My local toy store wasn’t interested in buying the rare LEGO set that was just gathering dust in a corner of my bedroom. They were, however, willing to offer me a store credit in exchange for it. A $1200 store credit!

This is not the note in question, but seemed so very appropriate as an illustration! Photo credit: Little Big Art/Andy Morris

For me to properly tell you the story of how I became famous—or, rather, infamous—within the shop franchise across the country, I have to give you a little bit of background first.

When I got back into LEGO around 2009, the first-ever modular 10182 Café Corner was the culprit. I assume many of you have similar stories: The realisation that LEGO was making great sets for adults made me take the plunge and order a set to see whether that good old feeling of opening a new box full of plastic parts could still be fun.

I say “a set,” but that’s not really true. Long story short (and no surprises here), it was still every bit as fun as I remembered. 10185 Green Grocer followed Café Corner, then 10190 Market Street, then the 10184 Town Plan, 10181 Eiffel Tower and 10193 Medieval Market Village... within two months. Yes, I went a bit crazy, like I’m sure many of you have done. It was, however, my seventh purchase that would enable me to tell this story: 10189 Taj Mahal.

We didn’t have any official LEGO stores in Norway (we still don’t!) and LEGO Shop at Home wasn’t available in Norway back in May 2009—that didn’t happen until later that year. So I was stuck with eBay and other websites where I could find sellers who were willing to ship to Norway, mostly from the US. The Taj Mahal, however, I found in the UK:

I can’t remember exactly how much I paid for it, and it’s so long ago that I can’t backtrack and find out (apparently, even my bank’s archive doesn’t go that far back!) but it wasn’t much more than LEGO themselves were charging at the time. A reasonable purchase, or at least that’s what I told myself… even after buying all that other stuff.

Dealing in Addictive Materials

A few days later. the courier had problems finding his way to my apartment, so I met him in a parking lot not far from my home—which only added to the feeling of being involved in some kind of dubious activity, receiving a huge package with addictive materials inside. I took it home, removed the cardboard box it came in, marveled at the sheer beauty of the—at the time—largest LEGO set released, with all its 5,922 pieces beaming at me from the box image…

…and then I left it in a corner of my bedroom for about three and a half years.

I built plenty of other LEGO stuff including, but definitely not limited to, the sets you could see in the slideshow above. But the Taj Mahal was just too big! It covers an area of four 32x32 baseplates, so I didn’t have space to put it on display anywhere, and I’d also read online reviews from people complaining that building it was a bit of a repetitive experience. Hence it sat patiently in its box, gathering dust, until I visited my local go-to store for LEGO sets, Outland, in my hometown of Bergen.

The picture above is recent, but it tells you a bit about the store. We have big toy store franchises in Norway like in any other country, but Outland is small. They specialise in comics, nerdy books, board games, LEGO, and geek culture in general (think Forbidden Planet), and have eight physical stores in Norway. These stores are charming, often a bit disorganised, full of stuff (from floor to ceiling) and there’s always something interesting to find. So every now and then I stop by to see what they’ve got.

A Shocking Realisation

In late 2012, just as I was about to discover the fantastic worldwide LEGO community, my Taj Mahal was still sitting in my bedroom. By then it had been out of production for a couple of years, and nobody knew that LEGO would re-release the set a few years later. Because Outland isn’t your typical franchise toy store, they also have retired sets on their shelves, but they mark them up according to the market value as they get older. I spotted a Taj Mahal on the shelf and had a closer look at it… and then I noticed the price tag. 8,000 Norwegian kroner! That’s almost US $1,000 at the current exchange rate.

I was blown away. I knew, of course, that certain LEGO sets appreciated over time, but that was a lot of money. And mine was just gathering dust… hmmm. What if…?

The store manager was a very friendly guy, so I decided to try my luck. Would he be interested in buying an unopened Taj Mahal from me? In pristine condition?

“No. We never buy stock from customers,” was the response.

Well, never mind then. It was worth a try!

“…however,” he continued, “if you are willing to accept a credit note, we’ll give you the same price.”

And even better: As long as they had the set numbers in their data system and a registered price for them, they’d accept most other sets as well! I went straight home, dusted off the Taj Mahal, grabbed the 10214 Tower Bridge next to it that had suffered the same fate, and added that Harry Potter 4840 Burrow set for good measure—all of them were sets that I had bought planning to build, before realising I simply didn’t have space.

Outland, complete with creepy huge harry potter outside.

I walked into the store with the three big sets, found some other LEGO that I was more interested in, and walked back out with The Giant LEGO Credit Note. Which, after the cost of the other sets I bought was subtracted, amounted to about 10,000 Norwegian kroner, or US $1,200.

Needless to say, I spent years digging away at it. Every time I needed some LEGO, and didn’t have time to wait for shipping from somewhere else, I’d just check if Outland had it. Sometimes it would be a little bit more expensive, but it was so much more convenient. This slow process did give me a few unexpected experiences, though!

“It’s YOU!!”

Maybe I was looking for a Friends set for one of my nieces, or maybe I was building a MOC for a convention and just needed that one part that came in abundance in that one set that Outland happened to have on the shelf—I don’t remember. But I picked something up in the store, went to the counter, and took The Giant LEGO Credit Note out of my wallet, handing it over to the girl by the cash register.

I should mention that I work in television, so I have occasionally been on the screen anchoring sports bulletins. That means I have also had a few—not many—experiences where people have recognised me (including that one time when the bus driver insisted that I should travel for free, refusing to take my money), but what happened next really gave me an idea of how properly famous people must feel.

The girl took the piece of paper, unfolded it, and looked at it, eyes widening. She then looked at me, back at the note, and back at me, before pointing her finger at me, shouting:

“It’s YOU!! The guy with the giant credit note! We talk about you in our lunch breaks!”

“It’s YOU!!” - A little illustration about a big credit note by me.

And that’s not the only time I discovered that I had become infamous—across the franchise, no less. I was in Oslo and stopped by the store there, picked up something, and went over to pay. I then told the guy at the counter that I had a credit note from Bergen, so I was wondering if I could use that in Oslo? He said that he didn’t think so, because they didn’t have the same inventory system, but he could look at it and check, so I handed it over.

“Aha,” he said. “I’ve heard about this!” … in a store located a seven-hour drive from where I live!

Sadly, the days of The Giant LEGO Credit Note are long gone. I now have to pay whenever I want to get LEGO from Outland—but, of course, being a seasoned AFOL, I now also know a thing or two about where to go to get things cheaper. But I got a couple of good stories out of it!

There was a Taj Mahal on the shelves in Bergen, but it is the reissued one—which is also now retired (but fear not, you can get the new smaller Architecture version!)—and it is placed next to an even harder-to-find 10253 Big Ben which also carries a hefty price tag.

Mind you, not $1200 hefty!

Note: I borrowed the header image for this article from Andy Morris at Little Big Art, a website that produces some amazing (and strictly unofficial) LEGO-related stuff. Check it out if you fancy a “Human Size Money Tile,” a “Bricksy” mural for your city, or a print for your wall.

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published June 25, 2021.

Have you had the honour of becoming a celebrity at your local LEGO store? Have they put a plaque on the wall with your name on it, or named a day of the year after you in memory of that time when you spent a fortune? Let us know in the comments!

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