These Lego Sets Are Actually Worth A Ton Of Money

Whether you know Lego from a treasured childhood set, trip to Legoland, or because of that one friend who keeps doing impressions of Will Arnett's Lego Batman ("I'm Batman!"), chances are, you have some love for Lego in your life. Maybe you just know some celebrity collectors of Lego, like soccer star David Beckham, basketball star Myles Turner, and actor-director Anna Kendrick. Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran even wrote a song called "Lego House," with a music video starring Rupert Grint, famous for his role as Ron Weasley in the very Lego-friendly "Harry Potter" franchise.

The colorful little plastic interlocking Lego bricks have been delighting collectors (and terrorizing shoeless grownups) since the Lego Group's founding in 1932. Invented by a Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen and named for a portmanteau for the Danish equivalent of "play well" — "leg godt" — people have been playing with Lego for just about as long as anyone currently on Earth has been alive. That's a wide range of time for collectors to develop a love for Lego bricks, and a taste for hunting valuable sets.

Anyone who has bought a Lego set for themselves or a loved one knows Lego sets can be worth some money, and not just because some of the more elaborate sets tend to be pricey in the first place. But which Lego bricks might be worth a ton of bricks even after their initial sale price?

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the franchise's everlasting hold on all things pop culture, "Star Wars" Lego sets have done exceptionally well in the collector's market. Lego first licensed Star Wars in 1999. Though this was the Darth Maul era, all the "Star Wars" movies were on the menu. Parents and kids who had grown up with the original trilogy could now bond over building "Star Wars" sets old and new, for the first time ever.

While Lego values are always in a state of flux, "Star Wars" usually shows up at the top of most- valuable lists. BrickEconomy.com, a website dedicated to tracking the market values of Legos, cites the "Star Wars" Cloud City set from 2003 (10123), as having a collector's value of around $5,500. Compare this to the set's original retail price of $99.99. We bet Lando Calrissian would crack a trademark smile at this.

Other top contenders? A bust of Darth Maul from 2001 (10018) can rake in $3,500, 22.3 times as much as its original price of $149.99. Other promotional sets from galaxies not so far away can also command top dollar. A black-suit Superman that was raffled off at the 2013 San Diego Comic Con is now worth around $6,200, while an unopened box of the Joker Manor set, inspired by the baddie's lair in 2017's "The LEGO Batman Movie" (70922), originally sold for around $270, and now can fetch around $630.

Of course, it's not just the various TV and movie tie-ins that get all of the collectible Lego laurels. While tie-ins tend to dominate toy-aisle shelves today, for many years Lego made its name while not having names tied to its blocks, unless you're counting names of in-house themes.

For example, the Pirates series launched in 1989. Today, an iconic red-and-white-sailed Black Seas Barracuda from 1989 (10040) is worth around $1,500, while the full Black Seas Barracuda is valued at around $6,100 (as of this writing). All of this against initial retail values of around $90 and $110, respectively. Yarr! To go even more classic, Lego's 1962 humble Town Plan set (810-4) is now worth 300 times what it was six decades ago, with a resale price of $3,765 versus its original retail price of $12.50. What's more, even Lego sets today could become classics tomorrow, depending on just how beloved a box of bricks is now, and then.

Refreshingly, unlike, say, collectors of the most valuable retro video games ever sold or some old Barbie dolls with unexpected value today, it seems Lego collectors actually play with their highly collectible toys. Even Lego collectors after top-ticket sets or their valuable missing pieces aren't just usually looking for an unopened box to gather dust. They're looking for an unopened box that they can crack open themselves, to build new fun from an old toy.