This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
Hey, what's up, friends? As we begin today, I want to say happy Thanksgiving to everybody in the United States, my Canadian friends and listeners. They already celebrated Thanksgiving, I believe, a few weeks ago. And for everybody around the world, well, perhaps this isn't your holiday, but nevertheless, I am thankful for you. I'm so glad to be able to make the show for you.
I'm so grateful to have been able to do it for 3,200 plus episodes. So thank you. That's all. Let's get right into it. Welcome to Side Hustle School. Welcome to Throwback Thursday,
where we take an in-depth look at someone whose story has evolved since we first featured them. Last week, we heard how a copy savvy side hustler turned a collection of recruiter emails into a paid swipe file. A swipe file is basically a file like a notes file or a Microsoft Word file, Google Docs, whatever, where you can kind of copy and use that information, repurpose it. Anyway, they built a monthly subscription around it. Today in our latest feature, a patient side hustler stockpiles retired Lego sets. Well, he buys Lego sets and eventually they get retired.
He holds onto them like collectibles and eventually makes a lot more money than he would just by buying and reselling them when anyone can access them. So this is an interesting project because we've talked about people buying and reselling Lego before in different ways, but basically he is combining eBay arbitrage with long-term investing, kind of like buying stocks or commodities or cryptocurrency, I suppose, but he's doing it with Lego. Probably not at great scale, but nevertheless, he's a former IT worker, builds a quiet little empire out of Lego bricks. Let's hear the detailed story from Brandon. I'll come back at the end with a few words of wrap up.
I'm Brandon, based in Milwaukee. I work full-time in IT, but my side hustle is buying Lego sets and then not opening them. Yeah, seriously. It started in 2019 when I fell down a rabbit hole about Lego retirement cycles. Once a set is retired, meaning Lego stops producing it, its value often shoots up, especially if it's part of a licensed line like Star Wars or Harry Potter, or one of the modular buildings that collectors love. At the time, I had maybe a thousand dollars I could afford
to experiment with, so I bought eight sets that I thought had long-term potential. I mean, I wasn't guessing. I used a site called Brick Economy to research trends, retirement predictions, and past resale values. Among my first buys, the ideas Saturn V Rocket, Star Wars UCS Snowspeeder, and the creator expert detective's office. I kept everything sealed and stored it in a climate controlled closet. No sun, no pets, no dents. Then I didn't touch them for almost two years. Every
few months I'd check prices on Bricklink and eBay, and gradually I started seeing some returns. The Saturn V set that I bought for $119 sold it for $280. The detective's office went from $149 to $350. A couple of my worst sales still earned me a small profit. Nothing lost. Once I knew this
could work, I reinvested the proceeds into more LEGO sets and other niche collectibles. Funko Pops, retro game cartridges, sealed Pokemon tins, things with built-in fan bases and predictable demand. I started selling on both Bricklink and eBay and eventually built a website called Closet Relics to consolidate everything. I now make around $2,000 to $3,000 a month in profit, with quarter four being the biggest spike every year. I don't do ads or content creation, I just focus on timing, storage, and, well, picking the right inventory. I used part of last year's earnings to pay for a
cruise for my family, something we probably wouldn't have splurged on otherwise. The rest of the money goes into 529 college accounts for my kids. It's fun, but it's also long-term thinking. A few takeaways that worked for me were that I only buy discounted sets, never full price. I wait for promos or I use store points. I keep everything sealed and in flawless condition, and I track all
purchases and sales in a spreadsheet with ROI columns and holding time. I avoid huge sets, too. They're a pain to store and ship. People think that flipping collectibles means constant hustle. But with LEGO, the secret is patience. Buy right, store well, and wait.
Brandon, I respect the creativity. I respect the patience as well in terms of buying and storing the inventory and selling it later. I think it's important to note for listeners that he's not taking a huge amount of risk here because most likely the biggest risk is that the value of that particular LEGO set will just not increase a great deal. Most likely he's still going to be able to sell it perhaps at a small loss, but it's not like, as I said in the beginning, cryptocurrency or commodities where the price can go to zero. LEGO has been around forever, millions of people buying LEGO, and a lot of them are willing to do so on the aftermarket through sites like eBay and lots of other marketplaces as well. So anyway, well done, Brandon. Listeners, let me know what you
think, who you'd like to see featured from our archives of thousands of episodes. If you have a question, a comment, an update, you know what to do. sidehustleschool.com. You can also access notes pages for every single episode there. Download stream, all 3200 plus episodes. New ones
come out every day, always free. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Sighthustleschool. From the Onward Project.
