself part of the problem. A far better and much more objective and factual measure to determine whether something is overprized or not is calculating the cost of developing, producing, logistics, and a reasonable - note: REASONABLE - profit margin on top of that. In that regard, everything LEGO is offering is overprized. And we are not talking about the diminishing quality of LEGO, from color-consistency to cheapo-quality offerings like many, many stickers instead of prints. LEGO produces cheap in countries all over the world, a lot of their sets are produced in China. As a counter-example to prove the point: There's a company in poland producing sets in the brick-system stolen by LEGO over half a century ago. Their bricks are high-quality with a superb color consistency, they almost exclusively print in high quality instead of using stickers, they produce exclusively in the EU, and their sets have twice or even more pieces for the same price as LEGO offerings. So yes, LEGO IS overprized, and whoever argues otherwise can only be demed self-delusional.
But we don't live in a wonderland where prices are as low as production costs, this is the real world where every kid knows the price is set by supply and demand
Lego sells gangbusters so by definition lego is not overpriced
Lego is subjectively very expensive imo and it's a legitimate complaint but it's objectively not overpriced
But hey, ppl tell me Capitalism is great and I suck because I lean leftwards :)
I tend to agree with you in principle, but it’s hard to adjudicate for a luxury good. What is a “reasonable” profit margin? How do we judge that? 1%? 5%? 10%? 20%? 0% (if you have a net profit, it should be paid out to workers)? Gross profit margin or net profit margin? Does it matter whether that is pure profit that just goes into the owners’ pockets or the profits are plowed back into the company? If so, does it matter whether the company then uses those profits for R&D or sits on them for a rainy-day fund so that if there’s a downturn they can afford to keep everyone on staff and not reduce wages even if it takes several years to recover?
With essentials, like groceries, it seems relatively easy to adjudicate reasonable profit margins. But with a luxury good? And what if we found out that Lego is _currently_ operating with 5% profit margins? Then would you say that it’s reasonably priced, without any changes in actual prices?
Almost none of what you said is true. Except that it’s probably overpriced for you, since you are greedy and self entitled thus you think you need to be able to own everything that you wanna, instead of working for it but then again you don’t wanna work for the minimum payment that is legal in your country?! So what gives ?
Lego has been fortunate that after most of their significant patents expired, not many companies jumped in to compete, and the ones that did had clearly inferior products. They pretty much remained untouchable, and able to continually test the market with their pricing (early comparisons were made with Playmobile products also being molded ABS though the play experience was different - weight and detailing were the benchmarks). When the 'collector/investor' market began to emerge and the prices of older models began to climb, and Lego began marketing directly to adults, that's when other companies really took notice. Add that Lego was now being manufactured in China, Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Malaysia (lower cost/higher profits), and it was only a matter of time, and that's where we are now. Toss in that adult MOC designers are beginning to submit designs to the emerging competitors, and it will be interesting to see what happens over the next few years.
You got a few things wrong with especially with manufacturing
The prices increase, while the quality and quantity of what you get decreases, thats the definition of overpricing. I hope you at least got paid for this braindead opinion.
Dude wtf
The quantity increased by a lot and via that the price per brick went actually a bit down
Also the complexity increased by a lot
And by that also the quality overall
Not sure if you are trolling or wtf
@@IvanAntolic Yes, you are getting more small inexpensive, common and cheap pieces. If getting 100 1x1 studs more justifies the 20+ percent price increases for you, then you are either rich, delusional or a corporate shill. Go cry about it.
Fake Lego factories are 50-25 percent the cost of Lego and they still make a profit
And some of them are as good as the original.
The issue has gotten much worse over the last 5 years.
There are still really well priced sets say the Ninjago City Gardens $350 with over 5,000 pieces and 20 MiniFigures.
Then you have the UCS AT-AT $850 6,000 pieces and less than 10 MiniFigures.
