Is Bricklink Slowing Down? What 19 Months of Global Sales Data Actually Show

Scroll through any Bricklink sellers group and you'll find the same post every few days: "Is it just me or is this week dead? I usually get 2 orders a day and this week I got none." Then fifty replies, half saying "same here", half saying "my best month ever", and nobody with numbers.

We have numbers. BL Metrics records Bricklink's worldwide price guide every month for 135,000 part and color combinations, 19,000 minifigures and 21,000 sets: every sale recorded for those items, on every store, in every country. We also record how many of them are listed for sale, and the daily order count of around 24,500 stores. So instead of guessing, we added it all up.

Here's what the data says about the size of the Bricklink market, whether it's growing or shrinking, and what it means for individual stores.

Key numbers
Yearly sales of parts, minifigures and sets	about $135 million
Items sold, June to September 2026 vs 2025	-5.8%
Money spent, June to September 2026 vs 2025	-1.8%
Average price per part / per minifigure	+3% / +14%
Share of new minifigures sold that were released since March 2025	23.5%
Parts listed for sale	+7.3%
Share of listed parts that sell each month	2.9% to 2.55%
Orders per store, June to September	-4%

How big is the Bricklink market?

Over the last 12 months (October 2025 to September 2026), across the parts and minifigures we track:

	Items sold	Sales value
Parts	564 million	$74.8 million
Minifigures	3.4 million	$24.4 million
Parts + minifigures	568 million	$99.2 million

On top of that, buyers purchase around 120,000 sets a month for about $3 million (we've only been tracking worldwide set sales since February 2026, more on that below). Put together, the catalog we track turns over something like $135 million a year. That's a floor, not a ceiling: it doesn't include gear, books, instructions, original boxes, or any part/color combination we don't track.

In a typical month, buyers purchase around 47 million parts and minifigures, worth about $8.3 million.

Minifigures are a small share of the item count (less than 1%), but about a quarter of all the money spent on parts and minifigures. That's why we look at both measures throughout this article: item counts show how much is physically moving, sales value shows how much money buyers are spending.

Month by month: 2026 vs 2025

Every comparison between 2025 and 2026 from here on uses the same items in both years. We compare everything we've tracked since March 2025, plus every part and minifigure released since then. New releases matter (as we'll see, they're almost a quarter of new minifigure sales), so they're in. What we leave out are older items we only started tracking later: they would only show up in recent months and make 2026 look artificially bigger. They're about 5% of sales value, two-thirds of it minifigures.

Worldwide figures are in US dollars. Regional figures, further down, are in each region's own currency.

Here's the worldwide value of parts and minifigures sold each month, with 2026 laid over 2025:

And the number of items sold worldwide:

Three things jump out.

January 2026 was the biggest month in our data. 56 million items and $9.4 million in sales, 20% above an average month. Our regional data goes back to December 2024, and January 2025 was also the top month of 2025 for stores selling in euros, pounds and Canadian dollars (US dollar stores peaked in November and December 2025).

Spring 2026 was above 2025. From March to May, sales value was 8% higher than a year earlier, and item counts were about the same.

From June onward, both fell below 2025, items more than value. June to September were the weakest months of 2026, both in items and in value.

The year-over-year change for each month makes the turn very visible:

Over the full March to September window, items sold were down 3.0% compared to 2025, while sales value was up 2.5%. Split in two:

Period (vs same months of 2025)	Items sold	Sales value
March to May 2026	+0.5%	+8.3%
June to September 2026	-5.8%	-1.8%

So if you've been feeling a slowdown since early summer, you're not imagining it. Buyers really are taking fewer parts and minifigures off Bricklink than at the same time last year. But it's a single-digit dip in volume with spending almost flat, not a collapse.

Fewer items, but each one worth more

Buyers took home fewer items, but paid more for each one. Comparing March to September of both years:

• The average part sold for 13.1 cents, up from 12.7 cents (+3%).
• The average minifigure sold for $7.37, up from $6.49 (+14%).

For minifigures, new releases explain only a small part of it: leaving them out, the average older figure sold for $7.02, up from $6.31 (+11%). For both parts and minifigures, our totals don't tell us how much is higher prices on the same items and how much is buyers choosing different ones. Either way, sales measured in money have held up much better than sales measured in pieces. If you're shipping fewer items but your revenue is holding, that matches the market.

Is it just summer?

Summer was the weakest period of the year in both 2025 and 2026. So how much of the 2026 slowdown is just the usual season?

We have one previous summer to compare with. Comparing the June to September monthly average with the March to May average:

Summer vs spring	Items sold	Sales value
2025	-4.4%	-0.9%
2026	-10.4%	-10.1%

In 2025, summer was a little lighter than spring. In 2026, the drop was more than twice as large, in both items and value. With only one previous year to compare with, we can't say what a "normal" summer looks like over the long run, but 2026's summer dip was clearly bigger than 2025's. It also came after a spring that was stronger than 2025's.

New vs used, parts vs minifigures

Splitting by condition and product type shows where the slowdown actually is:

New parts are the weak spot. Fewer new parts were sold than in 2025 (-3.7%) and spending on them fell 1.7%. Over the summer, new parts were down 6.1% in items and 5.1% in value, the biggest drop in spending of the four segments.

Used parts are holding up better. Slightly fewer items sold (-1.1%), but spending on used parts is up 3.7%. Over the summer, used parts spending dipped 1.4%.

Minifigures are where the money is growing. Spending on minifigures was up 11.9% for new and 11.7% for used, and used minifigures also sold in larger numbers (+3.7%). Over the summer, minifigure spending was still up 5.8% year over year.

That growth comes mostly from new releases. Figures released since March 2025 made up 23.5% of all new minifigures sold this summer, and 30% of the money spent on new minifigures. They also sell for more: $10.30 on average in new condition, against $7.49 for older figures. Leave the new releases out, and spending on minifigures was flat (-0.8%) from March to September. Put together: older figures sold 23% fewer units in new condition than a year earlier, and new releases made up most of that gap. That's how new minifigure sales fell 6% in units while spending on them rose 12%.

For parts, new releases are a much smaller part of the market: under 4% of parts spending. Without them, spending on parts would have been down 2.7% instead of flat.

What this means in practice: if you sell mostly new parts, you're in the weakest segment of the market. Used parts did better, and minifigure spending grew, mainly on recent releases.

Supply: more parts listed, fewer sold

Sales are only half of the picture. The other half is how much is for sale. Every month, we also record how many items are listed on Bricklink for each part and minifigure we track. Comparing June to September 2026 with the same months of 2025, on the same set of items:

June to September, 2026 vs 2025	Items listed for sale	Items sold
New parts	+5.7%	-6.1%
Used parts	+12.7%	-4.9%
All parts	+7.3%	-5.8%
New minifigures	-0.5%	-7.7%
Used minifigures	+7.3%	-2.6%

On average, about 1.66 billion parts were listed for sale on Bricklink at the end of each month this summer, counting the parts we compare across both years. That's 7.3% more than a year earlier, while sales of those same parts fell 5.8%. New releases aren't what's driving this: without them, listings were still up 6.6% and sales down 6.4%. More parts were listed, and fewer were sold.

The clearest way to see what that means for a seller is the sell-through rate: the share of listed items that sell in a given month.

In summer 2025, about 2.9% of all listed parts sold each month. In summer 2026, it was 2.55%. Put differently, on average, a listed part was about 12% less likely to sell in a given month than a year ago.

Another way to read the same numbers is months of stock: how long it would take to sell everything currently listed at the current pace. For parts, it went from 34 months to 39 months. There are more than three years of parts listed on Bricklink.

A few things stand out:

• Used parts saw the biggest change. Used listings grew by 12.7% while used sales fell 4.9%, so used sell-through dropped the most, from 3.1% to 2.6% per month.
• Minifigure supply is barely growing. Listings are up only 1.9%, all of it in used figures. New minifigure listings are flat, even with a year of new releases added.
• Minifigures still sell much faster than parts. About 4% of listed minifigures sell each month (6% for used ones), against 2.5% for parts.

