This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/PresidentWeevil on 2024-07-12 00:36:26+00:00.
This is the story of how one single LEGO minifigure became a symbol of vengeance against scalpers everywhere, and how the LEGO Company made it happen with one of the finest corporate trolls ever seen.
But first, we need to talk about the scourge that is
LEGO Investors
LEGO investors are a subset of ‘influencers’ on the collecting scene. Their primary goal is to turn LEGO into a speculative asset; buying sets exclusively for their potential future worth. There are whole websites and YouTube channels dedicated to this farce. I will not be linking any of them.
These people will buy, and encourage their fans to buy, new ‘hot’ sets in droves, specifically to inflate their value. This, of course, leaves legitimate LEGO fans, and kids everywhere, with empty shelves, because the toy equivalent of cryptobros have hoarded pallets of every new set into the back of their moms’ pickup so they can resell them later for negligible profit.
The Venator
In 2023, LEGO released the Ultimate Collector Series Venator-Class Republic Star Cruiser. This was a tremendously requested set, with the Venator being one of the most popular Star Wars ships. The set retailed for $650, and came with two minifigures, exclusive to this one very expensive set:
And the one we’re all here for, Captain Rex
The Rex Minifigure
Captain Rex is a very popular character amongst fans of the animated Star Wars universe. He’d had minifigs before, but they weren’t great. They were back during the Clone Wars era of LEGO Star Wars, where everyone had face prints attempting to mimic the art style of the show, which instead just made everyone look distantly related to Gollum. An updated modern Rex was a very hotly requested fig, and this new Rex was hot shit. Arm and leg printing is a big deal for minifig nerds as it’s a rare special detail, and the return of the cloth pauldron (the shoulder flap thing) was also a big winner. This figure may as well have been made of solid gold to the investment goblins.
The Scalpocalypse
The Venator instantly became one of the hottest scalpable sets in recent LEGO history. They were flying. And the first thing the goblins did when they got hold of them, was extract Rex, resell the set, and then sell Rex for a preposterously inflated price. Desperate Rex fans had no choice, because this minifig was exclusive to the Venator. Rex’s aftermarket value grew and grew, reaching listed heights of people trying to sell him for over $350. And people were buying. And many of those buyers were investment goblins themselves, essentially trading this figure back and forth, increasing its market value rapidly, all because of future worth speculation.
You may notice that some of the ‘cheaper’ listings of Rex on that list do not include the cloth pauldron. Why is that? Did these goblins lose it? Was it missing from some sets? Oh no.
LEGO’s cloth goods and accessories are made in different factories to their minifigures. Rex had become such a hot scalpable item, that factory workers were stealing them from assembly lines, without their pauldron, which was included later in the packaging process. The Rex mania had gotten so insane that people were committing industrial heists to get these figures to sell aftermarket.
The Rex-onning
We don’t know why this next development happened. We don’t know if it was always planned, or if it was a response to the scalping fiasco that had developed over the prior months. It could well have been an intentional troll from LEGO.
Because in late 2023, one of the leading LEGO inside leakers posted this scoop on an upcoming release.
It couldn’t be true. A $12.99 kids set? The same exact figure? It must be lies.
The Rex market went into panic.
And then in early 2024, LEGO officially revealed this.
It was true. LEGO did it. Rex was no longer exclusive to a $650 collector set. The very same arm-and-leg-printed, cloth pauldron minifigure that people were smuggling from Mexican factories to charge hundreds upon hundreds for online, was being re-released less than a year later in a set worth $12.99.
The scalper meltdown was catastrophic.
Investment goblins everywhere now had garages full of a collectors’ set that they could no longer profit from by reselling one of its figures for half the price of the entire set. Now it was worth…RRP. And if they yanked Rex from it? It was now worth even less.
In amongst the explosive market crash, one thing we all gained was possibly the single funniest goblin meltdown in toy collecting history. This post has now become a legendary copypasta in LEGO meme communities.
If you look at the price guide for Rex on LEGO marketplace Bricklink, you can see Rex’s sale history across this year. Scroll back to January. You’ll see Rex selling for over $120. Scroll up to today, and watch the decimal point inch further and further up his price tag, until you get to his sale price today: $5.
Did LEGO do this just to dunk on the scalpers and the goblins? Did they do it to cut down on the heists people were pulling in their factories? Was it all for the memes? We don’t know. But we do know that this is how LEGO undercut a scalpers’ market into dust with a $12.99 kids set you can buy right now from your local toy retailer.
One question remains, though.
Why didn’t anyone scalp Yularen?
Fuck that guy. He doesn’t even have printed arms and legs.