Brick Sale Finder - Beta

Lawrence · June 12

We have been developing a new tool for stores to help them find profitable sets to part out. You can find a link in the "My Store" area. It's only available to stores, and currently only for the UK.

I wanted to get some feedback on if this is a useful tool, and if stores would be likely to use it? We can then prioritise our development time accordingly, and maybe expand it to other regions.

https://www.brickowl.com/mystore/bsf

Jay37 · June 12

As someone who has some sets (mostly used, but some new and sealed), would it be possible to have a link or tab on the catalogue entry to take us to this tool to see if the set is there? I find I have sets sitting around for some time without selling and it would be useful to see whether they are more valuable broken down or more desirable as a set, but don't know that I would have the time to scroll through or order the list.

Also, what sort of coverage is there? There are 17 pages, and I can see the earliest set listed is from 2010, but I assume this is not an exhaustive list. For example I have just used the search function on the list and none of the set numbers I put in show up. Does this mean they will never show up, or will the list expand over time, or will it only show sets currently for sale and ultimately those which have been retired for a certain period of time will simply drop off?

I suspect it will have some use for stores who specialise in new sets, but at the moment I think it has limited use for me who predominantly sells used.

Lawrence · June 12

@Jay37 it's only intended for deciding which new sets to purchase. If you just want to see the part out value of a set, you can go to the inventory of a set. The information is in the description, I believe we've had that since 2013

brickadoon · June 12

@Lawrence is it possible to add the number of pieces in the set into this view too?

Lawrence · June 12

@brickadoon yes, that's been done

XS Bricks · June 13

@Lawence This sounds like a very useful tool, especially to sellers who mainly sell new, however having it restricted to one region or any region restrictions is putting other sellers at a disadvantage, not having equal access to all tools. Hopefully this can be developed for all regions or dropped completely.

For IRL reasons my store has been closed a long time, but I have still been buying and parting out sets for when I re-open with lots of new stock. This tool would be great for selecting best sets to purchase.

Brickingamazing · June 13

Looks great....

Could the "Part Out" value quoted take into account the Inventory/Listing settings for the store using this page per chance (as in 1 year average, 6 months minimum etc)? The values quoted in the last 4x columns otherwise doesn't hold much value.

Appreciate this would mean BO recalculating and storing multiple Part out values per set but would make this new feature really valuable!

Lawrence · June 13

@Brickingamazing Yes we could do that, could you post it as a seperate suggestion. Currently the page is cached for all users as it's too slow to load live, so it will need to be redeveloped.

Vosblokjes · June 15

Very nice tool, would be nice to have it for NL as well.
What does the 'discontinued' column represent?

And there maybe some glitches with the 'retired' status (?).
Just saw set 21331, is says retired, but with a S@H price and according to S@H it is available, not retired

Vosblokjes · June 20

Any chance on an explanation of the above?

Lawrence · June 20

My apologies, I missed that. The discontinued column takes into account several factors, to give a score on how likely it is that the set has been discontinued. We show "retired" if the set has ever been marked as retired, even if its currently for sale.

The tool was originally designed for purchasing sets for resale, and has been adapted for Brick Owl for parting out of sets. So the discontinued/retired element is probably less relevant here.

Luxurybricks · June 23

Hello,
That's a good idea.

My question is, is it possible to enter our own prices? Maybe manually or with an XML?
We source our items from one supplier, so we always have different prices.

An interesting feature would also be if we could see which sets have the most sold items.

Lawrence · June 23

@Luxurybricks I think that would be a bit too specific for us to implement on Brick Owl. Possibly we could add the part out information to the API and you could access it that way

XS Bricks · June 23

The table is appearing blank today, is there an issue or is it because I am not in any of the listed regions GB, FR, DE, IT, ES? If it's region related, can we still see the table by selecting the region? E.G. I would shop from UK or EU, so am still interested in viewing the table.

Lawrence · June 23

@XS Bricks Sorry i ran out of time to test some code changes yesterday, that should be sorted now

XS Bricks · June 23

No problem, working fine now, thanks.

ziotitanok · July 8

Dear Lawrence,

This is awesome. Can't wait to have more than UK - maybe the EU zone (DE, FR, ES, IT).

Lawrence · July 8

@ziotitanok I've added Amazon and Lego IT, hopefully they will show up soon

pippyblocks · July 8

This is a great tool, thanks. These are the sort of tools that will really benefit sellers.

BricksReunited · July 11

Looks great - maybe provide a 'freshness' marker for the links and an option to mark links as dead, having got excited at some Smyths discounts I found most of them defunct :'( - if offered (the mark dead) this could help increase accuracy. Maybe a report discount (with an unvalidated) flag/indicator. If only allowed to be updated by registered members then could be validated by others to gain credibility....?

Lawrence · July 11

I will remove Smyths for now. Unfortunately that needs to be updated manually

TectonicTeam238 · September 5

I've been using BSF for a week or so now, and its really helpful! Thanks Lawrence! I have a question regarding part-out prices. How do you justify how much profit we (as sellers) are going to make from parting out each piece? - Is it calculated on an average selling price or the price that the LEGO shop prices the pieces at? Apologies if it doesn't make total sense!