Four years ago right around Christmas time, I had posted an analysis of how the prices of Lego sets were related to their number of pieces.
Checking a Lego Christmas catalog last week, I had the feeling that:
- prices had gone up in general
- yet the 10-pieces-per-dollar ratio I had estimated 4 years ago still appeared to be valid.
This conclusion would then naturally be that the number of pieces had also gone up.
I pulled all the prices and number of pieces by Lego theme (over 40 nowadays!), and revisited the analysis.
The data needed some clean-up again, especially regarding sets with with abnormal prices for the number of pieces: the Duplo sets (oversized blocks are much more expensive), the Mindstorms sets (the color sensor is over $40) and Powered-Up sets (the move hub is $80). Similarly to last time, I also split themes into those that are based on an external partnership (Star Wars, Harry Potter, Marvel, DC...) and those entirely developed by Lego (City, Friends, Creator Expert...).
Here's the plot of pieces versus price for all sets less than $200 (95% of sets), and removing the outliers mentioned in the previous paragraph:
It's quite tempting to look at the range for the pieces-to-price ratio across sets, splitting by theme:
Out of the top 10 themes with best median ratio, 9 are themes Lego developed in-house, and only one is through external partnership (car makers, deal might not have been as lucrative as for Marvel or Star Wars rights).
We can fit a linear model to fit the number of pieces against price, partnership, and their interaction:
The result is that for non-partnership sets, we get a pieces-to-price ratio of approximately 10.7, ratio that drops to just over 9 for the partnership sets. The difference is highly significant and confirms our previous observations. The intercepts are slightly different but not significantly so.
A question we might be interested in is whether we observe any diminishing or increasing returns as the prices go up. This can be done by observing the pieces-to-price ratio for various pice buckets:
As we might have expected, our pieces-to-price improves as we go into the more expensive sets. This makes sense as the pieces are only one of the costs for sets, there are many other fixed costs in terms of packaging and marketing that will make the smaller sets less attractive to the smart buyer.
Non-partnership sets appear to always outperform the partnership sets, but one should keep in mind that the sample size is pretty small in the $200+ bucket.
The previous result also throws some shade on our linear models, the slopes (pieces-to-price ratio) are actually not constant. If we wanted to improve the models, we would probably need to include a quadratic term for price.
So to recap, your best pieces per dollar will come from non-partnership and bigger sets. Of course it could be your child has a specific theme in mind, so to help out with your Christmas purchases, here's the list of the best sets for each theme:
| Theme | Product Name | Pieces | Price | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Architecture | trafalgar-square | 1197 | 79.99 | 14.96 |
| Boost | droid-commander | 1177 | 199.99 | 5.89 |
| Brickheadz | thanksgiving-scarecrow | 177 | 9.99 | 17.72 |
| City | pizza-van | 249 | 19.99 | 12.46 |
| Classic | bricks-bricks-bricks | 1500 | 59.99 | 25.00 |
| Creator-3-in-1 | deep-sea-creatures | 230 | 14.99 | 15.34 |
| Creator-Expert | taj-mahal | 5923 | 369.99 | 16.01 |
| Dc | 1989-batmobile | 3306 | 249.99 | 13.22 |
| Disney | the-disney-castle | 4080 | 349.99 | 11.66 |
| Disney-Frozen-2 | elsa-s-magical-ice-palace | 701 | 79.99 | 8.76 |
| Duplo | creative-fun | 120 | 39.99 | 3.00 |
| Fantastic-Beasts | newt-s-case-of-magical-creatures | 694 | 49.99 | 13.88 |
| Friends | underwater-loop | 389 | 29.99 | 12.97 |
| Harry-Potter | hogwarts-castle | 6020 | 399.99 | 15.05 |
| Hidden-Side | shrimp-shack-attack | 579 | 49.99 | 11.58 |
| Ideas | lego-nasa-apollo-saturn-v | 1969 | 119.99 | 16.41 |
| Juniors | city-central-airport | 376 | 49.99 | 7.52 |
| Jurassic-World | jurassic-park-t-rex-rampage | 3120 | 249.99 | 12.48 |
| Lego-Batman-Sets | 1989-batmobile | 3306 | 249.99 | 13.22 |
| Lego-Spider-Man | spider-mech-vs-venom | 604 | 49.99 | 12.08 |
| Marvel | the-hulkbuster-smash-up | 375 | 29.99 | 12.50 |
| Mindstorms | lego-mindstorms-ev3 | 601 | 349.99 | 1.72 |
| Minecraft | the-wool-farm | 260 | 19.99 | 13.01 |
| Minifigures | mf-set-ninjago-2019 | 59 | 12.99 | 4.54 |
| Ninjago | ninjago-city | 4867 | 299.99 | 16.22 |
| Overwatch | dorado-showdown | 419 | 29.99 | 13.97 |
| Power-Functions | lego-power-functions-train-motor | 7 | 13.99 | 0.50 |
| Powered-Up | disney-train-and-station | 2925 | 329.99 | 8.86 |
| Powerpuff-Girls | mojo-jojo-strikes | 228 | 29.99 | 7.60 |
| Serious-Play | window-exploration-bag | 4900 | 484.99 | 10.10 |
| Speed-Champions | formula-e-panasonic-jaguar-racing | 565 | 29.99 | 18.84 |
| Star-Wars | yoda | 1771 | 99.99 | 17.71 |
| Stranger-Things | the-upside-down | 2287 | 199.99 | 11.44 |
| Technic | cherry-picker | 155 | 9.99 | 15.52 |
| The-Lego-Movie-2 | pop-up-party-bus | 1024 | 79.99 | 12.80 |
| The-Lego-Ninjago-Movie | ninjago-city | 4867 | 299.99 | 16.22 |
| Toy-Story-4 | woody-rc | 69 | 9.99 | 6.91 |
| Unikitty | unikitty-cloud-car | 126 | 9.99 | 12.61 |
| Xtra | traffic-lights | 46 | 3.99 | 11.53 |
Now one important caveat should be mentioned here. Number of pieces is a great proxy for size and time to build, but it isn't perfect. Going through some sets I've noticed a tendency of adding more and more small decorative pieces. This trick can significantly and artificially bump up the piece number. Ideally we should also include weight to control for that aspect, but weight was not available and would probably not have been available at the desired granularity level. Take the new gingerbread house for instance. At $99 for 1477 pieces it seems like a great deal, but take a closer look at what's inside:
Look at all those small pieces! Especially the red and white candy canes around the doors and windows. Just tiny 1-by-1 round shapes staked together. Almost 100 of them, and I doubt they're worth $10!
Now of course, these were just models, and you can throw them all out the window when it comes Ole Kirk's house. Who? Ole Kirk as in Ole Kirk Christiansen, the man who created The Lego Company. His house is an extremely rare Lego set which was gifted only to employees (and a few special visitors). At 912 pieces we would roughly estimate it at $90, but good luck finding it at less than $300, prices of $500 are not uncommon for unopened sets!
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