Doesn't have the same value. Maybe if it had more MiniFigures or was $200 cheaper.
I do think Lego's overpriced, but using piece count as a way to explain it is stupid. Lego pieces are NOT the same.
@gbrow1604
Piece count can be a bad indicator at times.
Is the Rivendell set really a $500 set the same value as the $350 Ninjago City Gardens.
Similar sizes, pieces, MiniFigures
Why the $150 difference?
@@LeePrice-r9u Well in that specific case I kind of do agree. I think Rivendell should have been $400.
You missed one elephant here. You say in your tile people say LEGO is overpriced - not a particular set. I think people complain about LEGO prices because they think these plastic studs are really cheap to produce and could have been sold much cheaper - as you see the KO brands do.
Now, I don't think cheap chinese bricks are of comparable quality (never tried them and I won't), but are you telling me that LEGOs manufacturing hasn't been able to reduce the price of these bricks when produced by the billions? Of course they have, hence LEGO group being as big as they are.
LEGO is OVERPRICED compared to production cost. Paying 500 dollars for half a kilo of pressed plastic. Please. That is where overpriced come from - not the supply/demand discussion this video is doing.
Lego does produce in China lol, its alt companies like Cobi that actually produce more in the EU
I just got myself Green Grocer and Book Shop from one of these Chinese manufacturers. They ARE of comfortable quality. Actually they are THE SAME quality. The only two differences are: no "LEGO" on the pins and no alternate faces on the minifigures. You won't see the differnce if you don't look too close.
Expensive does not equal overpriced sure, but that Skiff set is most definitely overpriced and a pretty bad example. Otherwise yeah the 500$ large display models are completely justified
Not at all, almost every big Lego set has a cheaper/higher quality alternative from a diffrent company
I think they're all around 20% overpriced. Rivendell for example is a great set and is worth hundreds of dollars. But $500 is ridiculous. There's not enough mass in the set to justify that. $400 would be fair
If you don't get the value then it's not overpriced?! I'm lost mate!
Cost vs value is a personal choice. I think the Deku tree is overpriced, my opinion, yet I'm getting it because I've loved Zelda since I was in my early 20's and I'm almost 60 now.
As a Star Wars fan, there are absolutely sets that are overpriced, and I've bought some that were not worth the extra $20 LEGO tacked onto them. Now supposedly, the prices of sets are not based on IP Tax or the part count, it's mostly based on the initial target when making a new set and then it's estimated weight when finally packaged up. So it's not the 10 cents per piece model we so often like to use and then rounding to the nearest $5 or $10, it's all about how heavy that box ends up being.
There are also other factors. How many new molds have been made for a minifigure or a particular windscreen, or weapon, or whatever? What new parts were specifically made for the set or theme, and is there a lot of reusability with them? The molds have to be paid for one way or another, and if a new part only appears in one set, and it's only ever going to be in one set, well it's got to be offset by either the budgeting of sets from the rest of the theme, or the one set's got to have a higher price.
It's also important to look at just how many big pieces there are in a set. Anything that has an area of 8x8 and larger requires better quality control, and if you're buying the Millennium Falcon, the AT-AT, the Venator-class Republic Cruiser, there's a lot of larger plates that need to be produced in large quantities with significant quality control. Is it all there? I have definitely noticed a decrease in quality of the plastic, it disappoints me, but not as much as say having half of them not even getting enough plastic to fully fill the mold or have them come all warped and unusable.
And what about printing? While I would prefer printing all the time, it's just not always economical because printed parts need to be sorted separately at the factories, meaning they're taking up more space that could be used up by a recolor instead. Similarly with minifigures, if there's front and back torso, duel molded arms and legs, front and back head, arm printing, front and side leg printing, and hair or a helmet with printing, too, you are also paying for all of that. Do minifigures really need to be so detailed? Nope, but for something like the Mandalorian line of sets, LEGO has made it a habit to where if you wear Mandalorian armor, you're getting the full treatment with arm printing, you even get something special on the back even if it's just going to get covered up with a cape or a jetpack, and even the legs have toe printing for scuffs on the boots or whatever. It's insane the amount of detail that goes into some of these minifigs. Now imagine you have three or four minifigures getting that same treatment in just one set. You're paying for all the quality control on that, too.
I still don't think that LEGO Star Wars is always justified in their prices, in fact I do think that Disney may have renegotiated contracts to get more of the percentage of profits than Lucasfilm once had before the acquisition, but there's always a reason for the pricing being what they are. The only way to change the overpriced conversation is to speak with your wallets and not buy sets that feel like they are not worth it. I love my Star Wars sets, but there are limits to which that love can extend, and I'm not buying stuff that's more than $10 over that 10 cents per piece ratio unless I feel it's justified, and even then, I'm still waiting until there's a Double VIP thing going on and a Gift with Purchase to help offset some of those prices, too, and really feel like I get what I'm paying for.
LEGO is way way overpriced
I still find video sets in my local toystore for like 4$
I try not to say “overpriced” when I talk with Lego, though that thought definitely came up when I looked at the Battle on Peridia Star Wars set (that said, idk how they price minifigs, so maybe that’s a factor?). I know it’ll sell, but it’s hard for me to justify that price..which is a bummer considering my wife wants it.😅I think you did well touching on the different possible causes of using that word. The other moment were when they revealed the Captain America/Batman/Wolverine buildable figure sets at around $10 more than the Spider-man ones, because I have can’t see why that jump happened.
Expensive, yeah. Which then..the current price is admittedly jarring for me as someone more coming back to the hobby with my kids. My old experience was with smaller sets, notably Bionicle, where it felt like an allowance was enough to get something. I’ve definitely been drawn into looking at mech sets.. those oddly have been hitting a point where I’m like “yeah, i could see the value in that..” but maybe that’s just my nostalgia for building figure sets.👀
Considering Chinese produce some of the same sets of the SAME quality (yes, they are) that are at least 3 times cheaper - it is totally overpriced! Unless you think paying for THE NAME and labeled pins is OK.
Tried to be open-minded to your argument and evaluated over-priced vs expensive. But at the end of the day, Lego doesn’t have any real competition, so they price as they want. If there were 4-5 other larger manufacturers that offered competitive sized products, designs, etc, and Lego was 35% higher, hypothetically, then I get your point. And yes, there are other vendors of these types of “toys”-but they’re not real competition.
This is where we need a metric, such as cost per piece, to evaluate Lego prices against itself. Example. Rivendell vs UCS sail barge. Both $500 sets. But there’s absolutely no way the sail barge is on par with Rivendell on design, piece count, build experience, etc. In this case, I say that sail barge is way over-priced, by comparison to other Lego sets.
The lack of real competitors is what hurts us here. But Lego does price egregiously. And they make a ton of money.
Why are seemingly all LEGO-Influencer suddenly putting out these kind of "stop saying" videos. Is LEGO panicking?
Lego influencers will likely suffer first if a massive pullback on Lego spending happens by consumers. Maybe Lego does a blitz of advertising with them hoping to convince shoppers to buy when they are already becoming conservative or Lego decides to cut the excess spending quickly knowing some real economic pain is coming and they need to preserve their margins. Panicking? Not yet, but there are signs that Lego has pushed too far with the consumers on prices. Any Lego influencers who financially depend on creating this illusion that it's ok to blow $1000 - 2000 a month on Lego will definitely be sweating. They are getting these sets for free to be shills, so of course they are not in touch with the reality of prices to regular consumers.
