Ok, just a bit of fun here, so don’t pulverize me too hard!
So I was thinking about this because every time I go to the toy shop I am shocked at the cost of Duplo and Lego and think, man I’m glad I kept my Duplo and Lego stuff, the kids don’t play with it much now, but still, it’s still quality shit! I am literally keeping this stuff for grandkids to enjoy.
But the thought did pop into my mind about how much my old treasured Lego sets sitting in the attic in the UK would be worth now.
And then I got to thinking - is Lego a better store of value/inflation hedge than fiat? So I went down a little rabbit hole on a couple of the sets I have (I have more but can't remember them all) and here are the results (caveat, we will assume the Lego was bought as an investment and kept boxed and in good condition etc).
My example sets
For my examples, I’ll use my two favourite sets as a kid – the pirate galleon and the black castle.
Using the waybackmahchine I found a copy of the 1989 Argos catolouge (a popular store in the UK) and refreshed my mind on the prices of the sets (Lego was never cheap, in relative terms, I would get a set a year for xmas usually).
So we have the classic 6085 LEGO Black Knights Black Monarch's Castle at £31 (£31 in 1989 would have been equivalent to between $46.81 and $56.42, depending on the specific exchange rate at the time of conversion.)
Then we have the Black Seas Barracuda 6285 at £47 (about $73.53 in 1989)
Adjusted for inflation (using this inflation calculator https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/monetary-policy/inflation/inflation-calculator ) we have:
Black Monarch's Castle (£31) - adjusted is now about £80 (about 99 USD)
The Black Seas Barracuda (£47) - adjusted is about £122 (about 151 USD)
So obviously just holding that total of £78 in cash would be a terrible move and would have tiny purchasing power today (fiat loses, as it always does), but just how much worse than Lego is it?
Since these sets are long discontinued, we need to check the resale value of those unboxed Lego sets.
Fortunately, there are legions of Lego lovers and fascinating resources (like this https://www.brickeconomy.com/set/10040-1/lego-pirates-black-seas-barracuda) to look at things like this.
So, since monitoring here are the estimates on the ship
Pirate Galleon looking pretty good at around £1217 ($1510) on the second-hand markets
Now the castle
Nice performance on the castle too at over £2178 ($2704)
(If you are curious about the crazy value of some of these Lego pieces, you can go here
https://www.brickeconomy.com/sets/top/most-valuable-lego-sets)
Now, while you might say, of course Lego beats fiat, everything does, let’s go back in time and see what the value of those Lego sets, invested in gold and the SnP500 would be worth.
SNP500
For the sake of ease, we will combine the value of the two sets in 1989 and switch to USD, since we’re talking snp.
So the castle (roughly adjusted to 47 USD) + the ship (roughly at $73) = about 120 dollars.
Using Deepseek, I asked what the value of $120 invested in 1989 would be, and here’s what the total might look like:
Nominal Value (not adjusted for inflation): Approximately $3,065.64 (using 10% average returns).
Now, let’s combine the top-end, current value estimation of those Lego sets:
Pirate ship – $1271
Black castle - $2178
Total $3449, so Lego has beaten the nominal value of the SnP500, nice.
Now let’s look at gold (I used chatGPT on this one).
Gold
In December 1989, the closing price of gold was $403.05 per troy ounce and as of January 28, 2025, gold was priced at $2,762.60 per troy ounce.
So the $120 investment in gold in 1989 (0.2977oz) would be worth approximately $822.83 today, unadjusted.
So, another stunning defeat for Peter Shiff and the gold bugs, and a big win for the theoretical guy that has been hoarding Lego sets in mint condition since 1989!
Bonus zaps for any stackers that share the estimated value of their favourite childhood lego sets using https://www.brickeconomy.com/