Qui-Gon Jinn’s reddish-brown beard: a LEGO Star Wars story

Reddish-brown beard fever has swept through the LEGO Star Wars community over the past few weeks, so here’s a full recap of this rare minifigure story – and where it’s likely to go next.

There’s nothing that sets the world of LEGO Star Wars minifigure collecting alight like an alternate variant, and so it goes with Qui-Gon Jinn’s reddish-brown beard. Not since Kanan Jarrus in 2014 have so many people focused so heavily on the facial follicles of a tiny plastic Jedi, when the LEGO Group swapped Kanan’s initial black hair and beard for a more show-accurate dark brown in subsequent production runs of 75053 The Ghost.

The black-haired variant has since become one of the rarest and most valuable LEGO Star Wars minifigures around, so nobody could pretend to be shocked when reddish-brown Qui-Gon mania swept through collectors’ circles last month. This minifigure was included in early copies of 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator in 2024, before the LEGO Group swapped it out for a version with a dark brown beard in later sets.

It’s tricky to say who first noticed the variant and when, but BrickLink had published two separate product listings for Qui-Gon Jinn by January at the very latest, with a handful of reddish-brown versions selling for anywhere from £11 to £42. Supplies then dried up entirely – but as word of the rarer variant began to spread, social media sites exploded with collectors scrutinising the particular shade of brown of Qui-Gon’s beard.

Facebook groups were full of people listing their ‘rare, opened’ Qui-Gon Jinn minifigures for anywhere from $100 to $250, having clearly realised they’d bought an early copy of 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator and could now cash in, while more calculating collectors tried to ascertain whether their unopened boxes were likely to have the original Qui-Gon variant by tracking the production codes.

The supposed identification of those codes then spurred a wave of people heading out to stores to search for leftover stock of early production runs, recording their efforts on TikTok and Instagram. One fan even reported buying what they thought was a fresh copy of the set only to find that someone had previously purchased the same copy, opened it, extracted Qui-Gon’s head, resealed it and returned it, echoing the torn Collectible Minifigures boxes seen in the search for the Dragonborn Paladin.

In short: this was a LEGO Star Wars social media craze, pure and simple. But with a little hindsight on and distance from the situation, the question left on our lips is whether this is just a passing fad, or if Qui-Gon’s brighter beard will have real staying power in the market.

Where just a few weeks ago there were zero listings for reddish-brown Qui-Gon on BrickLink, there are now dozens, ranging in price from £83 all the way up to £258 (with one outlying store asking an eyebrow-raising £793) for new examples. Those are just the asking prices, though: the latest to sell have ranged in price from £123 to £153, suggesting the market is beginning to settle somewhere in the middle of the current pack, coming down from record high sale prices of £197 and £218 in February.

It may be that Qui-Gon has peaked for now, perhaps driven by the market being flooded by people trying to cash in on the current craze. It will be interesting to see whether the price ticks up again in the weeks, months and years to come – but based on the best comparison currently available, it’s unlikely that the Jedi will seriously explode in value beyond his latest selling price.

That’s because the black-haired Kanan Jarrus variant is available right now on BrickLink for a minimum of £162 new, or £261 on average. This is a minifigure that was only briefly in production 11 years ago, and based on the LEGO Group’s sales numbers in recent years, you’d anticipate that 75053 The Ghost’s initial production run was also a fair bit smaller than that of 75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator, so there are likely more reddish-brown Qui-Gons out there than black-haired Kanans.

Regardless, if Kanan hasn’t climbed to the stratosphere in all those years, it’s tough to say that Qui-Gon will significantly outperform him (even if he is better known as a Star Wars character generally speaking). Anyone paying current prices for the Phantom Menace character hoping it will pay off significantly in five, 10 or even 20 years may be disappointed when push comes to shove – or at least regret sitting on the minifigure for the sake of an average £10 per year return in a decade’s time, for example.

But who knows? These things are tricky to predict. Either way, it’s been fascinating watching this unfold in real time, with all the history of Kanan Jarrus in mind, and it’ll be equally fascinating to see where it all goes from here. What this whole saga really does is demonstrate the continued fervour for rare LEGO Star Wars minifigures in a time where the LEGO Group is striving to make popular characters as accessible as possible (hello, Captain Rex’s Y-wing Microfighter).

And that isn’t necessarily a good thing for everyone. There’s a clear divide in the community between those fans who love jumping aboard these hype trains and those who would rather they’d never even rolled up at the station. One redditor called the hunt for reddish-brown Qui-Gon ‘insufferable’, while we’ve seen more than one post in Facebook groups asking when the entire situation is going to blow over.

But here’s the thing: even if it does blow over, we’ve been here before, and we’ll doubtless be here again next time the LEGO Group makes a change to a set mid-production. You only need to look at the prices for Finch Dallow, a minifigure randomly introduced to late, brief production runs of 75188 Resistance Bomber, for the proof: this Last Jedi pilot, who would otherwise be forgotten like most obscure sequel trilogy characters, instead sells for roughly £800 on the aftermarket.

It’s not that these pieces or minifigures are generally that desirable in and of themselves, but simply that they’re rare. You see it with Comic-Con exclusive minifigures (although those generally tend to offer more sought-after characters), characters locked behind expensive sets and (once upon a time) regional exclusives. Some people just like to collect rare stuff, and that’s at the heart of the prices we’re seeing for misprinted Qui-Gon – and will undoubtedly drive up the prices the next time this happens.

We’ll leave you with this post from pickapenguin, which includes all known LEGO Star Wars minifigure alternate beard variants: Qui-Gon Jinn, Kanan Jarrus and the original Count Dooku’s darker grey beard. Turns out there really is a collecting niche for everyone…

75383 Darth Maul’s Sith Infiltrator is available now, but you probably won’t find a reddish-brown bearded Qui-Gon Jinn in sets ordered from LEGO.com today. The good news is that it’s still worth your time anyway.

Featured image inset: LEGO Star Wars Fans

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