Welcome to Yellow Brick Road, follow me on my adventure of setting up and building a LEGO Bricklink business from scratch, collecting, investing and reviewing LEGO sets, with a particular focus on popular lines such as Star Wars, Speed Champions, LEGO Ideas, and more.
The channel caters to LEGO enthusiasts of all kinds, whether you're a male or female LEGO fan interested in collecting LEGO sets, building with LEGO bricks, or even starting your own Bricklink store business. I'll share my firsthand discoveries, wins, and fails, along with valuable advice and tips to help you on your own LEGO journey.
I like watching your part out value videos, but I thought I would point out that the Lego price in your video is in US dollars. $49.99 is Lego's AU RRP
Possible time saving tip with the UCS X wing parts - import the set into Brickstore, set the prices to whatever average you use and then sort it by price. Use the price data to then cherry pick the high value parts out and get them listed first and decide afterwards if any of the low value or yellowed parts are even worth your time.
@@sydneybrickemporium nice tip, although almost all the white and light blue grey is discoloured! But certainly do that for the interesting bits! Thanks
- - I experimented with an auction too ( Grays I think if I remember ) and got royally screwed ! I bid on a Bugatti thinking it would just be a slightly damaged box, but it turned out to have had a forklift through it! Plus they didn't have delivery so I had to do a six hour round trip to Sydney to find out the forklift perfectly smashed the most expensive parts ( the wheels ). So I wasted a day and ended up paying about retail. . I only every buy from eBay auctions now, if ever ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ
So much small print and fees killed me plus the sets were not in anywhere as good as condition as the photos made them out to be… but a lesson learnt!! Still it made for some decent content in the whole.
@@YellowBrickRoadLego ..Yes, unlike you.. I am too lazy too add the extra time and stress of vlogging my store.(I don't know how you make the time:) Thank you for your interesting videos.. As I mentioned I did RU-vid vlogging of Numismatic coins years back and did not have a good time. But the Lego community is very different. . .Just nicer over all:)
I am testing/building a moc for someone before they officially release instructions. Is there a way I can compare the version 1 parts list to the new version 2 parts list, and single out which new bricks or quantities of bricks were added/updated?
Hahaha...coronation street😂 about 3 of us remember that show👍 great vlog keep cracking on in this trying time..may Mrs YBR heal up well❤ #nowookiesforsale
Morning..did you do any investigation with new verses used on bricklink..I've found a few making used a better way and increasing lot counts..also that store that won't sell to you.any update with them
I looked at a couple of examples (Speed Champions) and the AUS pricing had it as a profit but not especially exciting - just not had the time to investigate more - but on the list! As for the 'Banned' status - found out some interesting stuff about their recent growth and a potential reason to block me form being able to purchase some of the 1.5 million parts they added in August and maybe stop me from growing much more?
@@YellowBrickRoadLego scared you might catch them up, with a year of trading and at 580000 thats a scare for them...keep it up and take the fuckers down
@@matt5948 the larger ones are food storage pots that Coles (supermarket sold) and the smaller ones are just drink cups I bought online - not a simple task with Australian single use plastic rules.
Nice to see the store grow. Time to go from 5-of partouts to 10- or 12-ofs and start bulking out various parts. Also, pro tip: use square cups instead of circular cups -- you can fit more of them on a sorting surface. Dessert cups work a charm. This week's tipple: Streetside Brewery's German Chocolate Barrel Aged Stout. Cheers!
@@GWNielsen square cups? Nice… those ikea things might be the ticket. Might do a little test to see how many per space. Thanks. Bulking out those part outs would be great, just the cash that goes into that is an issue!
Very much hope Mrs YBR is ok. You wonderfully walked the tightrope of rightly sounding concerned and focused on her wellbeing with your excitement for working in the store as much as you want all week! 🤣
Great entertaining vlog as usual 👍 love how you just show your humanity (if that makes sense?) Avoiding the things we can't be assed with happy with the things we achieve day to day and being a good husband and dad 👌 keep up the great work!
