This Ontario firefighter has been collecting Lego for a decade. Now his collection is for sale
CBC
Kory Pearn's obsession with Lego started innocently enough. But after 10 years of collecting and building with the thousands of tiny colourful pieces of plastic in his collection, he's calling it quits.
Pearn's love for Lego started when he and his wife, Lisa, took their two daughters to Legoland in Winter Haven, Florida, a decade ago.
"I bought a set for the kids, and I bought a set for myself and then I just kind of remembered how much fun it was," said Pearn, a 19-year veteran with the St. Thomas Fire Department in southwestern Ontario.
"I wanted to decorate my office, so I actually started building my own sets. The first thing I did was a Breaking Bad scene," he said.
Then Pearn started buying people's old Lego in bulk, weeding out the pieces he didn't want and keeping the ones he did. It wasn't long before his office was decked out in tiny plastic figurines, and he'd filled another room with bins of Lego.
He started 'free building,' as it's known in Lego circles, designing and crafting his own scenes. He's built a concert stage, drum sets, a record store and most recently, a life-sized Fender Stratocaster guitar.
Pearn's wife hates his Lego, he said. "The sound of the Lego being moved around and sifted through — probably nails on a chalkboard to her."
"I was just trying to teach my kids that you can get off the beaten path and use your own ingenuity and ideas," he said.
Pearn recently decided to ditch his hobby after launching a health and lifestyle magazine called Crackyl, targeted at first responders. Since last year, his team has published four issues and has already received accolades from the Canadian Online Publishing Awards.
This week, Pearn listed his Lego for sale on Facebook Marketplace for $2,500. "It's an adult collection. It's a nice set, a lot of free-build Lego pieces and a lot of choice pieces in there."
Lego usually sells for $10 a pound, he said. "So it's kind of liquid gold, really. It's valuable stuff," he said. And he's had an offer: a woman is purchasing the Lego for her two sons' birthdays, said Pearn.
"It's been great seeing so many happy kids come to our house over the year to build and take home Lego," said Lisa Pearn.
"I am looking forward to converting the Lego storage room into a space where our girls can hang out with their friends," Lisa Pearn admitted.
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