brick'em Review: Is It Worth It for LEGO Resellers?

You just dropped $200 on a bulk LEGO lot. There are 150 minifigures spread across your table. You need to know what each one is, what it is worth, and where to sell it. The old way takes an entire weekend. The question is whether there is a faster way that is actually worth paying for.

That is the exact situation where brick'em either saves you or wastes your money. After six months of using it full time, here is what I actually think.

What Is brick'em?

brick'em is a LEGO minifigure scanning and inventory app built specifically for resellers. You take a photo of your minifigures, and it identifies them using image recognition. It pulls the BrickLink ID, name, current used and new prices, and the full parts list for each figure. Then it lets you manage inventory across multiple collections and export formatted listings to Whatnot, eBay, BrickLink, Shopify, or CSV.

It is not a marketplace. It is not a social app. It is a work tool for people who process LEGO for profit.

How Accurate Is the Scanner?

The scanner is trained on over 18,600 minifigures from BrickLink's complete catalog. In my experience, it nails common figures almost every time. Star Wars, Marvel, City, Ninjago. The popular themes hit rates I would estimate above 90%. Rarer figures or heavily customized ones sometimes need a manual search, but the app has a search function for that.

The bulk scanner is where it gets interesting. You photograph 20 or more figures at once, draw a selection box around the group, and the app detects each individual figure. It then identifies and prices all of them in one batch. This is the feature that turns a 3 hour sorting session into 15 minutes.

What About Pricing?

Every identified figure comes with average used and new prices from BrickLink. These are not guesses. They are pulled from actual market data. The prices update regularly, and in my experience they are close enough to make quick pricing decisions without opening BrickLink in another tab.

For a lot of sellers, the pricing alone justifies the subscription. Before brick'em, I was spending 2 to 3 minutes per figure just looking up prices. With 100 figures, that is over 3 hours of price checking.

Is the Export Feature Worth It?

If you sell on multiple platforms, this is the feature that pays for the subscription. You scan your lot, add everything to an inventory collection, then export a formatted file for each platform. Whatnot gets a Whatnot-formatted CSV. eBay gets an eBay-formatted one. BrickLink gets XML. No reformatting. No copy-pasting between spreadsheets.

I used to spend an hour reformatting spreadsheets after every sorting session. That time is gone now.

Who Is brick'em NOT For?

If you sell fewer than 20 minifigures a month, you probably do not need a paid plan. The free tier gives you single scans and a handful of credits, which is enough for casual sellers.

If you only sell sealed sets and never deal with loose minifigures, you will not use most of the features. The scanner is built for loose figs.

And if you already have a system that handles 200+ figures a week without eating your weekends, you might not see enough improvement to justify switching.

Who Should Use It?

If you buy bulk lots regularly, if you sell on Whatnot or eBay, if you process more than 50 figures a week, brick'em will save you real hours. The math is simple. If you spend 3 minutes per figure on identification and pricing, and you handle 100 figures a week, that is 5 hours of manual work. brick'em cuts that to under an hour.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does brick'em work with LEGO parts or just minifigures?

It works with both. The parts scanner identifies individual pieces by shape and color and returns per-variant pricing. The minifigure scanner handles complete figs and pulls the full parts list.

Can I try brick'em before paying?

Yes. The free plan includes single scans with no credit card required. Paid plans come with a 14-day free trial. You can scan a real lot and see results before committing.

How does brick'em compare to BrickIt or BrickScan?

brick'em is the only tool that combines bulk multi-figure scanning, BrickLink pricing, multi-platform inventory management, and platform-specific exporting in one app. Most competitors handle scanning only without the inventory and export workflow.

Is my data safe on brick'em?

brick'em uses Supabase for authentication and data storage with row-level security. Your inventory data is private to your account. The app does not share or sell user data.

Bottom line: if minifigures are how you make money, brick'em is the fastest way to get from bulk lot to listed inventory. The scanner works, the prices are real, and the export saves hours every week.