Vancouver Island man is selling $7,000 Mr. Gold Lego minifigure to fund family home

A Vancouver Island man is selling a Lego minifigure for a whopping $7,200.

Matthew Fox of Black Creek, B.C., has been collecting Lego since he was a child. He says at one time he owned four of the rare Mr. Gold figures. Over the past few years, he's sold three of them for varying prices in the thousands to help fund the construction of his new family home. 

He says he purchased them when they were first released on the secondary market in Ontario. Prices ranged from $400 to $800 at the time. 

"I just had this inkling that man, these are gonna be worth something because to me they were really cool," said Fox. 

"Not bad for a 10-year investment."

 Who is Mr. Gold?

A number of factors have contributed to the high value placed on Mr. Gold minifigures, according to Andrew Cleary, founder of BrickEconomy.com.

Cleary created the website about eight years ago to track the value of Lego as people began to see it as an investment opportunity. 

He says scarcity is the main driver behind Mr. Gold's rise in value as only 5,000 of the minifigures were ever produced. The fact that an interested buyer could not purchase an individual Mr. Gold minifigure also contributed to its value. Someone had to be lucky enough to find the blinged-out figure in a blind bag for a minifigure series released in 2013. 

That led to huge markups on the secondary market, Cleary says. At the time of release, Mr. Gold was selling for $1,000 US on the secondary markets. Today, he is estimated to be worth over $6,500 US, well above Fox's asking price of $7,200 Cdn. 

"It's kind of the Holy Grail," said Fox. 

"It's just one of the ones that people seem to know about, and really, really want."

Investing in LEGO 

The Lego investment phenomena has been growing over the course of the last decade. 

Researchers from Russia's HSE University published a paper in January 2022 that found Lego yields high returns on the secondary market. 

The study, which looked at the average returns on 2,322 retired, sealed Lego sets sold on the secondary market, found that in many cases Lego outperforms large stocks, bonds and even gold as an investment. 

Charles Schell, acting associate dean for the faculty of management at Vancouver Island University, says that for anything to accrue in value, it needs scarcity and a secondary market — just like Mr. Gold. 

"People invest in things that they find interesting and enjoy. We've got all the millennials that grew up on Lego who still enjoy it and see it as a good investment," said Schell. 

"But don't confuse it with a well-diversified portfolio. There's better and safer options that provide more predictable returns." 

For Fox, collecting Lego isn't just an investment, it's a source of enjoyment, one that he shares with his children. 

"There's a creativity to it," he says.

"I can design, I can build, I can take two or three kits and put them together to make something I think is bigger or better."