How to buy used LEGO® sets on Facebook Marketplace and Kijiji

Why buy used LEGO locally

LEGO® sets hold up well. The bricks don’t wear out, so a set built once and put on a shelf is close to new, at a fraction of the box price. Retired sets often exist only on the secondhand market, and a local seller has no shipping costs to pass on. The catch is that a used set can be missing the three minifigures that carry most of its value, or not be LEGO brand at all. The checks below take a few minutes and catch both.

Search by set number, then by name

Every LEGO set has a number, usually four to six digits: 75192 is the large Millennium Falcon, 10497 is Galaxy Explorer. It is the most precise search you can run, because sellers who know what they have put it in the title and nothing else matches it by accident.

Where to find it. On the front and side of the box and on the cover of the instruction booklets, as LEGO’s help page says. No box or booklet? Look up the printed pieces or minifigures on Brickset or BrickLink, which show every set a part came in. The numbers moulded inside pieces are design numbers, not set numbers, but BrickLink can trace those too.

Searches that work, on both sites:

• The set number alone: 75192, 10305, 42115. On Kijiji, put it in Toys & Games so phone numbers and postal codes don’t match.
• Theme plus “set”: star wars set, technic set, lego castle, lego icons, lego city set.
• Collections: lego lot, lego bin, lego collection, lego bulk. Where whole childhoods go up for sale (see buying bulk LEGO).
• French: lego usagé, ensemble lego, lego en vrac, blocs lego.
• Misspellings sellers use: legos, leggo.

Words to block so the results are only sets you’d buy: duplo (unless you want it), mega bloks, compatible, table, storage, "for parts", ISO, WTB. Facebook can’t exclude words on its own (our guide to excluding words covers the workarounds); Kijiji’s search is just as literal.

Is it really LEGO brand?

The most common problem isn’t a dishonest seller. It’s a listing for another brand of bricks with “LEGO” in the title because that is what people search. On 2026-10-06 a Canada-wide Kijiji search for “lego compatible” in Toys & Games returned 244 ads. Some say so plainly; others bury it in the description.

Read the listing for:

• “Compatible” wording: “LEGO compatible”, “compatible with LEGO”, “fits LEGO”, “compatible avec Lego”, “building blocks”, “not LEGO”.
• Another brand’s name in the text or on the box. Many brick brands sell honestly labelled sets; the issue is the price and the title, not the brand.
• A big set at a small price. A large Star Wars, Technic or Icons set far below BrickLink’s used sold prices is a reason to ask more questions.

In person, look for the LEGO logo on top of the studs (your phone’s camera zoom works) and on the neck stud of each minifigure. Our page on how to tell if a LEGO set is fake has the full brick, box and minifigure checks.

Complete, incomplete, and “100% complete, no figures”

“Complete” is the most important word in a used LEGO listing, and the least reliable. Read the whole sentence. A real Kijiji ad said “100% complete, no figures included”, which is complete bricks and missing minifigures, two very different things.

How to check completeness:

1. Get the inventory. BrickLink and Brickset list every part and minifigure in a set. Newer instruction booklets print the parts list at the back.
2. Count the minifigures first. They are the easiest thing to check and often the most valuable. Match each figure’s printing to the inventory, not just the number of heads.
3. Look for the key pieces. Every set has a few large or printed parts that make it that set: a printed canopy, a large baseplate, a sticker sheet, a rare colour. If those are there, the rest usually is too.
4. Ask how it was stored. Built on a shelf, broken down in labelled bags, or mixed into a bin with other sets. A set that went into a bin is rarely complete.

Questions to ask before you drive:

• Is it built, in bags, or mixed with other sets?
• Are all the minifigures included? Can you send a photo of them together?
• Instructions and box included? Stickers applied, or the sheet unused?
• Any yellowed or sun-faded pieces? (White and light grey show it first.)
• Smoke-free and pet-free home?
• Anything missing that you know of?

If a few common pieces are missing, LEGO’s replacement parts service and BrickLink sellers can usually fill the gap, so price that in rather than walking away.

What to pay

The reference is BrickLink’s price guide for the set number. It shows four boxes: the last six months of sales, new and used, and the items currently for sale, new and used. Use the used, last six months sales average, not the asking prices. Check which currency the page is showing before you compare.

A complete used set with box and instructions sits at the top of the used range. Missing minifigures pull it down most on themes where the figures are the draw (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel). A set that is incomplete or mixed into a bin is worth what its parts are worth, which is a different calculation. Local sellers often price below BrickLink because there is no shipping, which is your margin. Our used LEGO price guide walks through the adjustments step by step.

Red flags in LEGO listings

LEGO attracts the same scams as anything else that sells, plus a couple of its own.

• Pay first, ship later. A Colchester councillor paid £50 by bank transfer for a LEGO Boba Fett head on Marketplace; the item never arrived and the account vanished (his bank later recovered the money). Pay in person, after you have seen the set. More in our guide to deposit scams.
• Sealed retired sets far under price. A sealed set that sells for hundreds used, listed at a fraction of that, is either not what it says or not the seller’s to sell.
• Stock photos only. Box art from LEGO.com instead of a photo of the actual box on a kitchen table. Ask for a photo with today’s date on a note.
• “Can ship only” for a seller who lists a local city.
• Many identical sealed sets from one private seller. In one US case, thieves resold LEGO sets taken in a toy store break-in on Facebook Marketplace and eBay, ABC7 reported. Ask where they came from.

Copy this setup

A good LEGO search setup does three jobs: shows only sets you’d buy, close enough to collect, and never the same listing twice.

1. Block words: duplo, "mega bloks", compatible, table, storage, ISO, WTB, plus the parts words ("for parts", broken, "as is").
2. Distance: about 30 km from home, or whatever you’d drive for a set.
3. Seen listings: dimmed, so new ones stand out.
4. One search per set number you want, saved as an alert.

Set numbers beat names in alerts. A watch on “millennium falcon” pings you for keychains, DUPLO and books. A watch on “75192” pings you for that set.

Alerts for a specific set

Kijiji’s own saved-search alerts arrive once a day by email (our Kijiji alerts guide has the steps). Facebook’s saved searches notify when Facebook decides to. For a set you have wanted for months, that’s slow: underpriced complete sets go within hours.

Save the set number as a search on both sites, then check it at least daily. On a computer, Sift can watch up to 10 Kijiji searches as often as every 15 minutes and up to 5 Facebook searches no faster than every 30, and it runs new listings through your filters before it notifies you, so a DUPLO set with the same number in its text doesn’t wake you up. More on new-listing alerts.

Meetup checklist

Print it, or keep it on your phone.

1. Meet somewhere you can spread it out. A table in a café or at the seller’s door, in daylight.
2. Open the box or the bags. A set you can’t see inside is a set you can’t check.
3. Check the studs for the LEGO logo, on a few random bricks and every minifigure neck.
4. Count the minifigures against the inventory on your phone, and check their printing.
5. Find the key pieces: the large, printed and rare-colour parts that make the set.
6. Look for yellowing, cracked pieces, chewed edges and sticker damage.
7. Check the instructions and sticker sheet if the listing promised them.
8. Pay last, in cash or by e-Transfer once you are happy, and never before.

With Sift on a computer

Once you know the checks, Sift does the lookups for you on desktop Chrome, Edge and Brave. Its LEGO kit switches on when it sees a LEGO listing.

• The set number, read from the listing. Sift finds the number after “set”, “#”, “no.” or “LEGO”, or a lone five-digit number in a LEGO title, and never mistakes a price, piece count or year for it. The details card is headed “LEGO · set 75192”.
• BrickLink first. The first link under “Check elsewhere” opens BrickLink’s price guide for that exact set. No number in the listing? A trimmed BrickLink search instead. Then eBay sold prices, Google Lens on the photo, and the same search on the other site.
• What the seller wrote, flagged. “May not be LEGO brand” when the listing says “compatible with LEGO”, “not LEGO” or names another brick brand. “Incomplete set” and “No minifigures” from the seller’s own words, in English and French. Green good signs for Complete, Minifigs included, Sealed and Instructions. It reads negations, so “no missing pieces” isn’t flagged as incomplete.
• Start a hunt: LEGO. One click in Options saves a LEGO hunt preset with the parts pack on (broken, for parts, as is, not working, needs repair).
• Fair price that compares like with like. On a search for one set number, the Below typical / Typical / Above typical badge compares that set with itself.

Facebook’s search cards carry no description, so most wording flags appear on the listing page panel when you open a Facebook listing; on Kijiji they show sooner.

What Sift can’t tell you

Sift reads the listing, not the bricks. A set from another brand listed simply as “Lego ship” passes without a flag, and pieces the seller didn’t mention are invisible to any software. The stud check and the inventory count are still yours, in person. And Sift runs on a computer; on your phone, the searches and checks above are your tools.

LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site. Sift is independent and not affiliated with the LEGO Group, BrickLink, Meta or Kijiji.