300 Stores, $95 Million, and a Thriving Secondhand Empire: The Complete Story of Bricks and Minifigs — and the LEGO Collecting World It Serves

The Franchise That Should Not Exist — But Does, Extraordinarily Well

By every conventional wisdom of modern retail, a chain of physical stores specialising in used LEGO bricks should not be thriving in 2026. The conventional wisdom says consumers buy physical goods online, that secondhand marketplaces live on smartphones, that toy retail is a dying category, and that a niche hobby product has no business anchoring a national franchise with over 300 locations. Bricks and Minifigs, headquartered in Orem, Utah, has spent the past several years proving that conventional wisdom spectacularly wrong.

In January 2026, the company announced that it had surpassed 300 stores — 150 locations opened since 2023 alone, a doubling of its footprint in just two years. Brand revenue exceeded $95 million in 2025. A single store generated over $1.7 million in revenue in a year. A single grand opening day recorded $37,301 in sales. The company now spans locations across the United States and Canada. Its franchise partners are outperforming most retail categories that industry analysts would consider more commercially viable. And at the centre of all of it is a simple, powerful, community-rooted idea: give LEGO a second life, give collectors a dedicated home, and give children and families a place to connect through the most enduring constructive toy ever made.

What Bricks and Minifigs Actually Is

Bricks and Minifigs was founded in 2010 and is the largest LEGO resale franchise in North America. It describes itself concisely as a buy, sell, and trade model. In practice, what that means is this: every Bricks and Minifigs location is simultaneously a LEGO acquisition point, a LEGO retail store, and a LEGO community hub. People bring in their collections — sealed sets, opened and assembled builds, loose bricks by the kilogram, minifigures by the hundred, storage-unit-sized hauls of decades-old pieces — and the store provides a cash or trade offer based on historical sales data, product demand, current store inventory, and condition. The acquired inventory is then sorted, cleaned, assessed, priced, and placed on the shelves for the next buyer. Every item in the store has had a previous life in someone else's hands, and every purchase is simultaneously an act of acquisition and an act of continuation.

The store typically carries new and pre-owned LEGO sets, thousands of individual minifigures, retired LEGO sets in original sealed packaging, bulk LEGO pieces sold by weight or volume, accessories, custom creations, and display models. The motto — "rebuild, reuse, and reimagine" — is not merely marketing copy. It is an accurate description of the circular economy that each Bricks and Minifigs location facilitates. An estimated 400 billion LEGO bricks exist in the world. Every one of them was designed to last forever, to connect to every other LEGO brick ever made, and to be built and rebuilt indefinitely. Bricks and Minifigs is the infrastructure through which those bricks find new hands when their previous owners are ready to move on.

The Founding Story: From 35 Franchises to 300

When Ammon McNeff became CEO of Bricks and Minifigs in 2018, he arrived not as an outside executive but as a customer and franchisee first. He and his brother had been among the 35 franchise operators running stores at that time. His first-hand familiarity with the business from the owner's perspective — the daily rhythms of acquisition and resale, the community relationships that anchor each store, the pleasure and the challenge of building a business around a passion product — shaped the strategic direction he brought to the CEO role.

The growth trajectory since 2018 has been one of the more remarkable in North American franchising. From 35 locations in 2018, the network grew to its 100th store, then accelerated dramatically: the leap from 100 to 200 stores happened in just 18 months, then the company cleared 300 stores by end of 2025. The pace of expansion — averaging roughly one new store opening every four to five days during the most intense growth phases — reflects both the strength of the franchise model and the depth of demand that exists in communities where no dedicated LEGO resale destination had previously existed. COO Matt McNeff, who also came from the franchisee community before joining the executive team, has described every new store as representing someone's excitement and passion for LEGO and their desire to pour that energy into their community.

The franchise model itself is designed to be accessible. The minimum cash required to enter the system is approximately $64,000, which is modest by franchise standards for a retail operation of this type. The business provides protected territory rights to each franchisee, turn-key operating systems, training, and brand infrastructure. The low overhead relative to general retail — no broad merchandise range, no complicated inventory management across unrelated categories, a focused and expert customer base — makes the model relatively efficient to operate once established. Franchisees describe the experience as uniquely fulfilling because the product itself generates its own passionate consumer community who would otherwise have nowhere to go.

The LEGO Collecting Universe in 2026: Why This Market Keeps Growing

To understand why Bricks and Minifigs keeps expanding, you need to understand the extraordinary breadth and depth of the LEGO collecting world in 2026 — a world that is simultaneously a children's toy market, a sophisticated adult hobby, an active investment market, and a community of passionate enthusiasts whose engagement with the product spans every demographic, income level, and age group.

LEGO as a collecting category has several characteristics that distinguish it from most other toy or hobby markets. The bricks are physically indestructible and perpetually compatible — a LEGO brick made in 1958 fits precisely onto a LEGO brick made in 2026, because the dimensional specification has not changed in 68 years. This means that LEGO never becomes truly obsolete, never degrades into worthlessness, and never loses its ability to connect with new or older inventory. A collection accumulated across decades retains complete physical utility. An adult who has 10,000 pieces from the 1980s can combine them seamlessly with pieces bought yesterday and with pieces their grandchildren receive for Christmas.

