What's happening with Bricks and Minifigs?!

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]So, I actually had a whole different video plan for today. I was going to sit down and walk you through how to get the most value out of your sets when you sell something at Bricks and Minifigs.

[00:00:08]Tips, tricks, what to bring, what to expect. I literally have this whole bin of sets that I was going to take into the store and film and show you guys the process. And I was pretty excited about it. Obviously, that video is now on pause. If you're even a little bit plugged into the LEGO community, you know that there is some drama going on and it has gotten really complicated really fast. I was not only a LEGO ambassador, but also someone who actually lives in Utah where Bricks and Minifigs is headquartered. And as someone who has both bought and sold with them before, I felt like I just couldn't stay quiet about it. And many of you have asked for my thoughts about it. So, we're going to talk about it today, including all of the factual stuff around what's going on, just in case you're a little bit out of the loop, or maybe you've heard about it, but you don't quite know what the deal is. And some of my thoughts about how we as a LEGO fan community can respond. So, a quick note before we get started, I am not a lawyer. Nothing in this video is legal advice. I'm going to be sharing with you guys some legal perspectives that I found online from people who are lawyers and who have dug a little bit deeper into this than I have. And I will point you to all of my sources for this down in the description, so you can check it out for yourself. Okay, so with that out of the way, let's dive into exactly what's going on with this story, in case you're a little bit out of the loop or don't quite know all of the facts around it. Brian Minshew and his dad spent over 15 years amassing a huge LEGO Star Wars collection. We're talking over 780 sets and over 1,200 minifigures that the family valued at around or over $200,000.

[00:01:23]The collection even reportedly included a sealed version of Cloud City, that's LEGO set number 10123, which on its own regularly sells online for over $10,000.

[00:01:33]So, this is a big, expensive collection.

[00:01:35]In 2023, Brian brought the collection to a Bricks and Minifigs franchise location in Keizer, Salem, Oregon with the plan to consign it. And the word consign here is really important. A consignment means that the store will sell everything on your behalf, but you keep ownership of those sets until they're sold. You get a cut of the sales, the store gets a cut, and everything that is unsold remains your property. According to the Salem Business Journal, the consignment was documented and inventoried with a spreadsheet of the sets, email records, and importantly, a return date for any unsold sets of January 31st, 2025. The original franchise owners, Crystal Loguerman and Benjamin Gorman, signed it, were working the consignments, and by all accounts, things were going smoothly. They paid Brian his share of the sales, they promoted the sales publicly, local news even covered it.

[00:02:17]There was apparently a line out the door for the unveiling. Then, in November 2024, things changed. BAM Corporate, BAM stands for Bricks and Minifigs, the franchiser behind the Bricks and Minifigs locations, which incidentally is headquartered about 30 minutes down the road for me in Orem, Utah, stepped in and removed the Gormans from that location. According to Crystal, they were removed from the store under threat of police action.

[00:02:39]They didn't even have time to complete a proper inventory. BAM Corporate says the Gormans owed around $200,000 worth of franchise obligations and were therefore in breach of their agreement. So, new operators came in to take over the location, Baker Bricks LLC, run by Joshua Johnson and Brandon Best. At this point, Brian Mansell's collection, the one on consignment, is still in the store. Now, according to Brian and his supporters, after the store changed hands, the identifying consignment tags on his items were removed, and the remaining inventory of his sets began to be sold without permission, without consent, and without paying Brian his share of the sales. When Brian tried to get his property back, he says that he was told he couldn't prove ownership.

[00:03:17]Brian eventually says he secured a default judgment in Oregon court.

[00:03:20]However, around the same time, that Bricks and Minifigs franchise location down. There's been a lot of speculation online that that was an intentional move to not have to pay the Mansells back their money. Now, here's where BAM's corporate response comes in. CEO Ammon McNeff and BAM Franchising have maintained several points publicly.

[00:03:37]First, they say that the consignment arrangement was unauthorized. They say that their franchise operations manual specifically prohibits consignment, requiring stores to only buy products outright, never lend, loan, consign, or pawn. Point number two, corporate was never party to the consignment agreement and didn't sign it. Number three, to the extent that Brian's property was still in the store, they claim that they offered to help return it. And then the majority may have already been sold by the previous owners before they took over. When it comes to the question of the shutdown of that Bricks & Minifigs franchise, BAM corporate maintains that it was a temporary shutdown because their local staff and employees were experiencing real world hazards including stalking, harassment, and even bomb threats. Unfortunately, it's really hard to pin down exactly what the timeline of all of this was with public records. So, whether the store's shutdown was a really shady move by Bricks & Minifigs or a legitimate response to safety concerns is really hard to say. BAM's official statement, and I'm paraphrasing here, basically says, "Any inventory that doesn't belong to us should go back to its rightful owner." CEO Adam McNeff publicly described the situation as genuinely regretful. However, and this is where it gets really messy, Crystal, remember the one who originally had the franchise and made the consignment deal in the first place, she disputes this unauthorized claim directly. She says no such prohibition existed in her franchise agreement. And she shared documentation that supports that. When the Salem Business Journal asked BAM to produce the documentation that prohibited consignment, it was not able to produce it at the time of their publication. BAM did later share an excerpt of an operating manual with the website Brick Fanatics, which does show that language.

[00:05:05]But Crystal disputed saying it wasn't applicable to her agreement.

[00:05:08]Additionally, BAM's own statements acknowledge that a corporate support employee verbally told the incoming operators that they would, quote, "Take on all that consignment liability during the store transitioning." But BAM is saying that that was an informal statement and not legally binding.

