Millions in blocks. A Czech has the world’s largest Lego collection!
His grandfather introduced him to Lego when he gave him a small kit of building blocks at the age of 3. Today, this kit has a luxurious place in the building block museum at Národní třída in Prague.
“I fell in love with blocks from the first instant I started building. Today, I cannot imagine my life without Lego at all,” admits Milan Křeček, owner of the largest private Lego collection in the world.
Blocks as an investment
Men have various hobbies. From sports, cars or watches, interest often changes into collectorship and a passion for children’s games. Butcher Milan Křeček managed to transform his love of building blocks into a very good investment.
“The optimal idea is to buy sets issued ten or fifteen years ago for slightly below-average prices. Then you have to store them in a dry, dark place, and take them out again three years later,” says Křeček.
The greatest chances of appreciation exist for more expensive, larger and less available building kits, because they have a wide and stable fan base. Typical examples are Star Wars, car, trains. These are often deluxe sets for three thousand crowns of more, which Lego sells in limited amounts and which toy stores often don’t buy at all. Unopened boxes offer the highest appreciation. “If somebody wants to trade in it, they have to treat it as an investment,” adds the co-owner of a network of butchery shops, who launched his collection career twenty years ago with the Technic and Star Wars series.
A hobby became several Czech museums
Having succumbed to the magic of internet marketplaces, he exhibits his luxurious collection at five Building Block Museums. He opened them not only to share his collection with lovers of building blocks, but primarily because he has nowhere left to put his models. His flagship is the luxury museum at Národní třída in Prague.
“It is a combination of exhibition, shop and play room, and the oldest kits can be seen here,” he says.
According to the owner, they are of incalculable value, so it is no surprise that he travels all over the world for new sets and blocks. He has almost 7,000 models and more are added every day. “I’m a fanatic. I own almost 7,000 of the 13,000,000 existing models and get more and more," boasts the collector, whose entire family supports the motto “Those who play aren’t naughty.”
He opened the museum on Prague’s Národní třída in 2010. Three years later, this was followed by a museum in Kutná Hora, a year later one in Špindlerův Mlýn, and in 2015 two more in Liberec and Jeseníky. If his collection reaches another even thousand, you can look forward to another museum rarity.
Almost half a million for the Statue of Liberty!
Mr Křeček builds all the models himself, especially the non-series ones. The latest is his pride and joy, the Statue of Liberty. It is 2.5 metres tall, weighs 200 kilos and cost almost half a million crowns. “It has over 30,000 blocks and it took me a month to build. It was recently unveiled along with the head of Bart Simpson by Martin Dejdar, who is the face of the museum,” adds the collector, who advises men in particular to try out how wonderful it is to return to the building blocks of their childhood. His aim is to have 10 luxury museums across the Czech Republic, a dream which will surely come true in just a few years.
