01
How to work out a set’s price per part in the aisle
Two numbers off the box, one division, and the three thresholds worth remembering.
BY POPPY · 5 MIN
How To: Gaming
THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
How To: Gaming
THE HOW TO CO. — EDITION 10
The count on the front of the box is the first thing a buyer reads and the last thing worth trusting. Divide it into the price, then ask what the set is actually for.
THE INTRODUCTION
Two numbers are printed on every box and only one of them is doing any work. The count is the number everybody quotes. The price divided by the count is the number that tells you whether you are buying plastic or paying rent on a licence.
Start with what the count is not. Piece count is a count. It does not measure size, weight, difficulty or value, because the box counts an 8×8 plate and a 1×1 tile as one each — and one of those covers sixty-four times the floor of the other. This is why a mosaic of a few thousand identical tiles lands at two or three cents a part while a small set built around four figures lands at twenty. Both numbers are honest. Neither is about how much set you are getting.
So do the division. Take the list price, divide by the part count, and read the result in cents. Somewhere near ten cents a part is where the middle of the catalogue sits, and it has sat roughly there for years. Under about eight cents you are being paid in plastic — big builds, plain parts, own-brand themes. Over about thirteen and something other than the plastic is being charged for, which is not automatically a bad buy, but you should be able to name it before you pay it.
What the premium buys is short and specific: a licence, a figure, or a mould. Licensed themes carry a fee to whoever owns the ship or the castle, and it lands on the part price. Figures are the most expensive thing in any box by weight and small sets are mostly figures — which is exactly why a battle pack or a polybag looks so bad on this metric and still sells out. And a big, newly-moulded, printed or transparent part costs more to make than the twelfth copy of a 1×2 brick.
One correction before the number is worth anything: price per part is a list-price measurement, and almost nothing is bought at list. Third-party retailers routinely run the general catalogue at twenty to thirty per cent off, which turns an eleven-cent set into an eight-cent one and changes the answer completely. Exclusives are the exception — the sets sold only by the manufacturer rarely discount, so on those the list figure is the real one.
THE DETAIL
Price per part in US cents at list, laid on a linear axis from nothing to twenty-six. Each band is the observed range for one kind of set — where it sits is the price, how long it is is the spread — and the shaded column across all six is the honest band the great middle of the catalogue lives in. Beneath it, the reason the axis has a tail at either end: three parts drawn at true relative footprint, each of them one piece.
FOUR CHECKS · BEFORE THE BOX LEAVES THE SHOP
The division tells you what a set costs. It cannot tell you whether you want it. That answer comes from one question asked honestly — is this going on a shelf, or is it going on a table? — and from four checks that take about ninety seconds in the aisle.
| KIND OF SET | TYPICAL RANGE | WHAT YOU ARE PAYING FOR |
|---|---|---|
| ART & MOSAIC | 2–5¢ | Thousands of 1×1 tiles. The metric flatters it; the build is a sort and a grid |
| ICONS & MODULARS | 6–9¢ | Big plain builds, deep part counts, no licence fee. The best plastic per pound in the catalogue |
| CITY & CREATOR | 8–11¢ | Ordinary parts in useful colours, and figures you can spare. The honest middle |
| TECHNIC | 9–13¢ | Gears, pins, axles and function. Fewer, stranger, more expensive parts doing more work |
| LICENSED THEMES | 10–15¢ | A fee to whoever owns the ship. Printed parts and figures you cannot get any other way |
| SMALL & FIGURE-LED | 15–25¢ | People, not parts. Worth it if the figure is the purchase — never as a way to buy bricks |
5 PIECES · IN THE ARCHIVE
The archive behind this label. Titles are set and the pieces are being written — nothing here links yet, because a label pointing at an empty case is worse than a label that says wait.
01
Two numbers off the box, one division, and the three thresholds worth remembering.
BY POPPY · 5 MIN
02
Comparing a themed box against its nearest own-brand equivalent, part for part.
BY POPPY · 6 MIN
03
Finding the finished footprint on the back of the box, and the shelf depth nobody checks.
BY IRIS · 4 MIN
04
Numbered bags, session length, and the honest hours behind a five-figure part count.
BY IRIS · 6 MIN
05
Which sets reach thirty per cent off, which never do, and how to tell them apart early.
BY POPPY · 7 MIN
SHELF 05 / 07 · LEGO
Every chapter in this region is a bay on this wall. This one is 05. Back to the wall to walk the rest.