Why Are LEGO® Elves So Freaking Expensive?

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The Demand For LEGO® Elven Warrior Minifigures

Listen, when LEGO® LOTR sets came out, retired, and subsequently became some of the most expensive sets, it is not like the fan demand for these sets disappeared. I was young at the time, now I am old(er), and yes, I still want LOTR LEGO®.

Now that most of the target demographic has jobs, a little bit of disposable income, and is looking (demanding) LOTR LEGO®, you got yourself a price hike.

Found In Discontinued Sets, Series, And Were Made For Short Periods: A Limited Supply

LOTR LEGO® had some exceptionally printed elven minifigures, polybags, and prints. Also, we had the CMF Series 3 Eleven Warrior, and this guy was only made in this singular CMF series, with finely designed printing. He is now a whopping $40.00 on third-party platforms.

Currently, even with new LOTR LEGO® like the Icons Rivendell set, the supply of these elven minifigs is reaching levels of extinction with no initiative to print more…even though the demand is there…really there.

Where are LEGO® Elven minifigures found? LOTR LEGO®. To further boost the price — surprise — this set line is now a discontinued theme! LEGO® also likes to keep up its secondary markets and exclusivity market for Adult Fans of LEGO®, so don’t count on them manufacturing more eleven minifigs anytime soon.

It is not like LEGO® is going to increase the supply of discontinued LEGO® sets.

Designs For Elven Warrior Minifigures

LEGO® is known for upping its games on specific high-ticket minifigs just like the ones you find on the CMF Series 3 Elf and the printings on many of the LOTR LEGO® Minifigures.

Why do printings and art on minifigs drive up the price?

It is a chicken-or-the-egg scenario: If LEGO® has fine printing, it usually means there are not many like it. If there are not many minifigures like it, chances are it has intricate LEGO® printing.

This links back to supply above. Furthermore, it truly is more expensive for the company itself to print minifigures with designs like this. Therefore, they are found (usually) in highly coveted, retired, and expensive LEGO® sets that contained one-of-a-kind minifig printing.

Utility For Other Uses: AFOLs And MOC Building

With fine printing, high prices, limited supply, and a ton of demand, who the heck is dropping hundreds, maybe even thousands of dollars, on LEGO® Eleven minifigures?

AFOLs.

Adult Fans of LEGO® represent all of us who embrace building, investing, collecting, and creating potential with LEGO® in our later years. It is a phenomenal hobby with only slight damage to your bank account and lower back. AFOLs also love to build MOCs where we design intricate landscapes of LEGO® creating unconventional or unlicensed designs.

How does this relate to LEGO® Elf minifigures being expensive?

We use them to build Lord of the Rings battle MOCs like a LEGO® Helms Deep MOC with 150,000 pieces. Yeah, there is a lot of devotion to the craft. Devotion means you are going to compete with AFOLs, with disposable income, who are desperately seeking many of these LEGO® minifiguress to create their own insane landscape.

What Are Your Options?

Unfortunately, Amazon has begun a bit of a crusade to reduce the level of knock off items on its own platform. There used to be an awesome assortment of LEGO® LOTR compatible bricks and figs you could snag — for extremely affordable prices and at large quantities.

However, many of these listings have now been removed. You can still find LOTR compatible elven warriors minifigs on Temu and other e-commerce platforms like Bonanza. The caveat: You get what you pay for…knock-off LEGO® is not known to be highly durable.

But for a fun MOC, and non-LEGO® purists? They will do just fine for now!

If You Have A Gringotts-Level Bank Account, You Can Get Real Elven Troops!

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