Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
We're chatting about the people, places, events, and flavors that make Johnson City, Tennessee a lovely place to live. An interview show hosted by Colin Johnson.
Proud member of the Maypop Media family of podcasts.
0:00:00 - (Colin Johnson): It is a beautiful August day here in Johnson City, and it was cool for a little bit, but it's hot again. I think they. Everybody was like, oh, pumpkin spice lattes are coming out. But I think Starbucks is in control of the weather almost. They, like, timed it perfectly or they. I don't know. They did something to make sure it was cold when pumpkin spice lattes came out, but it's now hot. And so we, we've got a few more weeks of summer ahead, but enough of that.
0:00:27 - (Colin Johnson): I'm excited because this guy works with some of my favorite toys ever, all time. And welcome to the podcast Greg Turner with get bricked Lego store.
0:00:39 - (Greg Turner): Hello.
0:00:40 - (Colin Johnson): Thanks for coming on the podcast.
0:00:42 - (Greg Turner): We're happy to be here, dude.
0:00:43 - (Colin Johnson): All right, so first things first, Johnson city living. What's your most favorite thing about Johnson city?
0:00:50 - (Greg Turner): Oh, man, there's not much traffic.
0:00:53 - (Colin Johnson): Amen. I got here.
0:00:55 - (Greg Turner): I was. I was in Asheville for 20 years before here.
0:00:57 - (Colin Johnson): I gotcha. Yes. I just left a friend's house I was looking to sell, and I was like, oh, no. I'm, like, running a little behind. It was about ten minutes to get here, and I got here in ten minutes.
0:01:07 - (Greg Turner): But no, I mean, honestly, Johnson City is just a great town. It's really starting to bustle and boom. I mean, about every building on Main street is getting rehabbed. Great for families. I mean, the parks here, I mean, you couldn't ask for more parks. There's got per capita, there's got to be more than most places in the state, I would say so, you know, just a clean, fun, nice, affordable place to live. Yeah, I mean, we love it here.
0:01:32 - (Colin Johnson): It is. It is awesome. How long have you lived here?
0:01:34 - (Greg Turner): So we moved up to unicorn in 2019. Okay. So we bought a house there, right in the town. I had been in Nashville for 20 years and spent the first 20 years of my life in upstate South Carolina in a small town. So we wanted to get back to a small town. Cost of living in Asheville just skyrocketed. The traffic, crime, et cetera, et cetera. So we've been down there, but my wife owns west main antique store, so we spend a lot of time in downtown. I've spent a lot of time in downtown for years.
0:02:01 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha. That's awesome. Awesome. And you've got. So your wife and you've got children as well?
0:02:07 - (Greg Turner): We have three boys. Yeah. So nine. Almost nine, almost eight and almost four.
0:02:12 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow. You got your hands full.
0:02:14 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, I love it.
0:02:16 - (Colin Johnson): I love it. Well, tell us about get bricked. Where'd this idea come from?
0:02:20 - (Greg Turner): Well, so I was big into Lego when I was a kid. I entered my dark ages, as we call it in my teen years. As you know, things change and you.
0:02:31 - (Colin Johnson): Want to play video games. Yes.
0:02:35 - (Greg Turner): So I was out of it for 20 something years. So the pandemic hit. Stuck at home, like a lot of people, but I had a gun on area, was having a yard sale. So I went, checked it out, was getting ready to leave, and I see a tub says Lego. How much? $10. I'll take it. So that reignited that from my childhood. I still had all my Lego sets at my grandmother's house, all still put together from my childhood. So retrieved all those, rebuilt all the sets out of the bin. It was all classic vintage pirate stuff, which is what I love.
0:03:09 - (Greg Turner): Sold it all on eBay for over $2,000.
0:03:11 - (Colin Johnson): Ho.
0:03:12 - (Greg Turner): Really good return. So it's like, I'm gonna dabble, I'm gonna dabble. You know, I'm not having to work right now. I'm stuck at home. I had four other retail stores. I've been in brick and mortar for 20 years, you know, but they're all shut down.
0:03:22 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:03:23 - (Greg Turner): So started dabbling, selling online, doing some Facebook live. Sales got out of hand pretty quickly. We couldn't get into two rooms in the house. One of them, you couldn't open the door more than twelve inches. It was about stacked 4ft high with a shipping boxes full of Lego, bulk tubs full of Lego.
0:03:42 - (Colin Johnson): So people were just. You were buying them?
0:03:44 - (Greg Turner): I was just buying and buying and buying and buying and buying, buying as much as I could buy. I don't. I just didn't stop. My wife finally kind of got to a point. She was like, hey, maybe start a business and get it out of the house. So fast forward to fall of last year. We signed a lease on a 1500 square foot space and opened basically the 1 December and we were off to the races and business took off beyond our expectations.
0:04:14 - (Greg Turner): So we realized within about three months we were going to outgrow that space. So yeah, when the space came available at 120, which is 4000 sqft, back at the 1 June, we jumped on it with no hesitation.
0:04:26 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's exciting.
0:04:28 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, it's been fun. It's been fun.
0:04:29 - (Colin Johnson): Now, have you been an entrepreneur at heart forever or.
0:04:33 - (Greg Turner): My entire life. I remember selling dumb, dumb lollipops in the first grade for $0.10. So that would have probably been my first business venture.
0:04:41 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:04:42 - (Greg Turner): Um, I was really big into wildlife and reptiles when I was early teens. I started breeding snakes.
0:04:48 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, cool.
0:04:48 - (Greg Turner): Um, got into breeding venomous snakes when I was about 14 years old.
0:04:52 - (Colin Johnson): Did you ever get bit?
0:04:53 - (Greg Turner): No, fortunately, I never had a few close calls. Um, almost got bit in the face. Cambridge rattlesnake. That would have been very bad bite. Um, got into wholesaling reptiles. So when I was 16, I was wholesaling reptiles to basically every pet store in upstate South Carolina.
0:05:09 - (Colin Johnson): Holy cow.
0:05:10 - (Greg Turner): Subsequently, I did not complete high school, but I've never looked back. Yeah, just. I've been an entrepreneur ever. I got into selling minerals and fossils about 20 years ago. I have four brick and mortar locations doing that. Used to travel the world pretty extensively before kids and Covid. Still do a few big trade shows and still travel here and there to some other countries when needed.
0:05:33 - (Colin Johnson): That's fun. You've got a good history.
0:05:35 - (Greg Turner): I love it.
0:05:36 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. So how did you say? All right, I'm going to get out of the mineral business and then.
0:05:40 - (Greg Turner): Still in the mineral business.
0:05:41 - (Colin Johnson): Are you still doing that? Okay.
0:05:42 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, I mean, like I said, four retail stores, we will be opening one up here in Johnson City this fall.
0:05:47 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, tell us about that.
0:05:48 - (Greg Turner): So in our space that we moved out of at 118 West Main, we're going to open up a mineral store. The name of that company is Cornerstone Minerals. So we specialize in minerals, fossils, silver, jewelry, everything from tumbled stones to home decor pieces. Collectors, we've sold to, I mean, British Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian, Chicago Field Museum. I mean, every pretty much major museum on the planet.
0:06:12 - (Greg Turner): And we'll also have natural history items like modern day skulls, mounted bugs, butterflies, insects, things of that nature as well. So that should be sometime in October. We'll have that up and running.
0:06:21 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:06:23 - (Greg Turner): We're excited about it. I think it'll go well.
0:06:24 - (Colin Johnson): And then your wife owns another store?
0:06:26 - (Greg Turner): My wife owns West Main antiques at 126 West Main, just next door to the Lego store. She's been 2018. She opened, if I recall. Okay. So a mix of her stuff and vendors and so, yeah, we've kind of got the block on lockdown over there.
0:06:42 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's great. That's great. We're good to know. Good people are down that way. Yeah, that's awesome. Tell us a little bit about the Lego store. Like. Okay, so, well, what do you guys offer?
0:06:53 - (Greg Turner): We specialize in new sets currently being sold by Lego. We are independent from Lego. We're an authorized reseller. But we are not a Lego store. Officially, you can't be one of those stores. But we're official Lego reseller. But we really specialize in vintage retired sets. We sell a lot of used but complete sets. We guarantee all of our complete sets. If we made a mistake, we make it right, replace the part, credit, whatever it be, loose minifigures, which is really popular, and then bulk bricks by the pound and then build your own minifigures. So we have a table compartmentalized and so you can pick your legs, your head, you know, your, your torso, et cetera, et cetera. So a lot of people come in, kind of build themselves or their significant other.
0:07:39 - (Greg Turner): Had one gentleman from Elizabeth, and he's a fire firefighter. And so he came in and built one for everybody in the crew.
0:07:44 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's fun.
0:07:45 - (Greg Turner): Yeah. So, you know, we've got a little bit of something for everybody. Whether you're looking for a Lego set from your childhood or you've got to have the new, new that just came out, you know, so it's kind of, it's, you know, the floor space area is a little over 3000 sqft, roughly. So it's a lot to choose to choose from and take a look around.
0:08:05 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. I think I grew up playing with Legos. First there was wooden blocks, you know, when you're a kid, and then you're, they're like, all right, we're going to transition you before you, after you can't, you know, they give you things you can't swallow. And later on I got, I got when I was 15. I'm just kidding. Yeah. So I loved building with Legos all the time. And I feel like they made, like when we were kids. I don't know how old you are.
0:08:31 - (Greg Turner): 46.
0:08:31 - (Colin Johnson): Okay, so I'm 51. We're right around the same. You almost had to, you had to kind of build stuff with squares and make your imagination had to work a little harder than it does now because you've got a lot of molded pieces and I don't know, maybe I'm a little bit.
0:08:44 - (Greg Turner): No, no. The, the amount and variety of parts now compared to, you know, 20 something, 30 something years ago has definitely expanded greatly. You know, a large set when I was a child was maybe 5600 pieces. Now, the Titanic, for instance, 9090 pieces.
0:09:02 - (Colin Johnson): Oh.
0:09:03 - (Greg Turner): So the complexity in the builds, the details has definitely, I mean, it's night and day.
0:09:10 - (Colin Johnson): It's crazy.
0:09:11 - (Greg Turner): It's night and day, right. But the, where they've gotten to and the minute details in these sets now are just, they're great. I mean, they're super cool. They're beautiful. I wish I had brought the camera if I'd known that we could have compared them, you know? Yeah, because they're almost identical, but. Yeah, but no, it really has changed. I mean, it's not a kid's toy, right. I mean, it's majority of my clientele. Are you 25 to 40 something year old men?
0:09:37 - (Greg Turner): I mean, that's the bulk of my business. They're like, hey, I like this stuff, you know? So, yeah, no, it's. It's definitely. Definitely a new horizon with Lego, I think.
0:09:46 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, I think it's been interesting to watch them continue to evolve and grow. Right. I mean, there are a lot of toys you can remember you played when you were a kid that aren't around anymore.
0:09:55 - (Greg Turner): No. And the great thing about Lego is the Lego brick made in 1968 will fit to the Lego brick made yesterday. I mean, they are completely compatible, you know, and they hold up. I mean, so few toys can stand the test of time, like, literally and physically as well. And Lego, they do a great job at that. They really do.
0:10:17 - (Colin Johnson): Do you have any tricks for those two four? Like, they've got eight dots on top. What do you call those?
0:10:23 - (Greg Turner): Like, if you're talking about a brick, a two x four brick.
0:10:26 - (Colin Johnson): Two x four brick. And there are two of them stuck together and they're, you know, your hands are kind of big. You're trying to get them apart and you don't want to scruff them up with like a little screwdriver. You got any tricks? And.
0:10:38 - (Greg Turner): Well, they have a tool called a brick separator there. I figured if anybody needs one, please come by and take one for free. I probably have 400 of them.
0:10:47 - (Colin Johnson): You heard it on the podcast. If you come by and mention the podcast, it will give you a free brick separation. Cause I remember just struggling.
0:10:56 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, some, you know, we don't recommend using your teeth, although children seem to, like, do that, but, you know, we don't recommend that. But yeah, the brick separator works pretty good for that.
0:11:06 - (Colin Johnson): Yes, yes. That was just one of my little pet peeve Legos. I love them. I think they're fantastic. Tell me, what's the biggest thing you've ever built?
0:11:15 - (Greg Turner): Oh, gosh. If you got the Taj Mahal, I can't remember the piece. Count 6000 maybe.
0:11:21 - (Colin Johnson): Holy shit.
0:11:21 - (Greg Turner): Off the top of my head, the Titanic we have. I did not build it. We purchased it built, but I had to rebuild the front end of it. It was not built correctly. So maybe a thousand plus pieces of that was rebuilt.
0:11:34 - (Colin Johnson): So you have that sitting there to come, like, look in your.
0:11:37 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, we have a lot of used sets that are built, and that's one thing we hear a lot of. I mean, you can go into an official Lego store and they'll have some sets. Yeah, but we actually have a lot of sets built out on display through the front window of display cases that run the link to the store. You know, we hear that a lot of people. This is really cool to see it built already. Yeah.
0:11:57 - (Colin Johnson): Cause you get the scale and see how it looks.
0:11:59 - (Greg Turner): We sell a lot of retired and vintage sets. These are things you'll never see at a Lego store anymore. I mean, the average shelf life for a Lego set is maybe two to three years.
0:12:08 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:12:08 - (Greg Turner): Little less if it's not popular, more if it's real popular. Every now and again, Lego will rerelease a set that's really popular.
0:12:15 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha.
0:12:16 - (Greg Turner): That's a handful of times that's happened to my knowledge.
0:12:19 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool. What's the coolest thing you think that you've built besides the Taj Mahal or coolest set they've got out now? Something like that.
0:12:28 - (Greg Turner): My favorite set from last year was the lighthouse. It stands about Jay tall. It's motorized as a light. The top that spins around house cabin attached to it lights up quick. Bill. Not a lot of pieces. Sure. A fun interactive set.
0:12:43 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:12:44 - (Greg Turner): For the last year, that's probably been my favorite. I mean, most people are really heavy. Star wars, that's like the number one theme. I'm not a huge, huge into Star Wars. I was when I was a child.
0:12:55 - (Colin Johnson): Me too.
0:12:56 - (Greg Turner): Kind of got out of that same. But, uh, so a lot of, you know, afouls. And afoul is a adult fan of Lego. Uh, we'd probably argue with me a lot about it, but I really honestly enjoy a lot of the vintage stuff and rebuilding the sets from my childhood. Yeah, that's what I like.
0:13:12 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:13:12 - (Greg Turner): They're simple, but. But beautifully well done.
0:13:15 - (Colin Johnson): That's super cool. I bet. Do your boys enjoy.
0:13:17 - (Greg Turner): Oh, God, they're all over. They enjoy it. They sneak a lot out the back door of the store. Sneak back in. You're like, we're a Lego family for sure. For sure.
0:13:29 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome. And I bet, you know, looking back, I remember playing legos or building stuff with my dad. Right. And so it's that it's not just you're putting together the Taj Mahal or airplane or whatever. It's just really quality time.
0:13:45 - (Greg Turner): They're great for family connection. They're great for brain stimulation. I mean, you know. Cause. Yes. One you can learn how to follow steps. Okay, that's great. I comes in handy in life. Two, you can just take the bricks and build whatever you want and use your imagination. Well, what's better than that? I mean, it's unbelievable. And you can tear it down and redo it again. You can build it better. You can do something completely different, you know, and the connection of family bonding time, my oldest especially, is just, he's up to it. He can spot a fake Lego brick or a fake Lego minifigure from a mile away. He can pick them up. That's a fake one. I don't want it. We have a role in our house.
0:14:21 - (Greg Turner): We don't allow fakes at all.
0:14:24 - (Colin Johnson): We do discriminate a little bit.
0:14:26 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, we discriminate on the, on the, on the flago, as we call it. But no, it's just a great call to toy, if you will. Product, whatever. I mean, hobby all the way around, in my opinion, you know, and, you know, we hear like, well, they're so expensive. Yes, okay. But they stay on the test of time and they last. You can hand them down generation after generation. So. And if you take care of your sets, if you keep all the parts and pieces, even a used set in enough time will typically sell for more than what it sold for brand new retail.
0:15:00 - (Greg Turner): It's just a waiting game is all it comes down to.
0:15:02 - (Colin Johnson): Is that because of the labor put into it? Are you building it or no?
0:15:06 - (Greg Turner): Like, collectability? So Lego Forbes named it two years in a row, the number one investment vehicle on the planet. Year over year, gains are higher than just about any stocks, unless you, like, have insider trader information. Typically, when a Lego set retires, it gains about $0.20 on the dollar immediately. And then depending on the set, can have a steady climb after that. There's no government regulations anywhere on the planet against Lego. So it's kind of like, yeah, so you have a lot of.
0:15:36 - (Greg Turner): We have a multiple markets. We have the kids market and the builders. We have the collectors, you know, and then we have the investment collectors.
0:15:45 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:15:46 - (Greg Turner): And then you have people that kind of float in and out of all those. Most people that collect for investment probably are builders as well. Gotcha. Problem you can run into is you buy a lot of Lego and you have a Lego closet and you don't get to build it. Then all of a sudden it retires and you go, well, I can't open the box now. It's worth double.
0:16:03 - (Colin Johnson): That was my next question.
0:16:04 - (Greg Turner): I run into that a lot.
0:16:05 - (Colin Johnson): Well, for the collectors out there. Yeah. Give us some tips and tricks. So you're saying that's more valuable unput together in the box?
0:16:13 - (Greg Turner): Of course. