Over the past year and a bit, the LEGO group has been crowd funding sets that reached a milestone of 10,000 fans on their submission. What’s crowdfunding and how does it work I hear you ask? As we show you the 9 sets that are up for sale in just 5 days, we’ll explain.
Early in 2021, LEGO determined that a huge number of fantastic creations were being submitted to the LEGO Ideas site. If you’ve not checked it out, pause and head there now. It’s epic. LEGO fans can then vote on these sets. Historically, sets that exceed 10,000 likes would be considered for official production by LEGO and be released onto the shelves of a retailer near you. The Ideas segment consistently impresses with some absolute pearlers including one of my favourite sets of all time – the Old Fishing Store.
But some sets which reached 10,000 likes were fantastic, but not put into production. This could have been due to limited production run capacity, commercial marketing challenges or a myriad of other things. So rather than have these amazing sets get passed by, LEGO decided to open them to crowdfunding. This means that people pre-purchase the sets and when a sufficient volume of purchases are made, the sets go into formal production. It’s a way for LEGO to share the risk with the consumer. If the sets can’t reach enough pre-orders, the purchases are simply refunded.
In this round, 9 sets will go up for sale on the 17th May, 2022 with the first 5 to reach 3000 pre-sales formally progressing to production. Only 10,000 of each of these models will then be created. It can be quite a stampede so make sure you set your alarms.
So is this a good approach? NO – IT’S TERRIBLE! There is $2059 worth of sets that look utterly stunning and I’d love in our collection. I suppose the good news is that with only 5 sets going into production, I guess that drops down to $1,659.95. Time to start a second job I think!
If any of these great sets takes your fancy, then head on over to the Bricklink Crowdfunding page and set your alarm for May 17th!
With so much goodness on offer, which is your favourite?