Inflation-adjusted price per piece has actually been declining over the years, dropping from ~$0.25 to a current $0.10 on average. This set is $0.06 per piece, so even less expensive than a median set by that metric.
Pantasy, Cobi, Funwhole, megabloks, etc. There's tons of alt bricks at nearly any reasonable price point. But you're still not going to find these sorts of multi-thousand piece sets for <$100 because it takes at least a few cents to produce a dimensionally accurate, quality controlled bit of plastic.
These are remarkably close to the raw cost of materials and tooling. The Sagrada Familia model is a 12k piece set for $800, ~$0.07/piece. Phantasy has an unlicensed Opera set (85019) [0] with 3.5k pieces for $190, $0.05/piece. That's straight up cheap. They're not limiting production to control prices. High quality injection molding (in multiple colors no less!) is hard. 2 cents over 12k pieces does add up to a nice bit of change for Lego though.
there are tons of them in China, you can buy them on AliExpress, though that are expensive there for 1/2-1/3rd of Lego
but you wouldn't believe if I told you how much it cost in China, you can buy sets with hundreds of pieces for like 3-4 euros, I couldn't believe it when I saw the prices, Lego prices are highway robbery for piece of plastic
and don't tell me about paying for their creativity, there are alternate builds made by fans for free which are better than the original sets
Adjusted for inflation, lego set prices have been consistent over the years:
> https://bricknerd.com/home/greed-or-inflation-an-economic-an...
Inflation-adjusted price per piece has actually been declining over the years, dropping from ~$0.25 to a current $0.10 on average. This set is $0.06 per piece, so even less expensive than a median set by that metric.
but the people buying has not had their purchasing power keep up, demographic have shifted entirely over the years
BlueBrixx is becoming fairly popular in Germany right now. The sets look competitive to me:
https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/bestsellers/
still look insanely overpriced
If you can't afford to buy the lego, you definitely can't afford to have the space to display it.
Pantasy, Cobi, Funwhole, megabloks, etc. There's tons of alt bricks at nearly any reasonable price point. But you're still not going to find these sorts of multi-thousand piece sets for <$100 because it takes at least a few cents to produce a dimensionally accurate, quality controlled bit of plastic.
But thats because they limit production to control prices, producing mass volume accurate plastic was never the bottleneck.
These are remarkably close to the raw cost of materials and tooling. The Sagrada Familia model is a 12k piece set for $800, ~$0.07/piece. Phantasy has an unlicensed Opera set (85019) [0] with 3.5k pieces for $190, $0.05/piece. That's straight up cheap. They're not limiting production to control prices. High quality injection molding (in multiple colors no less!) is hard. 2 cents over 12k pieces does add up to a nice bit of change for Lego though.
[0] https://pantasy.com/products/pantasy-the-opera-85019
I just looked and of course there are: https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005010679835500.html
There are cheaper alternatives. People still generally prefer Lego.
Also, is this one even that expensive? It's only 6 cents per piece.
there are tons of them in China, you can buy them on AliExpress, though that are expensive there for 1/2-1/3rd of Lego
but you wouldn't believe if I told you how much it cost in China, you can buy sets with hundreds of pieces for like 3-4 euros, I couldn't believe it when I saw the prices, Lego prices are highway robbery for piece of plastic
and don't tell me about paying for their creativity, there are alternate builds made by fans for free which are better than the original sets