How To Make The Most Of Your LEGO VIP Points?

After the recent LEGO price-hikes, making the most of your VIP points is even more important.

Good value for money. Good value for money. Good value for money. Good value for money… and I could repeat myself 1000 times, and I would still be understating the importance of good value for money. When it comes to LEGO, that’s even more true. With the recent price hikes, LEGO is getting some negative attention, even from its most hard-core fans, like myself. You see, we’re happy to spend our hard-earned cash on plastic bricks with the LEGO logo on them, but we also don’t like being taken for a ride, so like every consumer out there, we want to make the most of our money and that includes the VIP points as well.

And before I tell you how, here’s the good news. LEGO VIP members like myself are not special at all. This is just a fancy word for the LEGO loyalty program. It’s essentially the same thing as a loyalty card at your favourite burrito, bubble tea or supermarket. If you want to read the whole terms and conditions of it, go knock yourself out. So, there is literally nothing stopping you from becoming a VIP member.

Double VIP points

By far the most popular use of VIP points is actual money credits you can use when purchasing LEGO products. With every purchase, you get some points, so it makes a lot of sense that you’d want to shop, especially when LEGO has a double VIP points promotion.

What does this mean? Well, if normally you’d get say 750 points on a certain set, when the promotion is active, you’ll get 1500 points. That’s actually nothing to sneeze at. 750 points in Europe get you 5 Euros off, so double that, and you’re suddenly able to buy a 10 Euro set for free! Do this a few times a year, and you could easily end up with 30,000 points, which means 200 Euros off your next shop!

Pick a brick

By far, the best bang for your buck in terms of piece-count is getting a few pick-a-brick cups full of pieces. For 20 Euros, if you were to buy just sets, you’ll probably be able to get some 300–400 pieces max. When it comes to pick-a-brick cups, however, you can score some crazy good deals, and how crazy good that is really comes down to just you and your patience.

What not everyone knows, is that with pick-a-brick cups, there is one rule and one rule only: the lid has to close. How you manage to fit all the pieces into the cup, it’s entirely up to you. LEGO veterans will spend easily half an hour stacking bricks of various sizes and shapes together in a certain order to fit as many bricks as possible into a cup. You essentially build inside the cup, which can easily get you over 1000 pieces/cup! If you’re getting 1×1 or 1×2 plates, though, you can probably skip the stacking, and just shake the cup every couple of scoops.

Large piece-count sets

When it comes to piece/$ ratio, not all sets are equal, and while there aren’t that many, you will find some sets like the Mosaic Maker that gets you 4702 pieces for only 100 bucks. Granted, they’re all 1×1 tiles on a big baseplate, but if piece-count is what you’re going for, there are several interesting sets, particularly in the “art” collection, that will consistently come with 2000+ pieces for around 100 bucks. Jim Lee’s Batman Collection, Elvis Presley “The King” or Floral Art are all gorgeous sets to display or to just get for the pieces.

Many smaller sets

This might sound counterintuitive, but getting a very big set will not result in getting the most pieces for your money or VIP points. Take for instance the Lion Knight’s Castle, that retails for 400 bucks in most of Europe. For that, you get 4514 pieces. Sounds like many pieces, but it’s actually a lot less than you could get for the same amount of cash or points.

Just by looking at another new Classic set, the Galaxy Explorer retailing for 100 bucks with 1254 pieces in the box, just buying that set 4 times will get you an extra 500 pieces! Most Speed Champions sets come with an average of 270 pieces / car, and they usually retail for 20 bucks each. Buying 20 Speed Champions sets will result in roughly 5500 pieces, that’s now 1000 pieces extra for the same money. Brickheadz are an even better deal. With 200 pieces on average / set, costing on average 12 bucks, means you can get as many as 33 Brickheadz sets for the same 400 bucks, rendering you with 6600 pieces, or 2000 more than the Lion Knight’s Castle!

Finally, if you want to hit the absolute jackpot and get a ton of bricks while keeping piece-diversity in mind, you can get the Classic 90 Years of Play set for 50 bucks, eight times, scoring a total of 8800 pieces, essentially double the Lion Knight’s Castle piece-count!

As you can see, those VIP points can go pretty damn far if you pay attention, and it’s absolutely worth signing up for it, as it’s free. Not doing so, just leaves free money on the table. As long as you use them up in the space of 18 months, you’re grand. I usually save them up for a few months, and then just buy a large set for practically nothing, or employ one of the aforementioned strategies. Happy shopping! 😁

Hi there! 👋

Recently, I started a new publication — Bricks n’ Brackets — dedicated to LEGO, tech and coding. It would mean a huge deal to me if you’d follow it, though only do so, if any of those topics pique your interest. You can also read more about why I started it and what my overall goal with it is. You can also join as a writer if you’d like, as long as you submit articles around those three topics. The publication also has a YouTube, Instagram and TikTok channel. Thank you, and may the gods of creativity and success guide your day!

Attila Vago — Software Engineer improving the world one line of code at a time. Cool nerd since forever, writer of codes and blogs. Web accessibility advocate, LEGO fan, vinyl record collector. Loves craft beer! Read my Hello story here! Subscribe and/or become a member for more stories about LEGO, tech, coding and accessibility!