CONFIRMEDBricks & Minifigs stores’ own public online prices, matched set by set to six months of public open-market sales
Open-market values are the six-month average sold price on BrickLink’s public price guide. BAM shelf prices are the median asking price for the same set across Bricks & Minifigs stores’ own public online storefronts. Both are public. The markup between them is a hard number; the cash a seller receives is not public and is labeled an estimate throughout. Nothing here is a finding that any price is unlawful; every company named is presumed to have acted lawfully.
When you sell your LEGO to a Bricks & Minifigs store, you see one number: the offer. You have no easy way to check it. This page is the check. It takes what a set actually sells for on the open market and puts it next to what BAM stores charge for the same set on their own websites. The gap between those two numbers is the markup, and on most sets it is not small.
Figures from the most-traded sets with solid evidence on both sides: at least two BAM store listings and at least three recent open-market sales per set.
Each line is one set, and it reads left to right like the deal itself. The dashed band is the cash the seller is estimated to walk out with. The light dot is what the set really sells for. The dark dot is what the store charges. These are not rare grails; they are the ordinary sets a walk-in seller is most likely to bring.
Type a set name or number. The table pairs the open-market value with the BAM shelf price and shows the markup. It opens on the biggest gaps.
| Set | Cond. | Open market | BAM shelf | Markup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Treehouse 31010·2013 | used | $15.12 | $39.99 | +164% |
| Rebel U-Wing Starfighter 75399·2025 | sealed | $34.91 | $84.99 | +143% |
| London 21034·2016 | used | $15.31 | $35.00 | +129% |
| Empire State Building 21002·2009 | used | $13.51 | $30.00 | +122% |
| Yoda's Jedi Starfighter 75168·2017 | used | $15.60 | $34.00 | +118% |
| Zoey and Zian the Cat-Owl 71476·2024 | sealed | $25.51 | $54.99 | +116% |
| The Child 75318·2020 | used | $27.87 | $59.99 | +115% |
| NEOM McLaren Formula E Race Car 42169·2024 | sealed | $28.33 | $59.99 | +112% |
| Pre Vizsla's Mandalorian Fighter 9525·2012 | used | $104.88 | $219.99 | +110% |
| Polaroid OneStep SX-70 21345·2024 | sealed | $47.80 | $99.99 | +109% |
| Mercedes-AMG F1 W14 Pull-Back 42165·2024 | sealed | $15.82 | $32.99 | +109% |
| The Fox Lodge 21178·2022 | sealed | $12.20 | $24.99 | +105% |
| Geonosian Cannon 9491·2012 | used | $27.24 | $55.00 | +102% |
| Obi-Wan Kenobi's Jedi Starfighter 75333·2022 | sealed | $20.03 | $39.99 | +100% |
| Battle Bus 77073·2024 | sealed | $55.50 | $109.99 | +98% |
How to read this. Open market is the average price the set actually sold for on BrickLink over six months (public sold data). BAM shelf is the median price the same set is listed at across Bricks & Minifigs stores’ own public online storefronts. Markup is the shelf price over the open-market price. Est. seller cash is an estimate only: 20 to 35 percent of the store’s own shelf price, a typical secondhand intake rate. It is not a figure BAM discloses and is not a known BAM offer. Counts under each set name show how many BAM listings and how many recent open-market sales stand behind the numbers. Only sets listed online by at least two Bricks & Minifigs stores are shown, so a single high listing cannot drive the figure.
Buying low is the business. What the stores pay at the counter is the one number they never post, but BAM’s own franchise filing prices the whole trade. Item 19 of its 2026 disclosure document reports its stores’ gross margin: the share of every sales dollar the store keeps after paying for the goods it sold. For the typical franchisee store the figure is about 62 percent.
Read it from the seller’s side. Across everything a store sells, it paid about 38 cents for the goods behind each dollar of shelf price. And that 38 cents is a blend: it includes new sets bought wholesale from distributors, which cost the store far more per shelf dollar than counter buys do. For the used side to lift the whole store to a 62 percent margin, the counter has to pay below the blend. That is why the “est. seller cash” column above runs 20 to 35 percent of the shelf price, and why the dashed band sits where it does on the board above: the range is not this site’s guess against BAM, it is the range consistent with the margins BAM itself discloses. What no public source carries is the exact figure any counter offered any person; the stores’ websites publish what they charge, never what they pay, which is why the band is an estimate and is drawn as one. The same filing carries BAM’s own qualifier, that the data “has not been independently audited,” and the company’s manual teaches the discipline by name; its table of contents lists chapters for “Cost of Goods Sold (COGS),” “Gross Margin Dollars/Gross Margin Percent,” and “Gross Margin Return on Inventory (GMROI).” The flip is not an accident of one counter; it is the system’s design, disclosed in its own paper.
