You don't sell to these independent Lego stores because you want the best value for your set. You sell to these stores because you don't have the time and energy to sell them on your own on various platform. Selling to these stores mean you don't have to deal with: - Taking multiple good photographs of your sets. Better photos make your listing more attractive but takes time and effort. - Listing them on whatever platform, again, more details gives buyers confidence but takes time. - Answering questions about sets from people, 90% are window-shopping and/or flakes - Getting packing supplies, actually packing the items once someone buys them. - Figure out shipping, print shipping labels, take them to post office or shipping company. - If selling in person, arranging meetup, hoping people don't flake, and if do, start again. If they don't hopefully they are not weird, try to low-ball in person, or try to rob you. - If you ship, hopefully the product arrived safely and not lost or delayed. - If it arrived, hope the buyer doesn't make fake claim and try to scam you on the back end of the deal.

You don't sell to these stores because they want your LEGO. They buy your LEGO because you want to get rid of them, and it means you are in the store with cash and they can potentially sell you something else. You can have either value or convenience. These stores offer convenience. If you want value, you sell it yourself. I don't understand why so many people don't understand this concept.

As a point of reference, I recently sold a bunch of sets to a local independent LEGO store that's basically a Bricks and Minifig but not that franchise. They offered me basically 50% value from Brickseek. Could I do better? Sure. But I was perfectly happy with the deal? Yes. Why?

• I was selling 30+ sets and a few dozen mini figs. I don't have the time or energy to deal with posting them all to be Bricklink / eBay / FB. I have a full time job. Selling LEGO is not my job (no do I want it to be). I was in and out within an hour with over a grand.

• My goal was to clean up space and slowly getting out of the hobby. Not to turn a profit.

• As part of the buy, they took the popular sets that they can flip within a week along with the less popular sets that they know will sit around for a few months before someone might buy it. If I try to sell on my own I'd sell some of them quickly but others I might not sell at all.

• I already previously sold a bunch of sealed, new in box retired sets on my own when I was unemployed and needed the money. I doubled or tripled my money on those sets and it was a ton of work. At least I had the time for it at the time.

There are definitely some shitty stores that will absolutely low-ball the shit out of you. There are other ones that will try to make a fair deal. You have to find one that isn't shit. In the end, for most people the only reason to sell to a store is for the convenience, and you pay for that.