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The LEGO Group acquires BrickLink
- dsr_ 7y agoIt will be interesting to see what parts of the site LEGO keeps and which they discard. BrickLink is one of the primary reseller marketplaces.
- enriquto 7y agoas a die-hard lego fan I am quite worried about this. Will an alternative marketplace develop?
- freemanpontifex 7y agoI was wondering what would be the general opinion of the effect this will have on BrickLink going forward. I, too, am concerned about how this will affect BrickLink's autonomy to operate as it has for years.
- MisterOctober 7y agoyeah, when I read this headline, my first reaction was "uh-oh" -- for years, Bricklink has been the only reasonable way to get specific [i.e., not subject to pick-a-brick selection] bulk parts / bricks -- the stuff my kid and I build wouldn't be possible without Bricklink -- I sure hope they don't functionally torpedo it, or just kill it outright
- dathinab 7y agoI don't think so, in the end BrickLink is more like ebay then amazone, i.e. a platform which helps you by from other shops. And it also has the custom builds program. If they crack down on reselling parts someone will just create a new platform doing that. What might be lost is some of the custom builds stuff and "automatically find parts" functionality. At last for some time. Through they might put up a bit more quality assurance, i.e. follow complains about non-official LEGO parts being sold and similar. It also prevents the platforms from starting to sell non-Lego blocks and figures. Through we probably can be sure that militaria LEGO builds are not unlikely to disappear.
- milofeynman 7y agoIf I had to guess, this is related to Brickset working with LEGO to sell those custom sets recently. They're probably going to sell extra stuff occasionally through it and maybe some exclusive parts etc. Leaving the reselling alone. Just a thought.
- DoubleGlazing 7y agoI'd be a bit concerned too. I have got the distinct feeling that over the last ten years or so Lego has been working harder to control both it's image and how the fan community uses its products. Stuff like suing YouTubers for a variety of reasons and being ever stricter about how and when you can use the Lego name. My concern would be that Lego will make BrickLink the "approved" community and resale site and make it harder for alternatives to exist. I hope I'm wrong, but I cant help but think that because the resale/collector value of Lego increases it would make sense for Lego to try and control that market.
- jacquesm 7y agoBricklink will be hard to beat for an alternative marketplace, it's been tried a couple of times by people not happy with the way Bricklink was run but just like Ebay it's a two sided marketplace and those have very strong network effects that once a party is established make it very hard to enter that market. There already is https://brickowl.com https://brickowl.com
- philipkiely 7y agoLike most niche secondary markets, Lego resale has a lot of interesting dynamics from a variety of participants. For example, some unopened sets have historically done well as investment vehicles once out of production [1]. I hold the Lego Group in high esteem as a company (no affiliation, just a lifelong fan) and I hope that they will do well by this acquisition. However, it also raises questions about the economic and social effects on niche resale communities when the original producer also owns the aftermarket. What would it be like if Nike or Adidas purchased reselling platforms like StockX? What if, back in the bubble, the company behind Beanie Babies had owned the aftermarket platform? IDK how it changes incentives for the company or the market participants, but it's interesting to think about. I would appreciate any insights on the question. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/lego-collecting-delivers-huge-and-uncorrelated-market-returns https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/lego-coll...
- ramses0 7y agoLook no further than StubHub / ticket scalper sales. There was a great article a while back talking about tacit agreements between originators and scalpers (scalpers provide a baseline load, and detailed / last minute customer care without involving the originator).
- hef19898 7y agoYou remember the Millennium Falcon at scale for the mini figs a couple of years ago? I was that close buying on, but I said to myself 500 buck is tad expensive. They now sell them for more than 3k last time I checked... Maybe next te around...
- capableweb 7y agoHopefully the one that bought the set you were thinking about buying actually built and enjoyed the set instead of thinking about the resell value...
