Single Lego Piece Originally Priced at $15 Sells for $18K at Auction

A golden Lego piece originally priced at just under $15 has sold for thousands of dollars at auction. The piece, from Lego’s Bionicle line, was donated along with a bag of jewelry to a Goodwill location in Dubois, PA. Workers originally priced the item at $14.99 before customer inquiries revealed to them the Lego was much more valuable than their initial evaluation.

“[The store] didn’t know it was worth anything until people started asking if they could buy it for $1,000,” Chad Smith, head of e-commerce for the Dubois store, told ABC 6.

After further investigation, Goodwill employees discovered that the Lego was a “one of a kind” creation made from 14-karat gold. The piece is a Bionicle Kanohi Hau mask. Only 30 were produced as a promotional item near the start of the millennium, which is why the rare product is so desired on the second-hand market.

“It was a giveaway, and there were 25, I believe, that were given away and five remained for people who actually worked at Lego,” Smith explained to KDKA-TV. “So 23 years later, one of these resurfaces and it’s really unique.”

In light of that information, the store chose to put the Lego piece up for auction rather than sell it outright. After 48 bids, it sold for an astounding $18,101 to a winner who wished to remain anonymous. The second-highest bid was a desperately close $18,100, but according to Smith, the tally rose as high as $33K at one point. Nobody was bullish enough to submit a bid on that rate, however, with the piece ultimately going for a bit more than half of that sum.

Smith told ABC 6 that the winnings will go back to the Goodwill location that sold the Lego. “The money goes to support our mission, which is opportunity, education, training, and work,” he said. “It will provide a lot of opportunities for training and work.”