Lego Retirement Dates
As I have discussed before, there are many factors to consider before making a Lego purchase as an investment. One of the most important factors is the retirement date of the set. When purchasing Lego as an investment, the goal is to sell that set for a profit in the shortest amount of time in order to reach your investment goals. How long a person holds a set before selling is very specific to the individual’s investment goals. Hold times can be short term, longterm, or a marriage of both. Regardless of the individual’s preferred hold time, a smart investor will only look at Lego sets retiring in the current year.
Just a reminder, this discussion is focused on investing, not collecting. If you are a collector and find a good sale price, you can buy any set you want at any time. However, it is in your best interest to be cognizant of retirement dates to ensure you get the sets you want prior to retirement or you will be forced to pay aftermarket prices.
With that being said, let's start at the beginning.
Every Lego set has a limited shelf life determined by The Lego Group. Once it is retired by Lego, that specific set will not be printed again. It is never a certainty when a set will retire but there are resources available that can help us make an informed decision.
TheBrickDynasty.com and the Brick Dynasty App (obvious plug but if your reading this post you are already here🤪) You can check retirement dates, create watch lists, and browse the many Lego themes, ALL FOR FREE! The paid version gets you sale alerts and Walmart stock checking capabilities, all for $5 a month. Finding 1 set on clearance a month easily pays for your small subscription fee. If you’re interested click here.
The Buy Box - While not directly related to Lego investing or retirement dates, Brick Dynasty is part of The Buy Box. Being a paid member of the The Buy Box gets you access to Lego analysis, Lego coaching calls, and insider information on sales as they happen, as well as all the resources available for all resellers. The Buy Box is currently running a Q4 special. There will be added bonuses this Q4 with access to some of the smartest people in the reselling community. If interested, click here.
The Brick Tap on Discord (Google spreadsheet updated monthly)
Brick Hound on Discord for up to date retirement dates and/or changes.
Brickset.com - While not a great website for retirement dates, it can be a useful tool to check older sets and their dates on the market
I would encourage your to explore and become familiar with some or all of these resources soon as Q4 is approaching, along with many amazing Lego sales.
Most investors use some or all of these resources to assist in determining what sets will be retiring in any given year. Pro-tip: As we get closer to the end of the year, the probability increases that a set’s projected retirement date will not change. Nothing is ever 100% but the odds definitely increase as we get closer to the end of the year.
The first step for any Lego investor is to determine which sets are retiring during the current year and focus only on that list. Remove all other sets from consideration not retiring in the current year no matter how good the sale. When we see a great sale on a set not retiring this year, rest assured, that sale most likely will present itself again during its retirement year. Personally, I only stray from this rule when I find sets on a major clearance sale I can flip quickly for a profit.
Seems pretty straight forward, right? Not quite….
Issues with trusting retirement dates:
Lego can do a large print prior to release. This leads to major retailers staying in stock long beyond the retirement date. Examples are 75301 Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing and 75322 Hoth AT-ST from 2023. In 2024, 60387 City 4x4 Off-roader Adventures (still in stock by Amazon as of Sept 2025) and 21336 Ideas: The Office
Lego did not print enough to make it to retirement - Self explanatory but can lead to obvious lack of supply, which can be good thing if you were able to secure your bag early enough. Examples from 2024 are 40631 Gandalf the Grey and Balrog Brickheadz and 31126 Creator 3 in 1 Supersonic Jet.
75301 Luke Skywalker’s X-Wing Fighter and 75322 Hoth AT-ST both retired at the end of 2023, but both sets received large prints at the end of that year and stayed in stock till July 2024 as Amazon and Walmart respectively featured these sets during their summer deals sale at 30% off MSRP. If you had not stocked up on those sets prior, it was a great time to buy as both sets climbed in value by Q4 2024 and would have been a relatively quick flip for Lego.
40631 Gandalf the Grey and Balrog Brickheadz was an obvious investment set that ran out of stock 3 months before it was scheduled to retire. 40631 was a Lego store exclusive with an MSRP of $19.99. At the time of this writing it sells for $45 and has been at that price for several months. The entire Lord of the Rings Brickheadz line from 2024 has performed similarly.
31126 Supersonic Jet from the Creator 3 in 1 theme was a very popular set that many people had on their target list with the intention to buy large quantities as an investment. It rarely went on sale beyond the normal 20% price reduction, therefore many investors were holding out for a sale that typically comes during Q4. That sale eventually came and once they were sold out it was mostly gone for the year. I believe it briefly came in and out of stock but was short lived and no longer on sale. That being said, even paying MSRP of $19.99, so far in 2025 the set has performed well and is very profitable.
Why isn't Lego transparent about retirement dates? Or anything?
The first thing you need to know about The Lego Group is they are not a publicly traded company which means there is no obligation for them to disclose anything to the general public. Any information they do disclose is done because they feel the need to disclose it, not due to obligation from financial stakeholders on a stock exchange.
That being said, they do occasionally notify us on Lego.com with a “Retiring Soon” tag. However, I have found they do not put this tag on every set retiring in the current year.
So how do we determine what sets to invest in if we can’t, with certainty, know a set is going to retire??
We do the best we can with the information we have available to us. If you have any history or knowledge with investing or reselling in general, you know nothing is ever guaranteed and it comes with some inherent risk.
Here are a few tips we can all employ to reduce the risk.
Use the tools mentioned above to make an educated guess if a set is going to retire this year.
Join a community of likeminded people in the Lego investing world, paid or unpaid. Be active and talk to people in the know that may have information that you do not. Between The Brick Dynasty, Youtube, X, Instagram, Discord, and Reddit, you should be able to find people talking about retirement dates and investing.
Cut yourself some slack. Even the most experienced Lego investors have been forced to hold a set longer than anticipated because the retirement date changed. It happens, accept it, and move on. Either return the set to where you bought it or try to flip it to recoup some capital if you are not happy with the longer hold time.
Ok folks, after reading this and doing some of your own leg work, you should be able to determine with a high degree of certainty if a set is going to retire in the current year. Once you have a list of sets retiring, the next step is to do a deep dive on the individual sets to see what's worth investing in. In the coming weeks, I will discuss other factors to consider so you can decide if a Lego set will be a good investment.
If this is your first time here, I have two articles that you may be interested, Lego Investing 101 and How a Savvy Collector/Investor Maximizes Lego Holiday Deals
If you have a question about anything above, leave a comment below and I will gladly reply.
Until next time AFOL’s….