Our first deep dive into Lego investing takes us out of this world, this set I was always hugely confident of making a great return.
It was an Argos exclusive, but was a unique set, a truly iconic piece that was going to be hugely collectable. 

There was plenty of thought that went into this buy though and we can use the same logic and the lessons we learned in similar sets.

What discount did we get?

The average Buy price was £51.26 (15% off) so was not a huge discount (some at 20% some at full RRP) and normally we are always targeting at least 20%, but with some sets, you can still double your money on a full-price buy.

The international space station was an exclusive to Argos set. I managed to pick up these over a while in 2022. It retired end in December of that year. 

Validation for investing

I sold them towards the back end of 2023 on Amazon, so about a year-long hold for this set. 

It was always clearly a very iconic set, space sets often do well as well, and this was much more of a gut feeling, than other sets. Because it was exclusive, many of the metrics were not available. 

We saw similar good things from the Saturn V space ship that retired end of 2019 that quickly rose above the £200 mark at a RRP of £110

What we could see is that it was selling on Amazon above the RRP whilst on the market, which is promising not at a huge sales rank however, but this is often the case when the set is an exclusive one. Then once Amazon becomes the prime place to buy it after retirement this will be reflected in the price, and this is exactly what happened. 

How much we sold for

So always the target is 80-100% after all fees and that is exactly what we got with this set. 

We sold for £124.99 and I remember them selling rather quickly. After all fees and everything we made a 96% return on investment on each item. (£49.61)

Very, happy with the price we got for this. Even if you had bought this at RRP you would still have made a great return. 

What did we learn from this investment?

There were some great nuggets to take from this investment. 

Notably that Ideas as a theme is a hugely viable option, they are collectable and unique items. 

Space sells, space sets often do well and there is none more iconic than the ISS.

Don’t discard exclusives, yes you will not be able to see the same data on Amazon, but think outside the box, exclusivity will have a great boost to the price after retirement as well. 

What similar sets are good for investment?

So the good news is, there is another Nasa set that is well on my watchlist for investing this year.

Lego 10283 Nasa space shuttle Discovery has been out since 2021, and retires this year.

It is another exclusive set to Smyths and Lego. rarely discounted. Selling for around £220 on Amazon currently so once retires and supply diminishes will expect this to creep up.

By its nature may be a slightly longer hold may have to wait over 12 -18 months from retirement, but then would be confident of a 80-100% return.

If it gets available at a discount at any time then I am certainly snapping this beauty up.

For more Lego investing Successes check out this page and we will update the wins over the years