For sellers, this is the part of the picture that sales totals don't show: spending was almost flat, but it was spread across more listed parts than a year ago.

(New releases are included here: their listings and sales count from the moment they appear on Bricklink.)

Is it the same everywhere? Results by region

Bricklink's price guide splits sales by the currency the store sells in. In practice, that matches where stores are: 93% of the stores we track that sell in US dollars are in the United States, 95% of euro stores are in eurozone countries, and over 99% of pound, Canadian dollar and Australian dollar stores are in the UK, Canada and Australia. Values below are in each region's own currency, so exchange rates don't affect them:

Stores selling in	Share of world items sold	Items sold vs 2025		Sales value vs 2025
		Mar-May	Jun-Sep	Mar-May	Jun-Sep
Euro	46%	-2.3%	-4.7%	+2.8%	+0.6%
US dollar	30%	+4.3%	-9.3%	+18.7%	+2.4%
British pound	7%	+2.6%	-3.3%	+7.9%	+0.8%
Canadian dollar	2.5%	+12.3%	+6.4%	+9.9%	+18.5%
Australian dollar	2.3%	-15.0%	-16.0%	-9.8%	-6.7%

The summer slowdown shows up in all three big markets (Europe, US, UK) as fewer items sold, but in each of them, revenue in local currency was still flat to slightly up on 2025. US dollar stores had the biggest swing, from +4% in items and +19% in value in spring to -9% and +2% in summer.

The worldwide figures aren't the sum of these regions. They also include stores selling in other currencies (about 12% of items sold), and they're expressed in US dollars, while each region above is in its own currency.

Two regions stand out:

• Canada is growing. It's the only region in the table where summer 2026 beat summer 2025 in both items (+6%) and value (+19%).
• Australia has been down all year, by around 15% in items and 7 to 10% in value, in both spring and summer.

Euro stores sell 46% of all items, but at a lower average price per item than other regions: about 14 cents, against 20 cents for US dollar stores (at current exchange rates).

What about sets?

We only have complete worldwide set data from February 2026, so there's no year-over-year comparison yet. Here are the eight months we have:

The set market has been steady at about 120,000 sets and $3 million per month, 86% of them new. The summer dip was smaller than for parts: -4.6% in units and -2.7% in value compared to spring, against -10.4% in items and -10.1% in value for parts and minifigures. Around 2.9 million sets are listed at any time, and about 3.6% of them sell each month.

We'll be able to say whether the set market is growing or shrinking once we have a full year of data, in early 2027.

What does it mean for an individual store?

Market totals are one thing, but a seller doesn't experience the whole market: they experience their own orders. So we looked at it from the store side too.

BL Metrics records the order count of around 24,500 Bricklink stores every day. For each month, we counted how many of those stores received at least one order, and how many orders they received on average:

It's the same shape as the market charts above. The average store had a strong January (25.6 orders), a spring that was ahead of 2025, and a summer that was about 4% behind 2025 (20.0 orders a month on average from June to September, against 20.8 a year earlier).

What about competition? A common explanation in seller groups is "there are too many new stores now". The number of stores getting orders didn't grow:

April to September	2025	2026	Change
Stores receiving orders (monthly average)	11,868	11,459	-3.4%
Total orders	1.47 million	1.40 million	-4.5%
Orders per store per month	20.7	20.4	-1.1%
Share of orders going to stores less than a year old	6.3%	6.7%	+0.4 points

New stores open all the time (3,816 in 2025, 2,897 so far in 2026), but others stop selling. Of the stores that received orders from April to September 2025, 3,983 received none in the same months of 2026. Over the same period, 3,409 stores got orders that had none a year earlier, 2,800 of them opened since 2025. More stores stopped selling than started.

What did grow is inventory. The stores we track listed 14% more lots this summer than last summer. About two-thirds of those extra lots are in stores opened since 2025; established stores grew their own lot count by 4.5%. So competition did increase, but through more inventory, not through more stores getting orders.