Put the two legs together and follow one dollar of real value through the store. The person who sells it and the person who buys it are the same public, walking up to the same counter, trusting the same brand.
Scale it up and the spread is the business. BAM’s own Item 19 puts the median store’s 2025 sales at $467,539 and the typical margin near 62 percent: about $178,000 paid for the goods, about $290,000 kept, per store, per year, before rent and staff. The same filing reports $95,831,343 of system-wide 2025 sales; at the disclosed margins, about $59 million of it stayed with the stores as gross margin. The figures are BAM’s, franchisee-reported and, in its own words, not independently audited; the split between wholesale stock and counter buys inside them is not disclosed.
One category stands out. On used sets, Star Wars carries a bigger markup than everything else on the shelf:
The label on this section is this site’s; the numbers are the stores’ own. It refers to the store thread: in November 2023, Bryan Mansell consigned what BAM’s own court filing calls “a large collection of retired Star Wars Lego sets and minifigures” to the Salem store, on paper that said the sets stayed his until sold. After BAM seized that store, the former franchisees allege, the collection was swept up and sold with it. And BAM’s own franchise filing shows one operator, Brandon Best, holding both that store, now Keizer, and the Eugene resale store, at the same phone number, a tie documented in the disclosure and in the Keizer takeover update. Star Wars is the category his collection was made of, and it is a category the stores price at a premium. No claim is made that any set in today’s listings is one of his; where his sets went is the open question of the store thread, and it is unresolved in court.
The Eugene store’s own catalog carries a date on every listing: the day it was created. Group the store’s current prices by that date and a pattern shows. Stock listed in 2021 sits a median +13 percent over the open market. Stock listed in 2025 sits at +25 percent. Listings created in 2026 run +32 percent, and nine out of ten of them are priced above the market.
This is one store’s catalog, read from its own public data, and it is today’s prices on stock of different ages, not a price history. An old listing may simply have aged against the market. But the direction is consistent, and it is the store’s own record: the newer the shelf tag, the further it sits above what the set really sells for.
The same catalog answers one more question, because every listing carries its creation date. BAM dates its seizure of the Keizer store, the store holding the Mansell consignment, to November 14, 2024; the operator of that store also holds Eugene. In the two holiday seasons before that date, Star Wars sets were 7 percent and then 5 percent of the Eugene store’s newly created listings, and 7 percent in the months just before it. In the eleven weeks after, the share was 21 percent. It then stayed near 23 percent through 2025.
The heaviest intake days in those weeks were December 24 and 26. On December 24 the store created a second used listing for a Homing Spider Droid it had listed used at $15 since 2021; the new copy was priced at $90. A JEK-14 stealth starfighter went the same way the same day, $25 to $120. The shorter gaps show it too, wearing the store’s own stamp: a Money Tree listed used at $16 in February 2024 came back in November as a “certified” copy at $29.99, the same price the store asks for its factory-sealed one. What the catalog does not say is which boxes these were. A season of heavy buying, or one large collection being processed over months, would each leave this shape, and no claim is made that any listing is a Mansell set. What the record shows is narrower, and it is the store’s own: a catalog whose Star Wars share of new stock had run under ten percent for two years tripled it in the eleven weeks after the seizure at its co-owned sister store, and kept it there.
Averages can blur. These rows do not need one: each is a single comparison, quoted as listed. In every one, the stores’ asking price for a used copy meets or beats what a factory-sealed one actually sells for on the open market.
| Set | BAM asks, used | A sealed one sells for | Recorded sealed sales |
|---|---|---|---|
| Downtown Diner 10260 | $349.99 | $299.30 | 112 |
| Detective's Office 10246 | $379.99 | $331.28 | 57 |
| Lunar New Year Traditions 80108 | $70.00 | $48.77 | 10 |
| Rebel U-Wing Starfighter 75399 | $50.00 | $34.91 | 68 |
| Battle Bus 77073 | $69.99 | $55.50 | 13 |
| Zoey and Zian the Cat-Owl 71476 | $39.99 | $25.51 | 11 |
| Fantastical Tree House 71461 | $99.99 | $88.16 | 13 |
There are 37 sets like these in the record: the stores’ asking price for a used copy meets or beats what a factory-sealed one actually sells for. Each row is checkable in the table above. Two more rows of the same kind. The Eugene store’s catalog lists the same set in the same condition twice when copies arrive separately, and its own “certified” label carries a price: across 568 sets listed both ways at that store, the certified copy costs more on 488 of them, a median 40 percent more for the store’s own stamp; a used Rogue Shadow (7672) is $35 and a certified one $240. And one storefront asks $119.99 for a new Kopaka Nuva (8571) whose last 97 sealed sales averaged $18.72: one listing, quoted as listed.
