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Ten in the morning, a sky with no business being that blue at the end of September, and the Grugahalle sitting in the middle of it like a concrete wing. I had driven over for the second Essener Lego-Börse — and it is worth saying up front what makes this one different from the fan exhibitions I usually write about: this is a market. People come here to buy.
A Börse is not an exhibition
The foyer is one long room, and by half past ten there was somebody leaning over every table. Loose bricks sorted by colour and sold by weight. Little bags at 30 cents, ten of them for 2.50 €. Used sets in freezer bags, a scrap of paper with a number on it taped to the front, stacked three deep across the whole table.
What decides the price is not only what is in the bag. "Whether the original seals on the box are still unopened is decisive for the selling price too. Special sets sometimes cost more than 1,000 euros," organiser Holger Blumberg told the WAZ, whose reporter watched a Ghostbusters firehouse change hands for 725 euros a few stands along.
The nicest thing in that piece came from a couple in their twenties who had driven up from Moers: in the evening they like to do a "Lego-Date", and the dinner table becomes the building site. "We concentrate on our project and don't scroll aimlessly on our phones," is how Alessia Larocca put it. Their ceiling is 500 euros a set.
The models, though
A market this size still pulls builders in, and the display tables are the reason I stayed considerably longer than I had meant to. Starting with this, which I would like on record as the best idea of the day:
An AT-AT. In Fabuland. Blue body, big yellow windows, a little red awning on the side — the walker from Hoth rebuilt as a cottage on legs. The card in front of it says 1,116 parts, three months of building, by Patsonbricks after a design by Stubot, and that the stormtroopers have been replaced by pandas. I have no notes.
Six months on one tower
The opposite temperament, two tables along: a Coruscant tower, lit from the inside, landing platforms bristling with speeders, and a nicht berühren sign at every corner of the table.
The MOC card names the builders as Rafael and Lenny, the build time as six months — and then, which is the part I really like, gives the thing a plot. Level -2011-: Cal Kestis comes back to Coruscant after the fighting to join up with a rebel alliance, the Empire gets wind of the return, and is determined to finish him for good this time. Somebody spent six months on a model and then wrote it a cliffhanger.
The quiet table
And then a table nobody was crowding, which is usually where the good things are:
Red and orange maples built leaf by leaf, stepping stones across the grass, a torii at the top of the slope, a sign in katakana, a couple of mushrooms, small white creatures standing about on the lawn — and, right at the water's edge where you would walk straight past it, a figure under a broad straw hat, sitting by a lily pad.
Two minifigures the size of a toaster
Brick-built, knee-high, Classic Space logo across the chest: a yellow spaceman and his black counterpart, standing guard over a table of boxed Star Wars sets. They were not for sale. They were there to make you stop walking, and it worked on me.
The hall
Blumberg had hired cosplayers, so Star Wars and Marvel characters kept crossing the aisles all morning, and somewhere between the minifigure trays there was a fairy in a pink gown with a parasol. The premiere last year brought around 3,500 people into this foyer — "it went off like a bomb", as he put it — and he says he knew during that first edition that there would be a second.
The idea came to him at flea markets, where he noticed there was no larger event anywhere nearby that was purely about the bricks. "I just fancied doing something like that," he says. At home he has a room of about sixteen square metres given over entirely to the hobby, mostly Star Wars, plus the sets he had as a child. His stated aim for the day is that the bricks stop gathering dust in lofts and cellars.
Why I was there
Not purely to look, again. At a fan exhibition the question in the room is which part am I still missing. At a Börse it is a different one: do I already own this, and is 70 € a fair price for it? Both of those are exactly what I am building BrickDb for — and standing in front of a table of bagged sets with a phone in my hand, I could see very precisely which half of it still does not exist yet.
The next Essener Lego-Börse is on 19 September 2027, same foyer. I will be there, and next time I will bring a list.
The details
| What | Essener Lego-Börse 2026 — second edition, a LEGO® market |
| When | Sunday, 27 September 2026 |
| Where | Foyer of the Grugahalle, Norbertstraße 2, 45131 Essen, Germany |
| Organiser | Holger Blumberg |
| Next one | 19 September 2027, same foyer |
Quotations and the attendance figure are from the report by Jill Sommer in the WAZ of 27 September 2026. LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group, which does not sponsor or endorse this site. All photographs are my own, taken on 27 September 2026; the models belong to the people who built them.