- cptskippy 7y agoDon't fool yourself into believing these sets are hard to come by and that someone buying an "investment opportunity" is depriving someone else. The "hard to find" Saturn 5 rocket set has been on sale everywhere for 25% off recently. If you receive the Lego catalogs, it's pretty evident that they're targeting all demographics now. The ultimate collector line of sets is aimed pretty squarely at the "investment" market and people with more money than sense. They recently started putting out sets for the nostalgia and pop culture markets with sets for the Flintstones, Steam Boat Willie, Stranger Things, and Friends. You know when you're actively selling a toy set for a late 90s sitcom popular among 40 something single women that you're pandering to everyone. Honestly I'm surprised there isn't a Gilmore Girls set yet. My four year old has the Summer, Fall, Late Holiday, and Christmas catalogs splayed out on the counter with all the sets she wants circled. Not surprisingly the following sets aren't on her shopping list: 4784 piece Imperial Star Destroyer 4108 piece Liebherr R 9800 Excavator 3306 piece 1989 Batmobile 2287 piece The Updside Down 1197 piece Trafalgar Square 1023 piece Harley-Davidson Fat Boy 826 piece Vestas Wind Turbine I am a little offended she doesn't have the new Slave 1 set on her list though.
- mikerg87 7y agoMost collectors are just interested in the figures and have not interest in the sets themselves. I have a hard believing a lot of what goes on in bricklink and elsewhere is the result of harvesting minifigs out of boxes and boxes of minifigure sets. I surely dont know something about how all this works both officially and unofficially
- EamonnMR 7y agoI'm not sure that's the case for much older stuff. You regularly see complete old sets on ebay go for nonzero money. You can get upwards of three hundred for a working Space Monorail.
- tetra_proxy 7y agoI'm excited but hesitant to see what happens, as an adult who recently got back into Lego I think there could be some great support given. Or it could all go to hell in a handbasket.
- brickfreedom 7y agoSOHO Bricks was also included http://sohobricks.com/index.html http://sohobricks.com/index.html in the acquisition. Not sure they will be interested in keeping that alive. Additionally I am guessing they will remove BrickArms content from Bricklink at some point. --------- Will this have any impact on BrickLink's independence? > Yes, and no. BrickLink will no longer be an "unofficial" marketplace and will need to be conscious of the fact that it is representing the LEGO brand in a much more direct way than before. However, BrickLink's target audience (AFOLs) will remain unchanged, and the BrickLink brand itself will remain intact. Source: https://www.bricklink.com/r3/announcement/lego_bl_faq.page https://www.bricklink.com/r3/announcement/lego_bl_faq.page
- jacquesm 7y agoStatements of CEOs and acquiring companies around the time of acquisition should be valued at exactly nothing. They'll do what ever they want to do in time no matter what they say today.
- calibas 7y agoI read a whole lot into the fact that they specifically mention only two things they won't change, the target audience and the brand.
- aliswe 7y agoA kinda interesting way to make money is to go to flea markets and buy Lego bricks at a discount, then sell them at the likes of this site. Normally I see bricks go for about 60USD per kilo I think if not more, but in flea markets you can make some good deals.
- pflats 7y agoThis reminds me: A few years ago, Jacques Mattheij accidentally won a lot more bulk lego auctions than he meant to. His story of sorting through them with a homemade hopper/camera/ML/computer vision showed up on HN. It's still a good read today. It begins at: https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/
- SteveGerencser 7y agoBuying bricks at flea markets has gotten a lot harder in recent years. Occasionally you run across someone selling random bags of minifigs in packs of 5 for $10, or the occasional damaged box at 25% to 50% off retail, but in my experience, the prices at flea markets have gone up dramatically and finding 'deals' has gotten veyr hard.
- catalogia 7y agoI hope this market inefficiency doesn't get ironed out. Yard sales and flea markets are where I got all the lego I had when I was a kid. My parents couldn't afford to buy that much lego new, nor at the prices charged online.
- williamDafoe 7y agoAny idea how this affects peeron.com? Will they develop their own marketplace?
- bhouston 7y agoI've bought through BrickLink before and I am pretty sure I got non-branded lego clone parts. I wonder if Lego will clamp down on that and ensure everything is genuine.
- tpmx 7y agoAs a long-time BrickLink user/buyer I would welcome that kind of quality control.
- jacquesm 7y agoNo doubt they would love to but that would take a lot of work on their part, telling counterfeit Lego from the real thing is harder than it seems. The knock-offs are getting so good now that I have to resort to destructive testing to know for sure. Most of the clones still respect the Lego logo at the top and replace it with their own. Blox is particularly impressive, their precision is on par with Lego's and the plastic is just as good as well. I hate them with a passion because there is no way to automate that part of the recognition process with sufficient reliability.