Probably because it’s getting really boring that greedy self entitled kids cry about how something costs a lot as if they need to own everything, yet they don’t wanna be paid minimum that is legal in their country and advocate for even less play
@@IvanAntolic You ACTUALLY think people criticizing the prices are the ones being greedy and not Lego? lol
A lot of lego definitely is overpriced, look at the recent hellicarrier and a lot of the star wars theme but this doesnt mean every set and every theme is. Animal crossing, creator 3 in 1, lego art and minecraft are my favourite themes for pricing- usually give really good value for what they offer, and a good half of marvel and even disney actually have a really good price to them. So yeah not as a whole but some sets absolutely are.
I think when people are talking overpriced, they are talking about them selling bad sets (smaller than they should be with bad stickers and no prints) for more than we want to pay. I for one loved the price to piece ration in the Medieval Town Square - but I hated the amount of stickers (however, given the price I can't complain that much - however when I look at something with a lot of stickers and huge prices ... I am cringing a lot ) . Still I would have paid slightly more for a fully printed medieval town square.
I for one consider the Lions Knights Castle priced a bit higher than I would pay, but at 30% discout, I got 5.
I am eyeing rivendel, but I am not sure if I would get more than one here. Sauron's eye tower too.
A set that I might not even get at 30% off is the Zelda Deku Tree ... I love the set, but even at 250 I find it's too much for what it offers (I am still to see this live to decide, but it's unlikely I would like to get it).
Starwars sets, I only purchsed them at 75% off (got that vade vs Kenobi set with the fancy yellow robot at around $10 - and even then I found it a bit too expensive for what it was worth to me).
When I got back into Lego with Blacksmith in 2021, I knew I'd never have the budget to get Castle, Star Wars, and City, so I settled on mostly preindustrial: castle & some pirates. I love LOTR, so those big sets will fit in great with my theme. With the Bricklink Designer Program, I'm saving almost my whole budget for all the castle stuff in rounds 3 & 4. I thought Mountain Fortress BDP was a bit pricey, but upon building it, I can say it's "better than the pictures" and that seems to hold true for almost every big set. I got Lion Knight's when there was 2x points and a good GWP. A great value. The bigger the set, the bigger the deception the pics are.
@@Nphen I clearly agree, the bigger sets are wonderous. And some of them have a lot of value packed in them. I think I will have to stop buying non castle sets (I am starting to strain my budget a lot ). I think I will just finish off the last years harry potter "collection" and then focus only on castle and the occasional ninjago dragon / big temple and dreamzz.
@@octav1600 I got Dreamzzz Stable of Magical Creatures at Costco for $55, then $45. Goes with the fantasy theme, might be fun near Mushroom House (now BDP Mushroom Village). I have Monkey Kid Heavenly Realms, and Team Hideout (not built yet) to one day make a "Monkey Kid Mountain" along with some of the Ninjago temples. Great to get tons of swords & weapons from a clearance Ninja box. BDP gonna have me going broke for rounds 3, 4, and 5 next year!
Expensive is NOT overpriced. It is just that a lot of people use these words interchangeably. Lego is expensive. Some sets are overpriced and some have good value. Anyway, back to what I always believe - Buy later when there is a discount. Do not fall for the FOMO trap (which, in the Social Media Age, is a minefield).
But it is overpriced. Every brick LEGO makes is overpriced, especially in recent years with quality falling off. My old pieces from the '80s and early '90s weren't as bad as those today which have visible mould holes. There are fewer prints and more stickers even in expensive sets. Piece counts have become huge, but most of the pieces are tiny, bloating the sets and rendering the 'PPP' ratio moot. In this way, they can charge more for less. The LEGO Group knows they can overcharge for their product and people will buy it regardless because of nostalgia, endless licensing, and FOMO (hello, GWPs?).
The LEGO Group did not need to raise their prices in 2022 but did it anyway at a time when many were really struggling to keep food on the table. Sets like Rivendell are beautiful but unnecessary. It's £430 in my country and a bog-standard loaf of bread is about £1. So, do I buy Rivendell, or do I buy a loaf of bread every week for the next 8+ years? What has more value? For the record, I don't think Rivendell is overpriced but it is far too expensive and big. On the other hand, the Deku Tree is both expensive and overpriced; so disappointing for those of us who've wanted LEGO Zelda for years.
