#pickabrick

For those of us in North America who order from LEGO's online Pick-A-Brick selection, the current political situation in the United States has made our LEGO lives that much more complicated. The text from the screenshot is transcribed below and several of the facebook comments had people just saying they would switch to BrickLink, but I don't think that will solve the issue for several reasons. Firstly, BrickLink's website is about to be completely switched over to LEGO, with LEGO and BrickLink accounts merging in September. None of us really know what that's going to look like or what that's going to mean. Secondly, with all postal carriers including the United States Postal Service (USPS), DHL, the Royal Mail, and the French and Spanish national post offices stopping international shipping into the United States, it's possible all LEGO products will become more expensive and more difficult to acquire in the United States. Sources: https://www.newelementary.com/2025/08/pick-brick-standard-bricks-service.html https://www.npr.org/2025/08/23/nx-s1-5513936/dhl-parcel-tariffs The transcript for this screenshot from New Elementary's facebook post dated 25 August 2025 reads:

Today, thousands of Standard elements have been removed from sale on PaB in the US and Canada, and it seems the root cause might be the changes to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration.

On both the North American PaB stores, "Standard" elements are those stored in and shipped from the European warehouse, while "Bestseller" elements are in the USA. (For the rest of the world, there is no such distinction – everything comes from Europe.)

The Trump government have suspended something called the De Minimis exemption, where packages with a value less than US$800 can enter without paying customs, duties or taxes. Tariffs have to be paid prior to arrival, and it's up to the postage carriers to ensure this happens. As a result, postage carriers in Denmark and other countries are suspending all deliveries there, because of the short window given to them by the US to alter their business practices before this comes into effect on 29 August 2025.

We have not had any official statement from The LEGO Group as yet about how this affects customers, however thousands of Standard elements have been removed from the US & CA PaB services today and we suspect they'll all be gone in the next few hours. New Elementary do NOT recommend you try purchasing before they disappear, given the unpredictability of the situation.

Regrettably the same applies in Canada: obviously this is not a case of Canadian tariffs however. Presumably the whole PaB stock management system is geared towards treating North America as a single entity? After all, who could have predicted they'd need to treat one country so differently, at such short notice!

The rest of the world is not affected by this issue. About 350 elements have been removed from PaB sites in the rest of the world today, but apparently these are simply out of stock rather than due to any unusual problem.