- bhouston 7y agoFounded by Dan Jezek, who unfortunately died young: https://www.danjezek.com/index.html https://www.danjezek.com/index.html
- jacquesm 7y agoSuper nice guy, really a pity.
- javajosh 7y agoYes, it's a sad story. I worked at BrickLink shortly after he died and the company was acquired, and helped port some of his code to Java. It was all very dense ASP (classic, not ASP.net!) and SQL Server stored procedures. It was written perfectly for what it was: the product of one person's passion, one person's mind. He did lots of little simple things, like just delete all data after 30-days. This decision alone saved an incredible amount of complexity (and was charmingly naive). I've always been a minimalist myself, but I'd never seen minimalism taken so far. This was a very active, very data-intensive webapp that served the whole world basically running on two machines. It was a the webapp version of that 'aha' moment you get when you see what someone can do with 1k or 10k of code in code golf or the demoscene. We all pay a very heavy price for collaborating on software!
- annoyingnoob 7y agopours one out for Bricklink Gonna miss you Bricklink, its was good while it lasted.
- tpmx 7y agoAs an AFOL: I'm actually cautionally optimistic about this. I actually trust the TLG to do good here. They have had a bunch of exposure to the "internet people", over the years. I think they'll handle this well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms#History > The original Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System was born out of a collaboration between The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Lego group. In 1985, Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, then Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The Lego Group, heard of the work of MIT's Seymour Papert and was struck by how similar his goals of learning through building were to those of The Lego Group’s newly formed educational division. The Lego Group began a partnership with Papert’s Media Lab, funding their research and sharing ideas. Also, if TLG fucks this up: It's not like it's that hard for someone to create a new bricklink-like brick trading site.
- annoyingnoob 7y ago> It's not like it's that hard for someone to create a new bricklink-like brick trading site. That was my first thought.
- tpmx 7y agoThe people at Eurobricks.com don't seem to like the news though: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/174469-tlg-acquires-bricklink/ https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/174...
- bitxbit 7y agoAs someone who uses bricklink from time to time, I believe Lego is trying to control counterfeits. I know it’s becoming easier to replicate Lego products especially minifigures.
- runxel 7y agoThis is really bad news... I'm sorry for Bricklink, may you rest in peace! Maybe it's LEGO attempt to clutch at any straw and they finally trying to be better, but I really doubt it. LEGO has moved themself into a position where they are really cornered. No innovation, fat price tags on everything... – There is a German guy who had a LEGO store in Frankfurt, called "Held der Steine" (hero of the bricks). His YouTube account is quite popular and became a meme in Germany. LEGO sued him for having something which somehow resembled a LEGO brick in his logo. On his channel he reviewes all the "new" stuff LEGO is putting on the market; and he's showing how desastrous the Danish company became. They simply don't care anymore at all as it seems. Now he's also presenting all the Chinese stuff as well – they are actually ahead in the game already.
- jacquesm 7y agoMixed blessing. There was - and is - plenty wrong with Bricklink. The guy who bought it wasn't nearly as nice as the guy that started it (who died in a car crash, his mom then sold it).
- xyzzy_plugh 7y agoWoah I had no idea. I've been speaking bricklink's praise for a long time. Very sad to discover this!
- dmix 7y agoNBA is doing this to themselves too. They keep banning these amazing youtube channels that put up 10min highlight reels within minutes of the game ending. These videos are getting millions of views and instead of hiring them the NBA has been legally harassing them for years and the biggest one announced this week he's finally shutting down for good. There's plenty of other examples of this in the NBA itself (with their half-baked streaming options) which I'm sure exists in most other sports. One big one is they should have a library of every game ever for a subscription fee or individual access fee - it's pretty much impossible besides bittorrent or DailyMotion to find old classic games online (even from 2012 playoff finals). They are all just throwing money into a dumpster fire by trying to live in the past generation of media. This is just like how we all had to wait for a decade to get decent websites from every major retail-facing corporation, instead of a non-interactive static glorified contact form website. I expect it will take another decade for the big media companies to get proper leadership.
- jacquesm 7y agoBad news for Lego resellers, the original manufacturer taking full control of the bulk of the secondary market for their product can't end well for the people active in that marketplace. Fortunately I never really bet on Bricklink (didn't want to set up shop in someone else's ecosystem), but there are plenty of people augmenting their living there.