LEGO used to make waves of little sets, a few medium ones, and maybe a big one, but now for many popular themes, it's just one gigantic monster set with a monster price tag that only the super-rich can afford. People have every right to complain about being priced out of their own hobby.
LEGO's competitors make more-or-less the same quality bricks with a much lower price-point. With this in mind, if LEGO dropped their prices a little, they could charge more than the competition and still make a killing. Rather, they raise the prices further instead out of greed. It's the same with all big companies. They don't just want a piece of the pie, they want the whole pie and then some.
It's crazy that you defend the price of the new Sarlacc when even ultra-rich RUclipsrs like DuckBricks who can afford everything under the sun decry sets like this as too much.
So yes, LEGO is absolutely overpriced.
it is overpriced
When I can't afford a set, I sell sets I have in my backlog to get money for that set, or I make that set a priority for the whole year since my birthday is around Christmas. A good example this year is the Orient Express from last December. I have loved rtrains years before I was into lego and always wanted a display train in my bedroom now I have enough in my yearly budget to get it for my birthday this year but I also want to get the Icons Corvet since my grandpa was a big car guy and he passed away this spring and the corvet was the last lego set we talked about last August. So I am split do I empty my budget and get both big sets or do I get the Corvet only and do the train some time in 2025 because if I pass on it for Christmas I will be able to get 2 smaller sets I have wanted all year the animated series batmobile and Spiderman mask.
It is overprice, what you gonna do ?
It is 100% is as someone whos bought barad dur and legend of zelda or even sets worth the piece count like the medieval village still over priced we’re talkin about our hard earned money that goes towards our survival and means everything in this world we have set up so yes definitely overpriced fact is lego makes millions I make dollars im gonna support my finances before them any day
I totally agree!
lego is overpriced
I had a conversation over this with lego.
My two arguments were more affordable = more sales
&
Many Nock offs for cheaper
Their response was better Quality, & they thanked me for the input.
Personally, it's still just plastic formed in a mold repeatedly
Example
The $20 plastic chairs at Walmart cost $0.10 C ea to manufacture
What is the actual markup of plastic value on Lego?
well, ITS OVERPRICED :D
IDGAF what the price is. If it’s junk, it’s junk. Lots of whiners out there, need more money, go get some in the market, tons of other people’s money and you can take some for yourself. It’s what I do, and use that money to buy WTF I want… I only want endless copies of the Medieval Blacksmith in order to build more for my Black Falcon village… and Forestmen and Wolfpack figures… the Viking stuff has been good, small though… a lot to fix there… I’ve got to always fix everything that they make… good video! Later my fellow AHOLs!
Lego is overpriced.
I wholeheartedly agree with you on this topic. Probably these same people are the ones that complain Lego is producing too many different sets and they can’t keep up or afford all of them. Really?! Do car collectors complain that car makers are releasing too many models every year and they can’t keep up? Of course not. It’s such a bizarre way of thinking. Some people aren’t happy unless they are grumpy I guess 😂
thank you! I wish more people could say this plainly like this (without weirdly being jumped on). This is how capitalism works! Lego is a toy company that exists to make money selling toys! I think this attitude has come from market "training" because consumer standards have been pushed lower and lower by the economy and the market itself with sites like Amazon, Temu, Ali Baba.
If you compare your lego sets to most any other toys, especially knock off legos from said sites, or junk from the dollar store than of course they appear "over priced" but there's no reason for me to even mention what the qualitative differences are, they're so obvious. Lego is Lego, everyone knows what that means, that's why we see one of those banger sets and we just make it happen anyway. It's a treat to enjoy the Lego designs, rebuild and reuse every tiny brilliantly engineered piece, not a pokemon to collect and then toss weeks later. If it's life cycle was expected to be days or even months it would be a very different product and we wouldn't be here obsessing over it and talking about it, it would be long gone as a company.