Retired LEGO sets — those officially discontinued from production — have historically appreciated in value at rates that compare favourably with many financial asset classes. Studies of the secondary market have found that certain retired sets appreciate by 10 to 20 percent annually in sealed, unbuilt condition, substantially outperforming consumer price inflation and competitive with equity market returns. This creates an investment dimension to LEGO collecting that is entirely absent from most other toy categories and that drives a significant segment of adult purchasing behaviour — buying sealed sets not to build but to hold as appreciating assets. Bricks and Minifigs stores serve this market directly through their inventory of retired sealed sets, some of which command prices many times their original retail value.

The minifigure market is its own sophisticated sub-economy. Individual LEGO minifigures — the small, jointed human-shaped characters that accompany most LEGO sets — range in value from a few cents for common figures to hundreds or even thousands of dollars for rare, limited-edition, or discontinued characters. The LEGO Collectible Minifigures series, sold in blind-box packaging that obscures the contents, has been running continuously since 2010 and generates enormous collector engagement. Series 28 and Series 29 both launched in 2026 — the former consisting entirely of costumed characters across an animals theme, the latter featuring a Bionicle cosplayer, a Monster Hunter, a Trash Monster, and a Lloyd dressed as a Mysterious Ronin that have already generated significant collecting attention. A Shrek-themed Collectible Minifigures series is also rumoured for later in 2026, timed to the 25th anniversary of the first Shrek film.

What Is Hot in LEGO Collecting Right Now: The 2026 Landscape

The LEGO market in 2026 is producing some of the most collector-focused releases in the brand's history across multiple themes simultaneously, creating abundant material for dedicated collectors and steady inventory flow through Bricks and Minifigs locations.

LEGO Star Wars continues to be the most commercially significant licensed theme in the LEGO catalogue. The 2026 lineup includes Starship Collection sets featuring the Venator-class Star Destroyer, highly anticipated character minifigures including Cad Bane, Cobb Vanth, and the bounty hunter Embo, The Mandalorian and Grogu sets, and the introduction of the Smart Brick technology into the Star Wars theme — a development that is generating significant collector interest on its own terms. The LEGO Smart Brick, introduced at CES 2026 and launched March 1, is a brick containing sensors that can react to movement, play sound, light up, and detect the presence of Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags. It represents the most significant technology integration into the core LEGO system in the brand's history, and its implications for collecting and play are still being fully understood by the community.

LEGO Shrek is launching in June 2026 for the first time in the brand's history — a new licensed theme timed perfectly to the 25th anniversary of the original film. The initial lineup includes buildable character figures and a BrickHeadz set, with a Collectible Minifigures series rumoured for later in the year. For collectors who have been requesting Shrek minifigures since the theme failed to materialise in previous years, the June 2026 launch represents years of pent-up demand finally being released.

LEGO NINJAGO, celebrating its 15th anniversary in 2026 with exclusive commemorative minifigures across multiple sets, is driving strong interest from both child fans of the animated series and adult collectors who have been following the theme since its 2011 debut. The anniversary releases are specifically designed to be desirable for long-term fans, featuring special print variants and exclusive character appearances not available in standard sets. LEGO One Piece is also delivering a new wave in summer 2026 tied to Season 2 of the Netflix live-action adaptation, with seven sets planned including significant character minifigures.

The LEGO Speed Champions theme in 2026 has added the Lewis Hamilton Ferrari helmet — a brick-built displayable sculpture capturing Hamilton's debut season with Scuderia Ferrari HP — alongside a dedicated F1 Academy Race Car set whose driver minifigure was likely inspired by rising F1 Academy talent. The DeLorean from Back to the Future and Lightning McQueen from Pixar's Cars are also in the 2026 Speed Champions lineup, mixing film nostalgia with motorsport coverage in a way that broadens the theme's collector appeal significantly.

LEGO Editions, a brand-new theme for 2026, bundles sports sets and partnership products including buildable Formula 1 helmets into a standalone product line — a clear indication that LEGO sees premium collectible display pieces as a growing priority within its portfolio.

How to Buy, Sell, and Trade at Bricks and Minifigs: The Practical Guide

For anyone who has LEGO they want to convert into cash or into different LEGO — which, if you have been collecting for any length of time, describes virtually everyone — understanding how Bricks and Minifigs operates is genuinely useful.

On the selling side, the process is designed to be straightforward. You bring in your LEGO — whether it is a single sealed set, a collection of minifigures, or several tubs of loose bricks — and the store provides a cash or trade offer based on four factors: historical sales data from the broader Bricks and Minifigs network, the current demand for that specific product, the store's existing inventory levels, and the condition of what you are bringing in. Complete sets with all their minifigures, in clean condition and ready for the next customer, receive the best offers. Unassembled or partially built sets are treated as bulk LEGO — still valuable, but assessed differently. The cash offer and the trade offer are calculated separately, with the trade offer typically being higher because it keeps value circulating within the ecosystem.