- flowerlad 7y agoNo one has mentioned GBC yet (Great Ball Contraption). GBC is a great hobby for adults, especially if you have kids. Bricklink is indispensable to find parts for GBC. Here are some GBC examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWd3vgLaA_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWd3vgLaA_M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9_b6PzrqyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9_b6PzrqyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpBa59oOjVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpBa59oOjVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XqnTFSPG1I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XqnTFSPG1I See also: http://www.greatballcontraption.com/wiki/Main_Page http://www.greatballcontraption.com/wiki/Main_Page
- russellbeattie 7y agoWhen my son was younger - about 7 years ago - I got really into making GBC contraptions with him. The hardest bits to find were the damn Lego balls! I paid someone on eBay $1 per ball for only 20 of them, not including shipping. I have no idea if it's better now, but I'm always amazed at the numbers of Lego balls the GBC events have. Where did they get them all??
- Sendotsh 7y agoThat’s about right for the price. They’re not cheap. There’s copies that do the same job, but like in any hobby, people look down on the “fakes” despite them being functionally the same thing.
- bduerst 7y agoThat reminds me of Capsela for some reason: https://www.google.com/search?q=capsela&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=capsela&tbm=isch
- oliyoung 7y agoThis is either incredibly good news, or incredibly bad news, and I think that Lego's near-death experience and family ownership might mean this is good news ... maybe.
- koblas 7y agoLaughing at the irony and change of tone. Our love and appreciation for adult fans of LEGO. They have always been very important to us and have contributed so much to helping us build the brand. Their original tact was -- http://www.ibiblio.org/team/history/mirrors/lego/ http://www.ibiblio.org/team/history/mirrors/lego/
- stallmanite 7y agoSurprised at the number of typos in that document. Lawyers got paid good money to write that up I assume.
- dynjo 7y agoThere is a huge untapped market opportunity for Lego in the adult space IMO. I am a lifelong Lego fan (48yrs young), and I still buy the odd set (just finished 42099 which was epic). The problem is the perception by many that this is a kids toy. I have a 5 year old daughter, so even that excuse barely works :D
- bhaak 7y ago5 years is old enough for the junior/4+ sets. Those sets have larger parts and can be build within the attention span of a child. And they are mostly something hands on like cars or planes that the kids like to play with. Then even larger sets can be cool for children. I just bought and build the current moon station but that turned out to be not as good looking as I imagined. But my daughters (4 and 6) immediately took control of it. Especially the pizza dispenser was a highlight for them.
- mcv 7y agoWhy untapped? Lego is tapping the hell out of that market. It's both for 5 year old daughters and 48 year old parents. It's insane to consider how massive Lego has become. In my mind, the 1980s are still the golden age of Lego: every set was iconic, at least in my mind. Many of the current themes were started in the early 1980s. At some point, ver a decade ago, I feared they'd lost their way and making sets of questionable design that seemed to have forgotten what Lego was about, but now they're back. They're just doing everything: the Creator line that's about building stuff, the City line has more than just police and firefighters now, there's a new, more realistic space line (part of City actually), the different look of the friends line, but also (finally!) more female minifigs in other lines. There's tons of licenses, collectibles, programmable Lego of several kinds, mobile games, the cool stuff coming from Ideas, etc. The only thing I kinda miss is their Lego boardgame line. But other than that, it seems they're hitting every market at once, from every possible angle, and they're surprisingly effective at it. I think they surpassed Hasbro as the largest toy maker in the world, didn't they?
- jonbarker 7y agoLego not creating minecraft seems like the modern day kodak digital photo story everyone will be studying in a decade or two.
- mortenjorck 7y agoI’ve heard this sentiment before, but I don’t see why one would expect a toy company with decades of expertise in toy design, manufacturing, and plastic chemistry to invent a multiplayer computer game. It’s more like expecting Kodak to invent Photoshop. Also, computer and video games haven’t exactly done to the toy market what digital photography did to the film market.
- ntw1103 7y agoActually, the Lego group might have been in a great position to create a multiplayer computer game. They have been running games on their website for years, and even had a massively multiplayer game for a bit. The failure of their own multiplayer game was due to poor management, and not listening to user feedback. Also, they were pretty greedy with their pricing model. It was more expensive than other games at the time.
- paulie_a 7y agoThis is why you ignore copyright. There are zero consequences for doing so. I have zero respect for copyright. You can do whatever you want and you might be get a letter in the mail that can be thrown in the trash