News site of the year

National
  1. Home
  2. News
  3. National

The dark side of Lego

  • 28 reading now

"We're hearing more and more about it, especially from America," said Michael Peebles. "Australia has perhaps been a bit behind in this, but in America it's a big thing, a really, really big thing."

Peebles, 42, of Bendigo, was talking about people breaking into toy stores and stealing Lego sets. And he would know, at least insofar as the world's favourite building block is a huge part of his life.

Up Next

'Drunk' pilot stumbles through security

null
Video duration
00:44

More World News Videos

null
Video duration
01:32

Lego smash and grabs
null
Video duration
00:44

'Drunk' pilot stumbles through security

null
Video duration
00:49

Crystal Ball drops in Times Square test
null
Video duration
01:12

Europe ramps up security for NYE
More videos

Lego smash and grabs

Inside the world of Lego there is a sprawling black market, with back-of-a-truck dodgy dealings fuelled by a desire to get expensive sets at bargain prices.

Peebles is a proud AFOL, and the founder of his own LUG, in this case known as BLUG.

All of which demands some explanation. AFOL is the in-group acronym used to describe grown-ups who like to build brick models. It stands for "adult fan of Lego". A LUG is a Lego User Group, of which there are hundreds around the world; BLUG is the Bendigo version thereof. (He's also a member of the Melbourne one, dubbed MUG.)

LUG members, it must be said, seem to be scrupulously honest folk, who come by their bricks in traditional ways: buying sets from stores, and sought-after individual pieces from a couple of specialist online traders and community-run Facebook buy-swap-and-sell sites.

Beyond the world of these worthies, however, exists a vast and sprawling black market, with back-of-a-truck dodgy dealings fuelled by a desire to get expensive sets at bargain prices, and supplied by smash and grab operators who aren't exactly subtle.

Advertisement

In June 2014, a gang of thieves broke into a Seymour toy shop twice in a week, stealing $15,000 of Lego. They removed – neatly, both times – the glass from the sliding front door in order to do so.

Another toy store in Macksville in northern NSW suffered the loss of about $10,000 of Lego in a raid that involved the thieves traversing neighbouring gardens then cutting through the shop door with an angle-grinder.

In 2015, several grand's worth of Lego sets were stolen from a shop in Brunswick East by a man dressed as a ninja. Also in 2015 a giant Lego banana and Lego blue tongue lizard were stolen from an outdoor art show in Townsville. The items were later recovered by police, one of whom admitted to being a "keen Lego fan".

The most recent, and arguably most histrionic, Lego theft happened in Brunswick North in mid-December. Having staked out a toy store for hours, a couple in a Citroen van reversed at speed through the shop's gates, smashed the window, grabbed a metre-high statue from Lego's ninja-themed Ninjago range and drove away, rear doors flapping as the vehicle accelerated.

It was a heist that left the AFOL community as baffled as the police

"It's totally worthless, in the sense that once bricks are glued together it's virtually impossible to clean them back up," said Peebles.

"If you look at what its value was as a model, fantastic, bit it's only worth something as that model – so therefore the market for them to get any gain out of it is really limited. It is a strange theft."

This is, it should be noted, a particularly Lego-centric interpretation. Lego model builders love the colourful little bricks primarily for their potential to become part of something larger. When those bricks are glued together – "kragled", in the jargon – that potential is destroyed and their value greatly diminished.

"I can assure you that the Lego community is on the look-out for the statue," said Annaleise O'Keefe, 26, of Coburg North. "It will eventually resurface, because there's not much you can do with a ninja statue."

O'Keefe is an active member of MUG and also one of the organisers of Melbourne's annual Brickvention, the biggest Lego fan event in Australia, being held this year on January 14 and 15. (Sydney's equivalent, The Brick Show, takes place in April.)

"Perhaps even now it's on its way to a mysterious collector in Zurich," she said. "Perhaps it will come to light in about 60 years after he dies and police raid his giant mansion."

O'Keefe was being only slightly tongue in cheek. Surely, the international theft-to-order scenario is considerably less bleak than assuming two light-fingered parents nicked it as a Christmas present, the recipient now being told that he (or she) must never ever show it to a friend or mention it in the schoolyard.

"It was probably someone who loves Ninjago and wants it in their living room, said Lego jewellery-maker Rolanda Markovski, 48, of Mill Park.

"I've never heard of any black market stuff going on. I think Australians are a bit too open and honest to do that."

That certainly seems to be the case within the tight-knit AFOL community, which operates according to its own strict moral code.

The prime prohibition, however, isn't against theft so much as penny-pinching. Building with any brand of cheap Lego-lookalike bricks is LUG anathema. Anybody found using them at Brickvention, Markovski said, would be "banned and walked out".

But there is another, more prosaic barrier to black market trade among dedicated Lego enthusiasts: it's all a bit pointless. People with skill and a big enough collection of bricks can build pretty much any in-store Lego set without actually having to buy it. It's a practice known as "re-piecing".

However, there are a couple of very special, very rare Lego sets where this is impossible. That's when prices start to climb alarmingly – and, perhaps, the temptation to cut them by fair means or foul arises.

"There is one particular set that is probably the single most expensive set that's available on the market, which is an Ultimate Collectors' Set Millennium Falcon," Peebles said.

"That was released around nine years ago. To get one new in the box is over $7000. You can't re-piece it because there are two components in it that were only released in that set. Either of those components would sell for $300 or $400 for just one piece of Lego.

"That sort of thing would certainly have a market in the AFOL community, but a model like the Ninja wouldn't. If someone was to offer me the big Lego MCG that's currently in at Myer [in central Melbourne], I'd probably turn it down. It's all glued, so I'd have no use for it."