Booming online resale market leads to rise of international Lego thieves

Legos aren't just for kids, with adults seen waiting in line outside a toy store in Paris ahead of a new lockdown in France. — Bloomberg

As the world comes off a year of pandemic lockdowns, Lego bricks have become the focus of more than just homebound kids and adults with more time on their hands – criminals have also picked up on the appeal of the iconic toy brand.

French police are warning Lego sellers and parents about an international gang of toy thieves dubbed ‘Lego looters’ that are part of an increasingly lucrative global trade in the bricks, fuelled by a booming online resale market.

Gerben van Ijken, a Lego specialist who advises an online auction platform for buying and selling collectibles, told The Guardian that the second hand market has exploded over the last eight years as people realised they can make money reselling Lego on the Internet.

“Investing in these pieces isn’t new but this niche market has reached new heights with the pandemic. People have more time at home because of the health restrictions and the game market has exploded. We often have more than 1,000 Lego sales a week,” he said, revealing that sales on a French auction site doubled last year.

He said the collectability was also tied to how the company withdraws its collections around two years after debuting, fuelling a secondhand market.

Van Ijken gave an example of the Cafe Corner Lego set which sold for €150 (RM731) when released in 2007, but resold – in its original box – for €2,500 (RM12,187) last year.

The Guardian reported that the alert from French authorities follows the arrest of three people in the process of stealing boxes of Lego from a toy shop in Yvelines, outside Paris, last June.

The suspects – a woman and two men, all from Poland – revealed during questioning that they were part of a team that specialised in stealing highly collectable Legos.

Members of the gang had been arrested before in France, over the last few years. An investigator told Le Parisien newspaper that their modus operandi was to set up in a hotel in Paris, raid toy stores in the area, then return to Poland to sell their loot.

He added that the authorities had received complaints from victims who said their homes were broken into and had their Lego stolen.

The Guardian noted that Lego looting was a global business, with reports in the US, Canada and Australia about thefts over the last five years.