Researchers at the Higher School of Economics in Russia found that from 1987 to 2015 Lego investments returned about 10% annually - better than stocks, bonds, gold, and collectible items like wine and stamps. The boom has also given rise to a multimillion-dollar secondary market for the most sought-after builds. There are now more Minifigs in the world - 8.3 billion - than human beings. Fifteen million tourists a year flood the flagship Legoland theme park down the street, and a mile-long Lego factory runs around the clock, 361 days a year, churning out nearly 5 billion pieces a month. In the lobby, a full-scale Lego Bugatti flashed its headlights. When I visited last year, the company had hoisted a King Kong-size, primary-colored Lego Minifigure at the entrance. The company, headquartered in the tiny Danish town of Billund, recently opened a Googleplex-like campus for its 2,000 employees. "I don't know what I'm going to do," he said into his cellphone camera, blinking back tears. That afternoon, he taped what he said was his final YouTube message. I will maybe scream for at least 10, 20 minutes." Then I will just stand up and crush my head against the walls and just screaming. I will just crush my head against the floor. "It is just so much that I'm just collapsing on the ground. "I really feel like the whole part of my stomach is missing," Louis recalls. Most painful of all, the intruders had destroyed the massive, original Lego opus he'd been building over nights and long weekends for 10 months, a 35,000-piece installation he called "Imperial Gate."
His cash and laptops were untouched, but the Millennium Falcon his parents had given him was gone so was the original Clone Scout Walker from his grandma. Whole models had vanished, mint-condition boxes were ransacked, and scattered across the floor were the remnants of his most valuable builds. Now, his collection appeared to have been blasted by a Death Star Superlaser. Since that first gift from his grandma, he'd painstakingly acquired, cataloged, and dusted ("just the dust," he tells me, is "terrible, painful work") more than 300 sets worth more than $20,000. Nervously, he followed the trail of Lego to his bedroom. Though his parents were away, Louis feared the intruder might still be inside as he pushed open the broken front door. "It was like a horror movie," he recalls, "but for Lego." As Louis slowly followed the trail, he recognized chunks of his most beloved builds: a broken cockpit from his UCS X-Wing, the black treads ripped from his Clone Turbo Tank, a limbless Stormtrooper Minifigure staring helplessly from inside its helmet. Colorful parts littered the walkway outside his house - a green baseplate here, a yellow sloped brick there. On that October day, his toys were everywhere. "Because in my videos, I'm very much like, basically, a grown man playing with toys." "Otherwise, it'll be very awkward," he tells me over Zoom in his thick French accent. Unlike many aspiring influencers, he keeps his identity private, other than his first name, to avoid embarrassment at work. Under his handle Republicattak (the missing "c" a childhood misspelling that gnaws at him), he shares his custom Star Wars-themed builds on his YouTube channel. His grandmother gave him his first set, the Lego Clone Scout Walker, for his sixth birthday, igniting a singular passion that hasn't let up since. In brickspeak, Louis is an Adult Fan of Lego - known as AFOLs, for short - and among the most ardent. But when he saw the familiar gleam of a tiny red plastic brick on the driveway, his stomach plunged. A practical-minded 20-year-old with short dark hair, he figured it was just another petty crime in the rural outskirts of Paris, where he lived with his parents. On October 4, 2018, a young Frenchman named Louis came home from work to find the window in his front door smashed. Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders.
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