Over at Geek Mom, an interesting analysis of the pricing of Lego sets over the past 40 years or so. Looking at the pricing on a “price per brick” point of view, the average cost has actually been trending down.
As it turns out, after going up in the 70’s and 80’s, the average price per brick has actually been trending down. I sampled the prices of sets through the years as listed on brickset.com from across themes and set sizes. To try to make it an apples-to-apples comparison, I excluded minifigs by themselves, accessories, promotional items, games, or anything that required batteries, as well as Mindstorms, Duplo, and non-brick items.
One theory noted in the article is that the Lego sets of today are far more complex and thus have far more pieces than those of the 1970’s and 1980’s, So looking at it on a “per brick” may be skewing the numbers lower.
At the end of the day though, I think what this is telling us is that we should go out and get that epic 3,000 piece, 8 lb, 50 inch long Star Wars “Super Star Destroyer” kit for $400.