What’s LEGO Going to Cost You This Holiday Season?

Last spring, as I was devising my strategy for consistently reviewing LEGO sets, I decided that it would be a good idea to know the average cost of sets and bricks, and the average number of Minifigures per set. I found this information by analyzing the Summer 2016 catalogue (click here to read my review). I admit, this is by no means the perfect method to gather this sort of information, but it is easy and it gives a general idea of what’s going on in the LEGO market.

I recently received my 2016 Holiday catalogue, and I decided to do the same thing again so as to keep my information up to date. Before continuing, please keep in mind that this information is not a serious analysis and was produced for my own amusement. It should be taken with a grain of salt. All prices are also in Canadian dollars. Finally, I did not include any of the buildable Star Wars figures in my calculations since I do not consider them to be regular LEGO sets.

Let’s start by taking a look at the average cost of a set. Jumping back to the Spring, the average cost of one LEGO set advertised in the Summer 2016 catalogue was $98.84. If you have a look at figure 1 above, you will see that has jumped to $129.43. The average cost per theme has increased in Architecture, City, Creator, DC Super Heroes, Elves, Friends, Marvel Super Heroes, Minecraft, Nexo Knights, and Ninjago. Classic remained the same, Star Wars actually decreased, and Ghostbusters was not a category in my previous analysis. It is important to note that this does not necessarily mean that LEGO has gotten more expensive. It just means that LEGO advertised more of their larger sets in this catalogue than in the Summer catalogue. For example, in the Summer, the Marvel and DC Super Heroes featured the Mighty Micros line, which are inexpensive. There were no Mighty Micros in the Holiday catalogue, and that space was filled with actual sets.

A slightly better indication of an overall increase in price is the average cost of a brick in the Holiday catalogue. In the Summer, the average cost per LEGO brick worked out to $0.11 across all themes and sets. As you can see in figure 2 above, the average cost of a brick in this catalogue is $0.12. Creator, DC Super Heroes, Minecraft, and Star Wars have stayed the same, and there has been a decrease in Architecture, City, Classic, Creator, Marvel Super Heroes, Ninjago, and Technic. Elves, Friends, and Nexo Knights have all gone up though. This could just be a question of rounding the numbers though, so only a few more analyses of future catalogues will tell for sure.

Next up, we will look at Minifigures. In the Spring, the average number of Minifigs per set across all themes was about 4. I for one am happy to see that number go up to five. This analysis excludes some themes that are not meant to have any Minifigures (ex: Architecture). It also excludes Creator sets that are not meant to have Minifigs (ex: Big Ben, the Mini Cooper, etc). In the Spring, I did not include Minecraft, Elves, or Friends in the analysis because they are not really standard Minifigures. In this case, I think they actually pulled the overall average down since they all tend to be a little figurine deficient. These numbers also exclude big-figs, droids, ghosts, and other non-traditional figures.

In my set reviews, I often refer to the brick to Minifigure ratio. So, this time around I conducted an analysis to reflect that as well. Basically, the lower the number, the more Minifigures you are getting in your brick count. City is the clear winner in the category, with Minecraft being the worst. But, on average when you buy a LEGO set, you will get one Minifigure for every 223 bricks.

Finally, just as a point of interest, if you wanted to buy every set (with the exception of the buildable Star Wars figures that I excluded from my calculations) in the Holiday catalogue here in Canada, it would cost you $8,542.34 before taxes. You would get 76,506 bricks, and 257 Minifigures.

Until next time,

-T.N.B.