A MAN has revealed how trying to find his favourite toy as a child turned into a very lucrative side hustle.
Shane O'Farrell never intended to get rich with Lego sets, but in just two years has made almost £400,000.
The 35-year-old who lives in New Jersey, US, wanted to connect with his Irish childhood again and went online to find the Fort Legoredo set which was his favourite as a kid.
But twenty years after it was produced, Shane realised the value had gone higher and higher than it's original $85.
Seeing it retail for hundreds of pounds more than it did in 1996, Shane had a light-bulb moment and turned his attention to see how he could profit from it.
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The savvy man quickly jumped on the trend of buying and flipping Lego sets and has made hundreds of thousands.
Instead of sticking to traditional investments like stocks and bonds, he decided to follow his gut with Lego sets.
“I started trying to invest in stocks and realized the 8% a year that I’m making in the stock market is not really going to work. It’s not really going to get me where I want to go,” O’Farrell told The Post. “It would take decades.”
“The time it takes is very minimal, so I can do it on top of my full-time job and create a supplementary income,” O’Farrell said.
In just two years his toy trading side hustle has earned him almost £400k ($500,000).
Shane is so passionate about his new income that he even started a YouTube account to help others learn the trick of the trade.
What’s required is a standard-sized storage unit for inventory and a sharp set of eyes monitoring the companies, he said.
Shane also reads annual Lego-released finance and trend reports while also keeping tabs on when sets are being retired to help determine future value.
After Lego stops selling a certain model, that’s when the shop opens for sellers like Shane.
Recently, that was the Lego “Star Wars” TIE Fighter Pilot helmet model.
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“It was $60 before being retired in 2021. Then by about a year and a half of it being retired, it was $350,” he explained.
“You’re talking about a 400% return on investment in a year and a half’s time.”
But not all Lego sets are valued the same, and you have to be picky with what ones you want to grab.
While you might have though giant franchises were good to go for like Star Wars or Harry Potter, it may not always be profitable.
Instead, Shane urges people to go for rare sets that are exclusive to select stores since there will likely be fewer manufactured and tend to be best due to post-retirement demand.
Mini figures inside sets also appear to be very lucrative, Shane spotted a surge in demand for minifigs sold in Lego’s $460 Barad-dûr set from “Lord of the Rings.”
People were selling just the minifigures from the set for $250,” he said of the towering Eye of Mordor model.
Shane adds that flipping Lego is an easy way to make money, but it does take time and patience.
“You could just buy the stuff, put it away somewhere in storage and just wait for the price to go up,” he said. “The workload is quite low.”
