For the seller

Selling a whole Lego collection

A Lego collection matters most as complete sets: every piece, the minifigures, the instructions and ideally the box. Sealed sets are a category of their own. Loose bricks are a different thing altogether. Before you sell, the most useful thing you can do is keep sets together and nothing else apart.

Lego collections are some of the hardest to judge by eye. A tub of loose bricks can hide a handful of rare minifigures, and a shelf of built sets can be missing the one piece that makes each of them complete. Here is how to tell what you have.

What makes a Lego collection collectable

Sealed sets. Anything still in its unopened box is a category of its own. Leave it sealed, and keep the box out of the sun.

Complete sets. A built set matters most when every piece is there, with its minifigures and instructions. The box matters too, especially for older sets.

Retired sets. Sets that are no longer made are what collectors look for.

Minifigures. Often the most sought-after part of a set, and the part that goes missing first.

Condition. Yellowed white and grey pieces, cracked bricks and sun-faded boxes all count against a set.

Before you sell

  • Do not open anything sealed.
  • Do not take built sets apart just to store them. If they are built and complete, they are easiest to check as they are.
  • Do not mix sets into one tub. If they are already mixed, leave them; sorting it badly is worse than not sorting it.
  • Keep every instruction booklet and box, even the flattened and torn ones.
  • Photograph the shelves as they stand, with the sets in view.

How to check a set

Every set has a number, printed on the box and the instructions. With that number you can find the full inventory of the set online and check whether the pieces and minifigures are all there. It is slow work for one set, and a great deal of work for fifty.

The ways a Lego collection can go

Selling set by set takes the most time: checking inventories, replacing missing pieces, photographing, packing boxes that must not be crushed.

Selling loose bricks in bulk is quick, and suits bulk bricks, not sets.

One buyer for all of it is what we do. We take the whole collection, sealed, built, loose and incomplete. At Unseend, building sets are treated as the collector's pieces they are, and the story of how the collection was built goes with every set to its next owner, with the collector's name on it.

Wherever the collection is

We are based in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, and buy collections anywhere in the world. Smaller collections can be sent, insured and arranged by us; for a large collection worth the journey we come to it and pack it ourselves, so nothing gets crushed on the way.

Short answers

Are Lego collections worth money?

Complete, retired and sealed sets are sought after. Loose bricks much less so. Most collections are a mix of both.

Can you sell built Lego sets?

Yes. Built sets that are complete, with their minifigures and instructions, are very collectable. There is no need to take them apart.

Do you buy single sets?

No, only collections: roughly twenty objects and up, or fewer if they are exceptional.

Why we keep the story

A collection is not a pile of objects.

It is years of somebody deciding what was worth keeping, and sold off piece by piece that is the first thing to go. So before anything is sold, we sit down with you and record it: how it started, what the best of it was, the piece that got away. That story stays on every object with the collector's name, and goes with it to whoever keeps it next. You get a page where you can see where each piece ended up.

Three ways the story gets recorded

On camera, where it lives. We travel to the collection and film it properly: you talking about how it started, the room and the shelves as they are, the objects in your hands. Wherever in the world the collection happens to be.

On a call. If the collection is sent to us rather than collected, we have the same conversation over a video call and write it up, with one photograph of the shelf as it stood.

In writing. If you would rather not talk at all, answer a handful of questions in your own time and in your own words. It goes on the objects exactly as you wrote it.

It never changes anything else, and you can always say no to it. Some conversations run ten minutes, some an afternoon. Read the collections we have taken on

If it is a whole collection

We buy whole collections, not single pieces: one person takes all of it, and the story is kept with every object. Tell us what you have and a person replies within two days.

How passing it on works, in full

1The collection
What is in it
Pick everything that applies. Something else opens a line to tell us.
Roughly how many pieces
A guess is fine. Nobody has counted.
How would you describe it
There is no wrong answer here, and a lot of ordinary is a normal collection.
One or two sentences. This is the question we care about most.
2Where it is, and how it could reach us
Town and country is enough.
How could it reach us
Unseend is in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Sending and bringing are as welcome as a visit; if it is sent, we pay the freight and insure it.
When does it need to be gone
No hurry is a good answer. It lets us plan a visit properly.
3Condition and photographs
In your own words. Broken, incomplete or untested is fine and is normal; it only needs saying.
Photographs
Three to ten photographs The room and the shelves as they stand. Phone photographs are fine, and a slow walk round on video says more than any of them.Send them to hello@unseend.com
Or attach them to the reply that comes back within two days. Any of them works, and nothing is looked at until a person reads it. Do not clean up first — the shelves as they stand tell us more than a tidy arrangement.
4The number, and the story
A number or a range, whatever you have in mind. You will get an honest answer either way.
Would you tell the story of it
Filmed at the collection wherever it is, on a video call, or written in your own time. It never changes the price.
5How to reach you
The reply comes here, from a person, within two days.
Only if you would rather be called.

Answered within two days, by the person who would come, and by email at every step after that. Nothing you send is shared with anyone, and your photographs are deleted if we do not go ahead.

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