Advice on selling LEGO MOCs and what are your experiences on it?

[ExeSandbox]

Hello! 

I am just curious about this, and was wondering if anyone here has had experience in selling your MOCs online, or physically (like in a convention)? Because I have some interests in selling some MOCs myself, but I haven't had any experience doing so and it would be really great if you could give some advice on it.

Here are some questions that I have:

.1) How do you calculate the pricing on your creations? Do you charge based on costs of parts, workmanship, and shipping charges? Do you also mark up some more after that?

.2) Have you experienced any pitfalls or miscalculations that might result in a loss of profit? Do some of you sell, but not for the profit?

.3) How do you order your parts to build the models? If it's from sites like Bricklink or Ebay, there is the added price of shipping. Does every charge for shipment add up to the MOC's price?                                            - Or do you bulk buy LEGO kits and create MOCs from there. If so, how do you go about calculating the price of the MOC?

I would be very grateful for your advice on this!

Many thanks! 

[MAB]

Before you buy in parts to sell, I'd check if people would be willing to pay a reasonable price for your MOCs. Do you ever post your MOCs online and get comments from users about them? When you consider your time designing them,  you are likely to be working well below any minimum wage and more likely for free unless you can source your parts very cheaply.

[Johnny1360]

I have had some limited success selling LEGO art locally not online, very limited in fact just a few here and there. My stuff is relatively small and simple, around 100 pieces that I pay around $3 for and sell for $10, takes less than half an hour to make. 

So while I certainly don't make a living doing it, I have managed to make a small amount of money. 

[Nick Wolfe]

I have sold a couple of pieces. 2 full body sculptures about 1 ft tall for $50 each. The thing about selling MOCs is that you would have to price them like art. I also work with my dad who's a wood sculptor so the experience I have with that tells me that you have to price your sculptures as Material Cost + time spent working. We consider $35 an hour to be livable (because we do sculpture full time and that pays for out necessities). My sculptures usually take between 6 and 10 hours to make so I'm definitely underpricing them by a lot but I think it's more reasonable to expect someone to actually pay less and I'm not doing lego sculpting full time.

Right now I have my Hellboy sculpture for sale in a local used lego store. I have it priced at $150 (of which $30 goes to the store) and it gets a lot of compliments but nobody who is interested in buying yet.

Then again my builds tend to be bigger and take longer. I made a devil head this morning that I'm thinking about mounting on a wooden plaque and putting out for something like $40 and seeing if that sells.

I've never seen any of this sold online, you could try etsy or making a patreon page but the thing is that shipping a built set is going to be difficult. Unless you plan to make instructions to go with it in which case I don't see a problem. 

[peedeejay]

I have sold quite a few MOCs of my modular buildings so far, but not the MOC itself, rather a building kit containing all needed parts in new condition and I am continuing to do so.

I totally agree with what MAB said: You need to know if there is a market. In my case I know that because I have sold a 4 digit number of building instructions and had also quite a few buyers asking for the parts as well.

I buy parts from my local LEGO store PAB wall in bulk if matching parts are available. The majority however is bought from LEGO BNP and Bricklink.

My best advice? The number one rule of retail: You earn money on the buying side, not on the selling side. ;-)