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I am a big fan of LEGO and collecting for 30 years now. But while the "normal" sets seem to hold their price, LEGO minifigures are getting more and more expensive.

I can remember, when in Germany one of them was at 2.49 Euro, then they went up to 2.99 and the latest series (with the highest amount of 20 figures) now cost 3.99 Euro. The whole series is now roughly 80 Euro for a hand full of LEGO (if you don't have doubles)...

Have I missed some price rallies on the plastic markets or do they sell that good and LEGO wants to optimise profit as long as they have customers willing to pay (almost) any price? The amount of plastic and the custom parts are comparable to previous collections.

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  • I would probably guess that the reason for the increase in price would be either the that Lego needs more diverse colors to create new printings on the minifigures, or that new minifig pieces(such as head pieces and accessories) are costing more to create and design.
    – Samuel L.
    Commented Jan 23, 2017 at 3:19

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I live in the U.S. so I cannot comment on the German Lego market. That being said, the answer to your question must lie at least in part to the European market for CMFs and not in the inherent price of each mystery bag.

What I mean is the price of a CMF in the U.S. has remained at a steady $3.00 since Series 3. While distributions within boxed sets have appropriated the inherent value of the figures above or below that price, a lucky person could still theoretically get whatever figure they wanted for the standard price (if they are as crazy as I am and feel up all the bags in the Lego aisle.)

Now please correct me if I am wrong on this, but I believe the value of the Euro has depreciated in the past several years. Certain principles of microeconomics may maintain local purchasing power even through this drop, giving the illusion that funds go just as far. Increases in the amount of paper that goes in a wallet at the end of each pay period may even make it seem -- on a local level -- that a person is actually making more than they used to, when the extra amount is due to adjustments in inflation.

Now the value of a CMF as stated before has not changed, but perhaps the numerical price associated with that purchase may adjust for inflation. Could this be the reason it appears that the theme has grown more costly over time? If not, please tell me I'm just a nosy American who shouldn't be commenting on European economics. You won't hurt my feelings.

Bonus content: here are the apparent values of minifigures thanks to uneven box distributions, as well as a link to a very useful forum topic.

enter image description here

Hope this helps!

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  • Thanks for your long answer! Are you sure about the $3.00 price tag for the current Batman Movie series? At least online they sell them for $3.99 in the US: shop.lego.com/en-US/THE-LEGO-BATMAN-MOVIE-71017 so the price wouldn't differ much from Germany and the whole series would be $80...
    – janowitz
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 9:41
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    @pebx I appear to have missed a side-topic in this answer, and that goes to the licensed CMFs. I failed to mention that those lines are one dollar higher than the usual series. Of course, some of this may be explained away as pertaining to licensing costs associated with bringing us Simpsons, British Olympic Athletes, the German soccer team (whose faces are probably not free to replicate!) et cedera. My answer addresses an angle as to why the cost of CMFs has gone up between lines that should be of equal value. But even if I look at the specialty lines, they all are constant at four dollars.
    – Mac
    Commented Jan 20, 2017 at 19:22
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Annual inflation in Euro zone has been -1-4 % the latest decade. Meanwhile EUR/USD exchange rate has been non-volatile. So that wouldn't account for much.

If you've witnessed a price increase my guess it's probably down to greater demand for CMFs, allowing Lego to raise prices.

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  • Yes, I also assume LEGO just wants to optimise profits and takes higher prices since they know the demand will still stay high.
    – janowitz
    Commented Jan 24, 2017 at 18:48

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