@@russellhume6682 glad you are feeling better Russell and thanks for that! I’m very lucky to be able to do this day to day and it can’t always be fun but it should always be good!
I think they are just jealous of your ability to use the ladder and camera at the same time. I think you rival my part out procrastination skills. lol. I'm always busying myself with other random projects rather than parting out. Anything over 200 pieces feels like a trip to the dentist.
Fab. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages and have been putting it off. This was a great prompt. Already found a few issues! All the best from cloudy Manchester!
at 21:00 ...yeah I've way over extended myself when it comes to capital expended. I was paying down my C/C pretty well until the May the 4th sales and ever since I've bought way too many sales (I can't help myself) but now I've had many non Lego expenses (multiple car regos and many bills) and maxed out my credit ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ ... I know it's stupid buying Lego with credit at 20% on a C/C. . My logic ( lol ) is that last Christmas I sold a crazy amount of sets on eBay so hoping to do the same.
Really interesting. Wonder if you track some more traditional financial metrics like inventory turns, ROIC, etc. I have been tracking individual set purchases that I resell, but it's hard to get an idea of how the margins are on the stuff added to inventory.
@@GrumpyOldBricks I don’t track specific ROIC as I see that as part of general cap ex which I do track but don’t share in the stats as it always brings a load of tax avoiding suggestions. I am trying to figure out a way to get some financial metrics into this.
@@YellowBrickRoadLego lol yeah everyone has their opinion on taxes. lots of the targets depends on your model. if you are trying to just get big then likely lots of volume vs lots of margin like a grocery store. if you are focusing on minis or complete sets then buy price and margin matters more. i have been trying both with and it's been mixed. then there is the opportunity cost of everything and the never ending amount of bins lol. sometimes i think it would be better to just buy a whole store outright to get scale. either way great stuff. i have a bit of a background in finance and am always willing to chat offline if you would like. i would even comp you for it.
would you consider adding how much you spend each month on product/inventory. I feel like you can have all this data but still make no profit if a seller spends a lot, I’m just curious if there is a profit margin. Just wondering!
The big expense no one thinks about is part depreciation. The race to the bottom on price means your inventory is losing value the longer it takes to sell it. The more parts you have the more it costs you in depreciation. People don't seem to think about this because they don't see the amount as an explicit transaction in their bank account (it's hidden in the form of lower income)
@@AlCor-s1i I am trying to work in some more specific costs/margin profit element so for the next update to give it a bit more of reality check - but if you have questions feel free to message me.
@@dang3304 of course you can argue that buying at the right price and not being concerned about 6 month averages and seeing parts as an investment that can and do increase offsets any lower pricing needed. That comes down to buying right and monitoring what a sale price is needed to break even and being willing to wait for that sale.
@@YellowBrickRoadLego The average part price depreciation of new parts on Bricklink is nearly 20% yoy. Imagine trying to pick winners in a stock market that's falling 20% a year. Maybe it's possible, but the odds are overwhelmingly against you. A good way to figure out what works is to look at the top 10 stores by revenue, they're almost all doing the same quick flip strategy of parting out sets, listing the parts, then discounting them more aggressively each month in order to turn the parts over fast. They don't want to hold onto the stock while it depreciates. Those parts look cheap compared to the 6 month average, but they aren't actually cheap, it's an illusion becuase the 6 month average is historical and it takes time to reset down to the new market price. If you're not careful you can end up catching a falling knife.
@@dang3304 would be interesting to see the data to back that up for sure. But again it depends if you are a store looking to match or better 6 month average that given local market.
Love all the data you are sharing here. Question: would you be interested to know the rank of your items in the sales page? I'm working on something to fetch this as I find it quite an important piece of data. Curious to hear from others too.
Thanks Lucas. As a bit of a data nerd I'm always interested in knowing detail - whether it proves useful over the long-term is another question as is the case with some if not most of my own monthly data - as Guy's comment says, you can have a good week and then drop like a stone for unknown reasons - but certainly interested to hear more.