Lego is expensive but usually a good value. Especially if you only buy large sets for 2x points, and/or a good GWP that you want and can use. Compare Lion Knight's Castle to a $400 vintage castle from the 80's. Those old castles are tiny. I love the feeling of thinking back to when I was a kid, but those vintage sets are not worth it to me. What has happened is that rent, car prices, food, and insurance are all overpriced. This is due to financial manipulation that's been going on for decades. Rich people get cheap loans and then buy up homes and raise the rent. I got back into Lego hoping to *avoid* political discussions, but the problem today in the West is neoliberal austerity capitalism that prioritizes speculators over families and even rational investors.
Lego is expensive, yes, but you don't have to buy every set. I follow the news, see what is coming and save money for it. I can't buy a lot, but what I buy is making me happy😊
lego is a premium product, a buck can only get a kid just 10 pieces
but relatively, legos always been this way, so its not really overpriced. the only things that are overpriced are the star wars sets because people will shill it either way XD
I agree they are not overpriced but "strategically priced". What do I mean by that? Sets are priced based on the research they'd done and not based on the set. The design and parts count are secondary. For example: research data shows adults are more likely to buy modular sets. So, they priced it accordingly. Star Wars demographics are mostly men, adult and even middle-aged. So, they priced sets accordingly. You can see it across any theme, even Dreamzzz line. Ninjago is slowly creeping up as the OG fans enter the workforce. Yes they have cheaper sets but there's also an increase in the number of larger sets. Harry Potter/Marvel/Mario are all slowly pushing the ceiling as the fans are getting older. How else can you explain why LOTR only got large sets and not play sets? So yeah they're not overpriced but simply strategically priced. And soon Star Wars line will only get UCS sets all year round, each starting from $500 at least and don't expect it to have 3000 pieces but rather like a 1000 piece diorama...simply because us fans will be middle-aged by then and have a huge disposable income as all middle-aged men do, according to Lego's data 😅
While you're technically correct, it's really semantics.
Overpriced is synonymous with unaffordable in the common vernacular (thanks, modern education institutions).
I personally can't justify LEGO at its current price, for mass produced injection molded plastic.
You are 100% right. People who just throw that quote about a Lego set being overpriced have no clue and they are saying it because they can't afford anything. But there are ridiculous prices on some stuff that is just dumb. The 4+ sets. The city sets. I find it hilarious that the stuff that is supposed to be for young kids are the stuff that are THE most overpriced.
I can understand licensed IP sets being more expensive, but I remember looking at 4+ sets and duplo sets at one point and being reeeeaaaally perplexed by the cost for the number of pieces. I guess an argument could be made due to amount of plastic, but it still felt extreme for sets you would want to use to help younger kids playing with Lego?
But in the pursuit of being frank, most of my personal experience with Lego was the Bionicle line, when Lego was in a different spot and was selling canister sets for like..$7 back then (though they do go up in price slightly over the years), with the G2 stuff being approximate the cost of the older large Bionicle sets, understandably due to piece count and size. The mech sets they’ve done feel about a right price for me given minifigs and whatnot they have (plus being a style of Lego I personally am instinctively drawn to 😅)
Thank you ! Every bigger set , here come the videos crying out about the price. I'm sick of it too. Sorry, economics and the capitalistic world is what it is. Live with it and stop whining. Good video.
Well, by definition if it does well on the market it's not overpriced. it can be overpriced for some people but clearly it's not overpriced for a large number of customers, so many customers in fact that Lego is the largest toy maker in the world
But it is very expensive
The complaint I do find weird is that lego "got" too expensive, which is bs, its as expensive as it has ever been
Good job enabling Lego to be greedy.
@@gbrow1604 good job understanding the subject :)