LEGO has ‘taken action’ against BrickLink Designer Program scalpers

The LEGO Group says it’s ‘taken action’ against scalpers attempting to cash in on BrickLink Designer Program sets on eBay.

Less than 24 hours after selling out, both 910001 The Castle in the Forest and 910010 The Great Fishing Boat had already popped up on eBay for sums vastly beyond their original pre-order price on BrickLink – a consequence of the LEGO Group allowing users to purchase up to five copies of each set.

Director of Community Engagement Tanja Friberg has now revealed to LEGO Fan Media (including Brick Fanatics) that the company has ‘taken action’ against the sellers responsible for those listings in an attempt to clamp down on scalpers.

“As you saw, [The Castle in the Forest] went up on eBay in the amount of 800-something dollars – completely crazy,” Tanja said. “We have taken action against that, because eBay has a guideline that if you’re not able to ship your product within 30 days, you cannot put it up for sale.

“So this is something that we’ve taken action against and hopefully that will not support the scalpers trying to utilise this [programme] for business profit.”

eBay’s exact policy for presale listings states that they must identify they’re pre-orders in the listing, and ‘guarantee postage within 30 days of purchase’. Given the first batch of BrickLink Designer Program sets won’t ship until January 2022, the second half of those terms is obviously a little trickier to fulfil for resellers.

The two auctions for Daniel Van Zonneveld’s project that we spotted last week have both been ended by the seller ‘because there was an error in the listing’, which could potentially be what Tanja was referring to by the LEGO Group taking action. But it seemingly hasn’t stopped more listings springing up in their place.

Just this morning, two more sellers listed new auctions for The Castle in the Forest, with one claiming to have five copies available. Two of those have already sold for an eye-watering sum of $550 (approximately £400), while three remain available at the time of writing.

The ambitious buy-it-now listing for EdouardClo’s 910010 The Great Fishing Boat, meanwhile, is still up and available to buy – if you have a cool $999.99 AUD (or £543) to spare, that is. Whether that listing (and the new Castle in the Forest auctions) are eventually taken down, as per eBay’s policy, remains to be seen.

Going forward, the LEGO Group and BrickLink have promised to combat scalping by limiting users to just one copy of each set.

Support the work that Brick Fanatics does by purchasing your LEGO through one of our affiliate links.