Justen Tucker and Justin Hanna have a long time love of Lego, and are happy to now be helping more people continue their love of the building bricks hobby. The duo have been running SnXBricks on BrickLink for the past year.

“I got my first Lego set when I was 6, and really fell in love with the bricks at that time,” Tucker said. “It’s been something I’ve kept up with over the years.”

Hanna fell in love with the Star Wars Lego sets.

Both have had kids of their own and wanted them to fall in love with the toys as well.

Hanna said unlike Tucker, he needs the plans to be able to build a set.

“My kids, though, they’ll freely take things apart and rebuild them into something different,” Hanna said.

For years, Tucker and Hanna dreamed of owning their own hobby shop, where they could talk Legos all day long.

“And then one day, we saw someone selling a massive collection on Facebook Marketplace, and it was one of those ‘do you want to go halves on this project?’” Tucker said.

In October of last year, the duo bought a more than 300,000 piece collection of Lego bricks.

Hanna, who is a science teacher not working due to a case of long COVID, started learning more about BrickLink and how to set up a store.

Tucker, who works at Rockwell Collins, is housing the collection in a garage with a lot of square space.

And one of the first projects from the duo was going through and sorting the collection into many different individual pieces and organizing that in a manner that works better for them.

“I’m sure it made sense to the original seller to arrange the pieces the way he did, but we’ve had to come up with our own system,” Tucker said.

The sales are all online, as BrickLink allows people searching for sets or individual bricks to make their orders.

“The first couple months when we were running the shop were really slow, but we’ve really started seeing more business in these last two months,” Tucker said.

Many people who are buying on BrickLink are looking for very specific pieces to compete a set that they’ve lost or had break when constructing with the pieces.

Others, however, are happy to buy used sets that they know have all of the pieces and are ready to be built again by someone new.

One of the challenges for the business, since they are in rural Bertram, is the drive to the post office to drop off items that were purchased and need to get to customers.

“One of the perks we offer is if you have more than $75 in purchases, we offer free shipping,” Tucker said.

There are people who easily line that up because of construction projects they are working on, making sculpted pieces of art out of individual Lego bricks, which is a big hobby these days. Others add items to the cart to get to that exact amount.

But it’s when you’re looking at someone who is shopping for a lot of a specific color and have a chance to visit about the project that the duo really likes, as it builds those connections with fellow hobbyists.

“We still want to make a small amount of money doing this, so we’ve had to learn to price at what a set is worth when we sell it,” Hanna said.

One of the other things that is a challenge is conveying to customers when they ran out of an item or one they had listed is not in the drawer or location it is said to have been.

“For some of these people, that one brick is the one they were really searching for a set,” Tucker said.

And Lego has printed a lot of bricks in many different colors. Some of the shades are only slightly different from one another, so the duo have to make sure that they’re shipping the correct shade of blue for an item.

One of the big sales that Tucker and Hanna had success at locally was Rock 108’s Eastern Iowa Garage sale, where they could sell some of the sets and get their name out there about their BrickLinks store.

They’ve sold 20,000 individual pieces since opening, and more than 150 different sets.

The duo also know this small business wouldn’t be as successful without the help of their families and their involvement.

Hanna’s wife helps to sort the Lego pieces on occasion.

“She is in a lot of digital meetings, and sorting them gives her something to do with her hands,” Hanna said.

They all know if they need the help, their kids or spouses are willing to help out.

But as they’re getting more popular on their shop and leading into the holiday season, they have noticed the small business is taking up a little bit more time as they have more orders to fill.

They’ve also had some orders that have had postal journeys that took longer than expected or customers claiming damage that weren’t on orders.

Hanna is still a little upset about the one neutral review – an honest mistake where the wrong stormtrooper was sent with a set to a collector.

“Give us a chance to correct that issue first,” Hanna said. “Those reviews can hurt our shop.”

Both Hanna and Tucker admit they don’t build as much with Legos they have anymore.

“I have sets I’ve planned to build that I’m looking at and going ‘maybe its’ time to downsize,’” Hanna said.

The duo said that their busiest time was definitely the month leading up to May, with many sales of Star Wars sets before Star Wars Day and a lot of miniatures.

“We’re expecting things might get busier around now, too, with the holidays coming up,” Tucker said.

And the duo keeps eyes on marketplaces for sets they think they can resell.

“There’s a lot of people that love Lego in these areas, and we’re just happy to help so many of these sets find a connection with new owners,” Hanna said.

“It’s a lot of fun to help people build or reconnect to their love of this hobby,” Tucker said.

And the duo haven’t outlawed the idea of a storefront in the future, though that may still be a few more years down the road. You can find SnXBricks storefront at https://store.bricklink.com/SnXBricksLLC.