[00:05:23]Brian's supporters obviously see it differently. You with me so far? Enter Ben Schneider, known on YouTube as Reckless Ben. Ben picked up the Mansell story and published a multi-part video investigation into it. The original video crossed 2 million views. He launched a GoFundMe to help Brian cover legal costs, which has raised over $12,000 to force the dispute into court and to generate attention. He incorporated a business called We Steal from Old People using BAM branding. This was described as an attempt to provoke a legal response and create a public record. He then traveled to Utah to try to serve civil papers to Joshua Johnson, one of the individuals who took over that Salem Kaiser store. Johnson lives in American Fork, Utah, just up the road from Orem and just down the road from me. During that visit, Ben and his crew were stopped by the American Fork Police Department multiple times. He was ultimately arrested twice between March 8th and March 11th and charged with stalking, targeted residential picketing, criminal trespassing, and disorderly conduct. He was booked into the Utah County Jail. Ben has alleged that the American Fork Police Department was acting in coordination with Bricks in Miniature Figs and claims they targeted his team improperly. He made claims about religious affiliations and body cam footage that has circulated pretty widely online. The American Fork Police Department responded publicly releasing a 26-minute long video from Police Chief Cameron Paul. Their position is that their officers were responding to legitimate complaints from Johnson about repeated contact at his private residence, packages left at the door, signs placed nearby, multiple approaches, and that they were not acting in coordination with Bricks in Miniature Figs. Ben's court date is scheduled for June 8th, but he has reportedly stated that he fled to Mexico. American Fork Police Department has said there are no active warrants being pursued. BAM Corporate, for its part, has called Ben's campaign a coordinated viral extortion campaign and has filed a civil lawsuit against Ben for the videos, Brian, the original owner of the consignment, and others.

[00:07:08]So, that's the story so far. Again, I am not a lawyer and it is very possible that I got some details of that wrong, so this is all just what I've come to understand. But, I do want to share some of the legal perspectives that I found from other people who are more expert and closer to the case than I am because I think it really matters and is important for us as LEGO fans to understand what's happening. One legal analysis, which again I'll link in the description below, walks through a few things that I think are worth understanding. First, on consignment law. When you consign property, the store takes possession, but the ownership of the property is still yours. If a third party, including a franchiser that seizes a the takes control of the property and sells it without your consent, that can constitute what's legally called conversion, which is essentially civil theft of personal property. Importantly, this analysis claims that conversion can be pursued against BAM corporate directly, not just the franchise operators, because BAM corporate is the one who allegedly physically seized the store and its contents. Next, there's some analysis on franchise liability.

[00:08:02]BAM's standard defense is that franchise locations are independently owned and operated, so corporate can't be held responsible for franchisee conduct.

[00:08:09]Apparently, that defense does have some legal ground, but Oregon case law, specifically Viado versus Domino's Pizza, establishes that when a franchiser directly participates in the actions that caused harm, that shield can collapse. Whether BAM's role in that store transition meets the threshold for that case to apply is exactly what the courts would have to determine. The third important point I read in this analysis is regarding the leaked memo. A document which is described as an internal BAM crisis memo was leaked and analyzed publicly. It apparently instructed franchises to do a few things: use scripted responses, disable social media comments, and pursue a unified legal strategy across the network. The legal analysis points out that issuing a centralized directive to hundreds of franchises nationwide is in pretty clear conflict with the claim that you have no operational control over those same locations. None of these have been adjudicated in court, they are someone else's legal perspectives, but I just thought they were interesting to consider. With all of that understanding, we don't know where this is going to land. But there's one thing I keep coming back to. Bricks and Minifigs has over 300 locations. Most of them are franchises that are owned and operated by LEGO fans. People like you and me. People who saved up and bought into a franchise with the dream of making LEGO their job. And people who are, I would assume for the vast majority of cases, good people who are showing up every day and working hard trying to run a business. And right now, those owners are the ones I really feel bad for, because they're caught in the middle of something they had no role in.

[00:09:33]Something that happened at a different store with different people. Something that their overlords at corporate are doing is affecting their day-to-day lives. So, what do we do with this? On the one hand, if everything that is being said about what Bricks & Minifigs corporate did is true, that is infuriating to me, and I want to burn it all to the ground. But, on the other hand, I don't want to punish the individual store operators who are fans like you and me. Additionally, Bricks & Minifigs is a common sponsor of a lot of LEGO fan events. In fact, they're the main sponsors of BrickSlopes, which is the Salt Lake City LEGO fan convention, my personal favorite convention to go to. It's fair to ask the organizers of those events how they're feeling and what they're thinking about things.

[00:10:10]Maybe if they're taking any actions.

[00:10:12]But, again, those events are organized by hardcore LEGO fans, and I don't think we should punish those fan organizers for something that one of their sponsors may be doing. Look, this is a complicated situation, and I don't even really know how to wrap up this video because I don't really know how I feel about it yet, either. If you wish there was more you could do, the Mansells GoFundMe is still active. I will link to it below, and you can donate to it. The LEGO fan community can be so great. They will rally behind you. And I think it's important to remember who we're rallying behind and when. We obviously don't want anyone in our community to be taken advantage of, ever. And I am hopeful that with the public attention and the pressure on the courts, that things will work out. Obviously, I don't know, but I just have to hope that because there's nothing I can control about it. But, what I can control, and what I do plan on doing, is supporting the people directly in the community who are being affected by this. And I do think that that includes not just the Mansells, not just Ben, but also those local Bricks & Minifigs owners and employees, who the vast majority of which have not done anything wrong. So, anyway, that's where I'm at right now, and I don't know where this is all going to go. But, thank you for watching and trying to keep yourself informed. Stick around for, hopefully, what will next time be a bit more fun LEGO content. In the meantime, happy building. See you later.