On the buying side, what makes Bricks and Minifigs genuinely special relative to online marketplaces is the ability to physically inspect what you are purchasing. When you buy a used set on an online platform, you are trusting a photograph and a description. In a Bricks and Minifigs store, you can handle the pieces, verify minifigure authenticity, check for paint wear or fading, examine the condition of printed elements, and confirm completeness before any money changes hands. For serious collectors, the value of physical verification is substantial — particularly for vintage or rare items where condition differences can represent hundreds of dollars of price difference and where counterfeit pieces are a real concern in the unregulated online secondary market.

Minifigures particularly benefit from the in-store experience. Individual loose minifigures are typically displayed across broad wall sections organised by theme, character, or year — allowing collectors to browse through hundreds or thousands of options, compare condition grades, and assemble custom characters or complete sets at their own pace. This kind of browsing experience is genuinely irreplaceable in an online format where each figure is listed individually, photographed from fixed angles, and priced without the context of alternatives sitting next to it.

The Investment Dimension: LEGO as a Serious Asset Class

Bricks and Minifigs has accelerated the development of LEGO's secondary market to the point where serious investors now treat certain LEGO sets as legitimate alternative assets alongside wine, art, and rare coins. The sealed, retired set segment of the market is where investment returns have historically been most dramatic. The LEGO Millennium Falcon, the LEGO Hogwarts Castle, the LEGO Eiffel Tower, and various other large-scale sets have appreciated from their original retail prices into significantly higher secondhand valuations as production runs ended and demand from new buyers continued to grow.

The mechanics of LEGO investment are different from most other collectibles because the product's condition categories are clearly defined — sealed in original box represents the highest tier; complete and assembled represents the middle tier; bulk represents the loose-piece tier — and because the brand's 400 billion brick installed base creates an enormous and globally distributed secondary market with genuine price discovery. Bricks and Minifigs stores serve as one of the most important physical price-setting mechanisms in this market, because each store's cash offer for incoming inventory reflects the actual demand its customer base is generating for that specific product at that specific moment.

For beginning collectors who want to understand what is valuable and why, walking into a Bricks and Minifigs store and spending an hour examining the pricing across its inventory of retired sets and rare minifigures is one of the most efficient forms of market education available. The pricing tells you, in real time, what the collecting community values most highly — and often reveals opportunities that are invisible to casual observers.

The Community Dimension: Why the Physical Store Matters

The most consistently cited reason that Bricks and Minifigs has succeeded where digital-only competitors have struggled is the community it creates around the physical space. Each store draws a regular customer base that returns not only to buy but to talk — to share knowledge about new releases, to show off recent acquisitions, to ask questions about building techniques or collecting strategies, to participate in events organised by individual stores. Birthday parties, community build events, minifigure swap meets, and themed collector nights are all common elements of the Bricks and Minifigs store calendar.

This community function — the store as gathering place rather than mere transaction point — is precisely what Amazon and the major online resale platforms cannot replicate. The expertise of store staff, the browsability of physical inventory, the social experience of discovery in the company of other enthusiasts: all of these are experiences that digital commerce, despite its convenience, structurally cannot provide. The success of Bricks and Minifigs is, at one level, a straightforward validation of what many in retail have been arguing for years: that physical retail does not die when e-commerce rises, but it does change, and the stores that survive are those that offer experiences and communities that screens cannot replace.

What Comes Next: The 400-Store Horizon and Beyond

With over 300 locations already operational and a franchise model that continues to attract new operators, the trajectory of Bricks and Minifigs points toward continued expansion through 2026 and into 2027. The company's announcement of 300 stores was paired with messaging about continued domestic growth and international interest — Canada has already been added to the network, and the brand's model is theoretically exportable to any market with a strong LEGO fan base, which means practically the entire developed world.

The LEGO Group itself shows no signs of slowing the innovation that drives collector demand. The 2026 lineup — LEGO Smart Bricks, the first Shrek sets, NINJAGO's 15th anniversary, new Star Wars character firsts, expanding One Piece releases, and the growing Editions premium collectible line — represents one of the most ambitious annual programmes in the brand's recent history. Every new release creates potential future inventory for Bricks and Minifigs stores: the set bought today for its current retail price will eventually find its way to a secondary market location, enriching the network's inventory and continuing the circular economy that 400 billion permanent plastic bricks were always destined to sustain.

For LEGO collectors at every level — the child hunting a specific minifigure, the adult investor completing a retired set collection, the nostalgic parent recreating sets from their 1980s childhood, the senior builder working on a complex architectural model — Bricks and Minifigs is 2026's most compelling answer to a question the LEGO world has always needed someone to answer: where do the bricks go when they are ready for their next life?

The answer is through the doors of a store that smells like plastic and possibility, staffed by people who know every set by catalogue number, and lined from floor to ceiling with the accumulated building dreams of everyone who came before.

Sources

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