What to pay for a used LEGO® set: reading BrickLink’s price guide

Step 1: find the set number

Everything starts with the number. LEGO’s help page says set numbers appear “prominently on the box and instructions”, so look there first: the front and side of the box, and the cover of each booklet. Most sets have four to six digits (10294, 75192, 42143). On BrickLink they carry a suffix, 75192-1, because a few numbers were reused for different products.

No box, no instructions?

• Printed pieces and minifigures. Search Brickset or BrickLink for a distinctive printed part or figure (“Boba Fett with jetpack”, “printed tile control panel”). Both list every set it appeared in.
• Part numbers. Many bricks have a design number moulded inside them, visible under a bright light. BrickLink’s part pages show which sets used that part in that colour.
• Theme and year. Brickset’s set browser by theme and year narrows a mixed bag to a few candidates; the box art photos confirm it.

If the seller doesn’t know the number, ask for a photo of the most unusual pieces and the figures. You can usually identify the set in five minutes, and a seller who has done that work tends to know what they have.

Step 2: read BrickLink’s price guide

BrickLink is the largest marketplace for LEGO sets and parts and has been owned by the LEGO Group since 2019, so its sales history is the usual price reference. Open the set’s catalogue page and choose Price Guide. You will see four boxes:

Inside each box: Times sold (or total lots), Total qty, Min price, Avg price, Qty avg price (weighted by quantity) and Max price.

How to read it:

• Sold beats asking. The left-hand boxes are what buyers paid. The right-hand boxes are hopes. Use the used sold average as your anchor.
• Look at times sold. An average built from 40 sales is solid. An average from three sales on a rare set can swing on one odd sale; scroll down to the individual sales and look at the spread.
• Min and max are outliers. The minimum is often an incomplete set; the maximum is often a mint copy with box sold to an impatient buyer.
• It lags. Six months is a long window. When a set has just retired or been announced for a remake, prices move faster than the average, as Brickem’s explainer notes. Compare the last few individual sales with the average.
• Check the currency. BrickLink’s help page says buyers see the guide in their local currency by default and that sold prices use the exchange rate at the time of the order. Make sure the page says CA$ (or US$) before you compare with a local listing.

Step 3: adjust for condition

BrickLink’s used price covers everything from a mint set with its box to a dusty one without instructions. Adjust from the average in the direction of the table below. We deliberately give no percentages: the size of each adjustment depends on the set, and inventing a rule would mislead you.

Minifigures first. On many sets, check what the figures sell for alone on BrickLink (each minifigure has its own price guide). If two exclusive figures are worth most of the set’s used price, a listing that says “no figures” is worth much less than the same set with them. Our minifigure guide covers how to check figures are genuine.

Step 4: convert and compare with local prices

1. Convert. If BrickLink shows US dollars, convert at today’s rate. A rough mental conversion is fine for a $40 set; check the rate for a $600 one.
2. Remember shipping. BrickLink buyers pay shipping on top of the price. A local seller saves you that, so a fair local price can sit a little under BrickLink and still be a good sale for them.
3. Check retail. If the set is still on LEGO.com Canada or in stores, the current retail price (and any sale price) is the ceiling for a used copy.
4. Check local asking prices. Search the set number on Marketplace and Kijiji. If three local sellers ask well above BrickLink’s sold average, they are hoping, and the listings will sit.

Worked example (illustrative). A used set, complete with instructions, no box. BrickLink’s used sold average, converted, is CA$180 from 25 sales. Retail is gone (the set retired last year). One minifigure is missing, and on its own that figure sells for about CA$20 used. A fair local price lands around CA$140 to CA$155. A listing at CA$220 is high; a listing at CA$70 deserves a closer look at the photos and the seller (see how to spot fake LEGO).

Retired sets, sealed sets and price spikes

When LEGO stops making a set, its price on the secondhand market usually rises, sometimes fast, because supply only shrinks. That makes three things true for a buyer:

• Retired sets are where used shines. Used may be the only way to get one, and a complete used copy costs less than a sealed one.
• Sealed retired sets attract trouble. They are the sets that knock-offs copy, that thieves resell, and that scammers advertise far under price with “deposit to hold”. A sealed retired set at half its sold price is a reason to check the seals and the seller, not to hurry.
• Remakes move prices down. When LEGO announces a new version of a classic, the old one can drop. The six-month average will catch up late.

Pricing lots and collections

A bin of mixed LEGO isn’t priced like a set. Split it in your head:

1. Identify the complete or nearly complete sets (the box or instructions in the photos help) and price each as above.
2. Price the minifigures separately. A handful of figures can be worth more than the bricks around them.
3. Treat the rest as bulk, by weight. Our bulk LEGO guide covers what bulk sells for and how to check a bin for other brands.

Then offer on the total, less your time to sort it.

With Sift

Doing Step 2 for every listing in a search takes a while. Sift, a free extension for desktop Chrome, Edge and Brave, does the lookup from the listing.

• Reads the set number. Sift takes 4 to 7 digits after “set”, “#”, “no.” or “LEGO”, or a lone five-digit number in a LEGO title. It never reads a price, a piece count or a year as a set number, ignores another brand’s own number, and drops the “-1”. The details card says “LEGO · set 75192”.
• Opens the right price guide. The first “Check elsewhere” link goes straight to BrickLink’s price guide for that exact set. No number in the listing? A trimmed BrickLink search. eBay sold prices, Google Lens and the other site’s search follow.
• Compares like with like. Search one set number and the Below typical / Typical / Above typical badge compares each listing with the others for the same set, once there are eight or more prices on the page. On a broad search like “lego”, ignore it: it would be comparing a DUPLO bucket with a Millennium Falcon.
• Remembers prices. Each listing’s price history and drops, so you know whether the seller is already moving.
• Start a hunt: LEGO saves a preset with the parts pack on, so “for parts” and “broken” sets stay out of the way.

The prices themselves stay on BrickLink; Sift just takes you to the right page. The condition adjustments are still your call.

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 or BrickLink.