Selling vintage lego sets

FallenArcher

Hi all, I have a number of vintage lego sets (late 80s) that I am contemplating selling. I can't yet decide, seems weird keeping hold of these for "when we have kids" when we're trying desperately hard to clear debt so we can start trying to have kids!!

Anyway, my sets are all boxed and have no missing pieces of lego. But annoyingly I am missing the instruction booklets. This is really strange, as as a child I was really particular about things being in their right places - so all the lego parts are even within the right sections of the boxes, and hence no lost bits. Recently sold a NES that was in immaculate condition (box and polystrene too!) and looked like a child had never been near it - despite having it since i was about 7, anyway I digress...

I can only think i put them all together "somewhere safe" and that has now disappeared. Hmm.... So my conundrum, is a) do I sell or keep hold of these, and b) if i do sell do i sell as they are or attempt to source the instruction booklets so these can be sold as "complete" - you can donwload all the booklets as PDFs anyway. How much of a difference do you think it would make to the selling price of these items?

Any thoughts?

Cheers.

pulliptears

FallenArcher wrote: »

Hi all, I have a number of vintage lego sets (late 80s) that I am contemplating selling. I can't yet decide, seems weird keeping hold of these for "when we have kids" when we're trying desperately hard to clear debt so we can start trying to have kids!!

Anyway, my sets are all boxed and have no missing pieces of lego. But annoyingly I am missing the instruction booklets. This is really strange, as as a child I was really particular about things being in their right places - so all the lego parts are even within the right sections of the boxes, and hence no lost bits. Recently sold a NES that was in immaculate condition (box and polystrene too!) and looked like a child had never been near it - despite having it since i was about 7, anyway I digress...

I can only think i put them all together "somewhere safe" and that has now disappeared. Hmm.... So my conundrum, is a) do I sell or keep hold of these, and b) if i do sell do i sell as they are or attempt to source the instruction booklets so these can be sold as "complete" - you can donwload all the booklets as PDFs anyway. How much of a difference do you think it would make to the selling price of these items?

Any thoughts?

Cheers.

Toy trends usually dictate that when the child reaches their late 20's early 30's in theory they have a little disposable income to buy all the toys their parents wouldn't buy them. As they get older they have more income.

With that in mind 80's toys rose about ten years ago and are back in a bit of a lull again. Lego is a funny thing to call though, more obscure sets like trains and moon landings tend to do reasonably well, but the run of the mill sets like Police Stations and Houses don't do as well as they did a few years ago.

Have a look more specifically at what you have in eBay's completed listings, but if it were me personally I'd hold on a while and keep watching.

FallenArcher

Thanks for your response PullipTears, I've checked completed listings for my sets and they are making very reasonable prices. My biggest one should fetch between £60-£120. This is what has made me contemplating selling now. I think age-wise probably about right (I'm 31) - and if I was the other side of being a DFW I'd probably have young children and be buying the rest of those lego sets to improve my collection! The sets are all either Pirates or Castles- so think probably good for collectors or children now. Will give it some more thought though based on your feedback. If don't sell now I probably wouldn't for another 10-15 years which probably misses the boat for retro-factor!

Any thoughts on whether it's worth bothering trying to get the instruction manuals? I can't work out how much extra it would make the sets worth from eBay completed listings.

pulliptears

FallenArcher wrote: »

Thanks for your response PullipTears, I've checked completed listings for my sets and they are making very reasonable prices. My biggest one should fetch between £60-£120. This is what has made me contemplating selling now. I think age-wise probably about right (I'm 31) - and if I was the other side of being a DFW I'd probably have young children and be buying the rest of those lego sets to improve my collection! The sets are all either Pirates or Castles- so think probably good for collectors or children now. Will give it some more thought though based on your feedback. If don't sell now I probably wouldn't for another 10-15 years which probably misses the boat for retro-factor!

Any thoughts on whether it's worth bothering trying to get the instruction manuals? I can't work out how much extra it would make the sets worth from eBay completed listings.

Its probably worth giving lego a call, I'm sure I read somewhere they did keep an archive of manuals so they might be able to email you a PDF or scan?

I don't think I'd go out of my way to source them though, 80's lego wasn't especially complex was it and can more than likely be assembled from the box pic which you have.
(as an aside I was bought a Lord of The Rings lego set for xmas and good god was that complicated!!!)

Its funny you should post this actually because I was reminiscing after someone locally put some 80's sets on ebay the other day. I had fond memories of the little chef figure and his burger bar

I don't think you can ever go to far wrong with Lego though, its one of those timeless things that always commands a fairly decent price.
Good luck!
x

lindseykim13

There are a couple of webistes which have the old lego set instructions loaded up to them, which you can either print or just build from on screen. You search by your set no.
http://www.brickset.com/
http://letsbuilditagain.com/

pinkshoes

I have £100s of old 1980s "retro" lego, but it will definitely be for my son - there is NO WAY I'd sell it!!