Does anyone have any knowledge or advice as to going about selling you

[Derfel Cadarn]

I have a lot of custom medieval style buildings that I've often thought about selling. I know I'd have to order the bricks in for every set and make a profit, but I was wondering if you need special permission to sell your own sets. Do many others do this? What's the best way to go about it?

[Zzz]

You don't need permission. Advice is to look carefully at the market, find a demand, calculate your costs, calculate your time, find your personal break-even-point, set a price, make up your mind if you use ebay, EB or BL, think of limited editions or even garanteed uniqueness, try to protect your copyright, make instructions (CD or print), think how to ship it in a nice way and when to buy the bricks, advertise everywhere, good luck!

Ask yourself the following questions:

- Do I want to make profit and/or just someone else happy?

- Do I show everything about my MOC (that people think "I can do that by myself!") or almost nothing (people less interested)

- How much value does the time that I invest has?

- How high is my personal/financial risk?

- When do I buy the parts?

(as you can see, these are some questions, and they might be hard to answer. But you need to.)

And I cannot stretch it enough:

- WATCH THE MARKET!

Look at other people who make MOCs and sell them. You may find.. cough.. some here ..cough... on EB. See how they are doing. What items are sold out? What items don't they seem to sell? What price do they want for either?

Just a few thoughts, good luck, mate!

[DLuders]

I think that you should sell them on eBay, to get worldwide exposure. I just did a search using the terms "Lego Custom Set", and got 111 hits ( http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_nkw=lego+cust...3286.m270.l1313 ).

This fellow had good luck selling instructions for his custom aircraft creations: http://shop.ebay.com/hancocksh73/m.html?_n...from=&_ipg= .

[Edmond Dantes]

This guy sells MOCs all the time and does VERY well for himself (he's talented): http://shop.ebay.com/lesko76/m.html?_nkw=&...p;_trksid=p3686

I have never bid on his auctions, but I do watch them, as it gives a good indication of the willingness of others to spend big money.

[karl1]

I think you would be better off just selling the instructions for 10 bucks. You would probably sell a larger. Quantity with minimal investment. Try out an auction bin with 50 available and post a link here so we can watch too

[Legononymous]

Just wondering if you've given any more thought to selling your custom sets?

I had been wondering why this hasn't been done before. I don't have a lot of random pieces to try and come up with what I want. It would be nice to purchase custom kits or buy requested ones. For example, smaller kits to furnish a castle or home.

[Asterios]

Well several factors to consider, the set size which is quite large so would be expensive so not many would buy such a large set, the part costs which could effect instruction sales, in this situation you would be best off making like a CD or instruction book and selling those, but then again it might not go for alot, several custom sellers sell instructions for buildings and such like the guild of bricksmiths and even Dan Siskind but smaller creations instructions have a tendancy to sell faster then large creations do, but this is mainly on feasibility of building.

[legotrainfan]

If you decide to sell your creations on eBay, don't forget the following things:

- Take good pictures of your creation. The better the pictures, the higher people will bid.

- Don't let the auction end when there's a big event like a soccer game, Formular 1 race or similar events that will make people watch TV instead of bidding.

- Don't let the auction end at a time when everybody normally works like at 10 a.m. That would be an inconvenient time. Most people wouldn't have time to bid because they would be working. Let it end some time in the late evening when everyone is at home.

[Asterios]

also another major factor to consider is the economy with the economy in the bad shape it is, people are not forking out big bucks for things these days.