A $200,000 LEGO collection, a franchise takeover and a lost lawsuit

A long investigation by the hobby blog MyBrickLog traces a dispute that began with a private collector and ended in court. Ed Mansell spent years assembling what many believe to be the largest personal LEGO Star Wars collection in history, worth over 200,000 dollars. As he grew older, he and his son Bryan decided to sell it.

The deal and the takeover

Bryan agreed a consignment deal with the Bricks & Minifigs franchise in Salem, Oregon: the sets went into the store, the shop kept 10 percent of any sale and Bryan received the rest. The contract was signed and the collection handed over. The store celebrated on Facebook, describing "this beautiful collection belonging to Ed and Bryan Mansell, estimated at over $200,000."

Bricks & Minifigs corporate then took the Salem location from the original franchise owner, Chrystal. According to the blog, Bryan's signed contract suddenly became nobody's problem but his own, even though the collection was still in the building. The message to Bryan, the post says, was that any lawsuit would be dragged out far past the value of the collection. The current owner's defence: "It's not my name on the contract."

A YouTuber and a criminal turn

A YouTuber known as Reckless Ben began documenting the case. He spoke to the CEO at company headquarters, then took the original paperwork — the documents corporate said it had long been trying to obtain — to the Salem store, where he was thrown out and had the police called on him several times.

The blog names two men as central to the transition: Joshua "Josh" Johnson and Brandon Best, who also own the Eugene store and, it reports, sold Salem inventory through the Eugene website. In recorded calls Johnson acknowledged the collection existed — "when we got the store, we put all those sets aside specifically" — before later claiming the sets never existed. Ben says he was told: "If you try to pursue me legally, YOU stole the LEGOs."

Soon after, a police report claimed Ben was transporting heroin; officers in American Fork, Utah held him and his associates for hours but found no drugs and filed no charges. A search warrant was later executed in American Fork; it was used to raid Ben's Airbnb at gunpoint, and documented accounts say an officer dislocated his arm. He spent about a month in jail, and among the factors a detective cited for continued detention was his plan to start a GoFundMe.

The lawsuit and the unanswered question

The Salem store was sued and lost. Rather than pay the judgment, it closed permanently. In a statement on 21 May, Bricks & Minifigs corporate argued it was not a party to the consignment agreement and that consignment is prohibited under its franchise agreements. The statement does not say who holds the collection now. The blog counters that the franchise agreement obtained by the original Salem-Keizer owner, Chrystal Law, states consignment is allowed.