The average hides very different stories

Stability at the market level doesn't mean every store is stable. Here's how established stores (opened before 2025) did individually, comparing their orders from April to September 2026 with the same months of 2025:

This covers the 5,112 established stores that are currently open and had at least 30 orders from April to September 2025:

• Only one in six stayed within 10% of last year's orders.
• Half lost more than 10%, and one in seven lost more than half.
• One in three grew by more than 10%, and one in seven grew by more than half.

What separates the two groups? The clearest pattern in our data is inventory. For 5,092 of these stores with complete lot counts, we compared how their number of lots changed with how their orders changed:

Lots, Apr-Sep 2026 vs 2025	Stores	Median change in orders	Share of stores with more orders
Shrank more than 25%	418	-58%	10%
Shrank 10-25%	466	-34%	23%
Stable (±10%)	2,229	-15%	32%
Grew 10-25%	937	0%	50%
Grew 25-50%	536	+14%	63%
Grew more than 50%	506	+46%	76%

Stores that kept their inventory the same size typically lost about 15% of their orders. Stores that grew it by 10 to 25% held steady, and stores that grew it by more than half typically gained 46%. This table alone doesn't prove that more lots cause more orders, but our lots vs orders analysis, which followed individual stores over a year, found the same pattern.

So if your store is down 5% this summer, that's in line with the market. If it's down 30%, the market accounts for only a few points of it, and the rest is specific to your store.

(These numbers come from the order and lot counts shown on store pages, which we record every day. They only include stores we track, so treat the exact percentages as approximate.)

What the data suggests

1. Compare like with like. Month-to-month swings are large: January 2026 was 20% above an average month, and summer was the weakest period in both years. Compare your last three months with the same three months last year, not with last week.
2. Know which segment you're in. Over the summer, spending fell most on new parts (-5.1%) and dipped on used parts (-1.4%), while minifigure spending grew (+5.8%), mostly on figures released in the last 18 months.
3. Watch your inventory trend. Among established stores, those whose lot count stayed flat typically lost about 15% of their orders this year, while those that grew it by more than half typically gained 46%.
4. Expect lower sell-through. With 7% more parts listed and fewer sold, a listed part was about 12% less likely to sell in a given month than a year ago. Market-wide, there are now about 39 months of parts stock listed.

Methodology

For anyone who wants to check our work:

• Source: the Bricklink price guide (last 6 months of sales plus current listings), recorded for every item we track. Items are re-scraped on a rotation of a few days, and each month's sales figures keep being updated for three months after the month ends.
• Coverage: 135,000 part/color combinations and 19,000 minifigures with continuous worldwide data since March 2025; 21,000 sets since February 2026. Regional (per-currency) data starts in December 2024.
• Market size counts every item we track. The yearly set figure is estimated from eight months of data.
• Comparable items: year-over-year comparisons use everything tracked since March 2025 plus every part and minifigure released since March 2025 (based on the date it first appeared in a set). Older items we added to our tracking later are left out of comparisons, because they would only appear in recent months. They represent about 5% of sales value and 1% of items sold.
• Items sold is the total quantity sold. Sales value is quantity sold times the quantity-weighted average price. Worldwide values are in US dollars, converted from Bricklink's euro figures at the exchange rate of the day we recorded them. Regional values are in each region's own currency.
• Listings are the number of items for sale worldwide at our last check of each month, available since June 2025 for parts and minifigures and April 2026 for sets. Over 98% of items were re-checked within the first week of every month in both summers, so each month's snapshot comes from its last days. Sell-through is items sold in a month divided by items listed.
• Regions are defined by the currency the store sells in, which is how Bricklink breaks down its price guide.
• Store orders and lots come from the daily counters shown on store pages, for the stores we track: 17,920 stores opened before 2025 that we've followed since April 2025, plus the 6,559 stores opened since. Stores added to our tracking later are left out so the comparison stays like for like. This is a large sample but not the full market.
• October 2026 is excluded because the month was still in progress at the time of this analysis.