Jun 30, 2026
Two years have passed since Bryan Mansell’s expensive Lego collection went missing. He still hasn’t gotten it back — even though the ensuing internet drama has started to die down.
Back in 2024, the Oregon resident, who had inherited his 83-year-old father’s collection of out-of-print Star Wars Lego sets, entrusted them to a Salem, Ore. Bricks & Minifigs store. The store agreed to resell them on consignment. Then the franchise abruptly changed hands — and his Lego collection seemingly disappeared.
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It might seem strange to be upset over a missing Lego collection — but to the Mansell family, it was a generational investment. Rare collectibles from iconic franchises like Star Wars can fetch big bucks on the private market, and retired Star Wars Lego sets can go from hundreds to thousands of dollars apiece.
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Here’s what to know about who’s involved in Mansell’s Lego drama, as well as where the Lego sets might actually be.
On June 29, Bricks & Minifigs released a statement saying it wants to “find an amicable resolution” with the Mansell family.
The case attracted the attention of several independent content creators, including Ben Schneider, who goes by the username Reckless Ben online. He launched a three-part YouTube series detailing the (sometimes questionable) ways he tried to get Mansell’s Lego collection back, including by confronting the new store owners in person.
Schneider was sued for defamation by Bricks & Minifigs for his YouTube videos. He is also facing criminal charges — including stalking, targeted residential picketing, disorderly conduct, and trespassing — from both going to the Bricks & Minifigs corporate office and going to Utah to try and serve an Oregon lawsuit to one of the store’s new owners at his house.
Schneider is currently under a gag order that does not allow him to publish YouTube videos or make comments on the lawsuit or the broader Lego case. An injunction that would have allowed Schneider to talk about the case in YouTube videos, comments to the press, and other venues was recently struck down by a Utah judge.
Mansell is currently named as a co-defendant in the lawsuit Bricks & Minifigs is bringing against Reckless Ben. But the company says that it’s willing to remove him, while also extending an invitation to Mansell to go through internal documentation with Bricks & MinifigMinifigs CEO Ammon McNeff.
The company also says it’s willing to give him all of the Lego Star Wars sets currently being held at the Salem store.
No one can agree where the missing Lego sets are or what they’re worth
Schneider said in his video publicizing the incident that the missing Lego sets and figures were initially assessed to be worth around $200,000, a number that Mansell, as well as a 2023 promotional post from Bricks & Minifigs, corroborate.
But that number wasn’t an accurate appraisal of the Lego collection’s value, according to both Bricks & Minifigs and Gorman.
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“Bricks & Minifigs’ investigation found documentation estimating the realistic highest retail value at approximately $95,000 to $100,000,” a press release from Bricks & Minifigs states. “A so-called promotional higher value of $200,000 is believed to have circulated publicly in 2023, but was apparently not a confirmed or appraised value.”
Gorman’s full estimate of the Lego sets puts their worth at about $107,000.
“My original assessment of about $200,000… was before I’d actually gone through and had set numbers and done an actual evaluation,” Gorman said in an interview with Stephen Findeisen, who runs the YouTube channel Coffeezilla. “We put out the press release well in advance of the event itself, so that press release went out before I had those full numbers.”
Gorman paid Mansell around $17,000 for the $24,000 worth of his Lego she sold before the store changed hands, with the $7,000 difference going to the stores’ consignment fees. The store was taken over by Brandon Best and Joshua Johnson, who have since separated with Bricks & Minifigs.
From here, Bricks & Minifigs and Gorman’s accounts diverge.
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Bricks & Minifigs maintain that $2,000 to $5,000 worth of product remained in the store after the ownership change, saying that “most of the remaining collection may have been sold or removed (and stored offsite) before Best and Johnson took over the location.” It offered to return the stock to Mansell “as a courtesy,” which Mansell did not accept.
Meanwhile, Gorman says that all $82,000 of stock they didn’t sell was still at the store. She says that she temporarily moved some of the stock offsite to deter thieves, but moved the Lego sets back shortly after.
Findeisen conducted his own investigation of how much stock was left over after the ownership change, based on Gorman’s photos of the store’s stock timestamped to the night of the takeover — and estimated around $21,000 worth of stock, going against both what Bricks & Minifigs and Gorman say.
He found irregularities in items that were marked sold in different internal documents, and found that dozens of sets were marked both “sold” and “layaway.” He also alleges that around $15,000 worth of Lego sets and figurines were sold in a side deal to a third party without being removed from internal documents.
All in all, of the $82,000 of stock not confirmed paid out to Mansell, Findeisen claims that around $10,000 to $20,000 of Lego are “truly missing.” The rest, he says, can be accounted for in the various documentation irregularities.
Schneider, Gorman, and Mansell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Kit Pulliam is a DC-based financial journalist with over five years of experience writing, editing, and fact-checking financial content.