Hi, it's me again (‾◡◝) Interesting as always seeing how you make so much effort in analyzing your store data. I still pretty much just wing it. Maybe notice a part here or there that seems popular or rare to try and add. Mostly just brute force as many sets to part out that I don't think will necessarily do well after retirement (plus some new high part out value sets) as I can before burning out:). It would be nice to have free child labor like most stores probably have. I had a strange two weeks in sales, last week I had more sales and bigger than ever (for me) then I had to take the week end off to dismantle a massive shed and foundation. ( I would normally work 7 days) Then this week my sales dropped to ten times less each day in value !. . . Another possible reason is another store last week made a really big purchase of parts that I think were on the more rare side, not sure if both contributed.ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ
Thanks Guy, Child labour would be good - or a child genius that can make sense of collecting all the data!! HA!! Sales have been one week good, then a slower week for the last 4-6 weeks personally, perhaps it's the time of year or all the other things on at the moment in people's lives - but... one day the magic formula will appear - if I keep searching!!! Thanks as always for watching and contributing.
@@YellowBrickRoadLego ..haha.. true. I cursively have noticed medium sized stores tend to be family run.. And I underestimated how much time a store near our size takes to upkeep. I don't really mind as it interests me, but can't imagine how difficult it must be for some stores that do it purely as a job ＼(ﾟｰﾟ＼) .. Where I am it has gone from super cold to pretty hot, so I thought maybe people are going outside rather than making moc's etc...
Thanks for reminding me it's retired. I had it a bit too cheap.. So just put it up a few dollars. I run my shop by myself so it's hard to keep track of all my sets ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ Parting out is just so time consuming ＼(ﾟｰﾟ＼)
The problem with new parts is that everyone is parting out the same sets, and no one can beat the big European stores that part out hundreds of copies of each set using cheap labour from neighbouring countries (poland and czech republic iirc). They all try to dump the same parts at the same time creating a brutal race to the bottom. It makes relying on the 6ma risky,, because it can fall a lot after the part appears in a new set, so you don't want to be holding a lot of parts if possible or the depreciation on them will eat up all your profit. Margins are better in used parts, but even there, stores in Asia with low labour costs are winning (DD Bricks for example).
Great vlog as usual..yep back into Perths smallest lego city but under heavy construction adding the pizza shop and someone's bricklink store 😉 and new icecream shop coming soon. Good to see my colleague and best mate Rickie cracking on with his space moc hope he shares when it's completed👌
@@russellhume6682 loving that you and Rickie are mates!!! I’ll leave you to sweet talk him into sharing his MOC pics! And look forward to seeing the city improvements.
I have a slightly smaller store (as you might remember from my previous comments) and I've also noticed some stores dropping prices sometimes by half or so ! ( and not just a sale ) I like you, have bought lots of parts from PickaBrick or oversees stores when for eg: a part was say 50c, so we might buy hundreds at maybe 35c then we find a few months latter a few stores have them at circa 25c.. I check if there's maybe a new set that came out with a lot of those parts but there isn't.. Anyway, I agree this race to the bottom it not good for any store. If you remember my store I have my featured page showing random parts cheapest in Aust. but it's less than 1% of my parts.
@@Guy.Fleegman nice work on the featured page… I really should give that landing page some attention at some point! It does seems prices are moving lower quicker right now than previously… I’m putting that down to cost of living and slower sales. But not revisiting mine with any purpose yet, just as and when I am doing wish list updates.
I run just on Brickowl here in the U.k, small store (31,000 pieces) and regarding New/Used, I've always listed as Used. Space is a premium for me and listing as Used helps keep the amount of containers/drawers reduced.
@@YellowBrickRoadLego it's not just storage space ... I feel customer expectations, reducing packaging and allowing me to "jenga" without it been an issue and simplifying the process of running a Brickowl Store.
Definitely have to agree with leaving feedback and it goes for buyers too. As a fairly new (and small) store, Down South Bricks always leaves feed back but of the handful of orders I have had only about half have left feedback.
They're called a Rockler 37081 Easy Sorter Funnel Tray - I got them via Amazon a while back now - they came in a pack of 4 only at that time, but they're not easy to find, as I remember!