The stores price alike because they are wired alike. BAM’s own franchise papers require every store to buy the point-of-sale system BAM specifies, from suppliers BAM approves (FDD Item 8), and to pay BAM $200 a month for the software package, which includes a proprietary BAM app, Patron, “to help manage buys/trades and back office operations” (Item 6, Note 7). Every store must connect its system to BAM’s centralized computers, and BAM keeps the right to read all of the data in it (Item 11 and Franchise Agreement Section 4). The company’s manual carries the pricing chapters: “An Introduction to BAM Pricing,” “Standardized Pricing Policies,” “Pricing Used Sets and Retired Sets.” Every buy at every counter flows up to the company, on hardware it chose, priced by a policy it wrote. The one party who sees none of it is the person selling. (One bound, from the same agreement: BAM’s own point-of-sale software is “not currently in effect,” so the checkout box itself is an approved third-party product. What is centralized is the specification, the fee, the data, and the pricing policy.)
Three kinds of numbers are on this page. The markup is a fact: both of its sides are public, BAM’s own shelf price and the open market’s own sold record, and the arithmetic between them is not in dispute. The gross margins are BAM’s own disclosures, quoted from Item 19 of its 2026 franchise filing, with BAM’s own caveat that they are franchisee-reported and not independently audited. The “est. seller cash” is an estimate: BAM does not publish what any counter pays, so the tool shows 20 to 35 percent of the store’s own price, a range consistent with the margins BAM discloses, and labels every such figure “est.” No claim is made about what any store paid any person. A markup, on its own, is ordinary retail and breaks no law. The point is narrower: the numbers that size the gap are public, and the person selling is the only one at the counter who has never seen them.
Resale is not the paperwork-free trade the company describes. BAM’s own disclosure document tells prospective buyers, four editions running, that “there are no government regulations that apply specifically to operating a re-sale store.” Utah’s secondhand-dealer law says otherwise: a store that buys used goods from the public is a regulated dealer, required to register with the state and to keep a record of every purchase, the item and the seller (Utah Code 13-32a). A store selling only children’s products can argue an exemption; used adult-collector sets are a hard fit for it. The record the statute requires, what was bought and from whom, is the very information the seller never sees across the counter. The state’s dealer registry is public. The gap survives only in the dark; this page puts the numbers in the light.
The fair counterpoint. A markup is not a wrong. A physical store carries rent, staff, the testing and cleaning of used sets, stock that never sells, and the service of paying cash on the spot to a seller who wants the boxes gone today; an online sold-price average carries none of those costs, blends conditions and marketplaces, and moves week to week. A premium on Star Wars is also ordinary retail: licensed themes hold demand, and pricing demand is what stores do; the numbers show the premium exists, not why. The year-by-year pattern has innocent readings too, since older stock can drift below today’s market on its own. A “certified” label can reflect real work, a completeness check piece by piece, and a used copy priced above a sealed one can carry extras the listing does not show; the rows are quoted as listed, and the reader can weigh each one. The eleven-week shift in one store’s catalog has more than one possible cause, and the post claims only the timing, not the source, of the stock. The seller-cash figures are estimates off the store’s own price, not a disclosed BAM offer, and no claim is made that any specific store paid any specific seller any specific amount. Gross margin is not profit: rent, staff, fees and every other cost come out of it afterward, and a healthy margin is what keeps any retail store open; the disclosed figures are also blended across new and used goods and are franchisee-reported, not audited. Nothing on this page is a finding that any price, or any store, is unlawful. It is a public record of a public gap, offered so the reader can weigh it.
Sources: open-market values from BrickLink’s public six-month sold price guide; BAM shelf prices from Bricks & Minifigs stores’ own public online storefronts at bricksandminifigs.com, 366 of the most-traded sets, captured July 2026; the Eugene store’s public online catalog, 14,750 listings captured July 6, 2026, of which 1,250 match the open-market record. The franchise-system requirements are from Bricks & Minifigs’ Franchise Disclosure Document (Items 6, 8 and 11) and the Franchise Agreement (Exhibit B in Utah case 260200029), read Item by Item in the disclosure and summarized in this update; the gross-margin figures are BAM’s own, from Item 19 of the same 2026 document (Tables 4 and 6, 104 franchisee stores and 5 corporate stores), and the manual chapter titles are from its Exhibit E table of contents. The consignment and the takeover are documented in the store and the Keizer takeover update. The secondhand-dealer statute is Utah Code Title 13, Chapter 32a.
The BAM Map is independent reporting on matters of public concern. Nothing here is a finding of any person’s guilt; the criminal charges referenced are unadjudicated and every defendant is presumed innocent. Sources are linked so readers can check the record. · Home · Map · The law · Bodycam