I know everything about LEGO.
Try me.
A price is only as good as its sourcing. Ashlard is explicit about where every figure originates, what it represents, and what it does not. When the data is thin, the surface says so — an honest absence is worth more than a confident guess.
A set does not have one value. A factory-sealed copy, a complete-in-box copy, and a loose or incomplete copy are three distinct markets with three distinct buyers — trophy, display, and parts. The Course Ladder shows all three and never collapses them into a single number. This is the structural law of the platform.
Live asking prices come chiefly from eBay, fetched on visit through the eBay Browse API. Grail-tier settlement venues — Catawiki, Heritage, Goldin, RR Auction — inform the top of the market. Brickset supplies catalogue enrichment: designer, original retail price, release and retirement dates, status. Rebrickable supplies the catalogue spine and the set-to-minifigure mapping. A BrickOwl integration is pending approval as a secondary asking-price source. We do not use the BrickLink API — its terms are incompatible with an independent intelligence model.
Today’s floors are the lowest genuine asking prices on the open market — what a copy is listed at, not what one last sold for, and not an appraisal. We label them that way everywhere. Realised-sale comparables, via eBay’s Marketplace Insights, are the next layer; they upgrade the floor from asking to sold once approved. We will not present an asking floor as a sold price, and we will not synthesise a median we do not have.
Open-market listings are noisy. Before a floor is computed, listings are sanitised: reproduction, custom, and third-party items are excluded by name; bulk lots and parts auctions are removed; and a value-relative minimum drops the manuals, single minifigures, and stickers that cluster far below a real set’s price. The floor is the lowest genuine listing that survives — not the cheapest line of noise.
Retirement status reflects the catalogue and, where confidence allows, a forecast with its basis stated; timing the manufacturer has not confirmed is labelled as such. On authenticity, reproduction minifigures, re-sealed boxes, and counterfeit polybags are a no-go and are called out by name — minifig listings on Ashlard exclude reproductions, and we tell you when a match is by name rather than a verified identifier.
No fabricated set values, no invented retirement dates, no fictional production numbers. Where the hobby disagrees, the surface hedges rather than picks. Ashlard is independent third-party intelligence; LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group, referred to only by nominative reference.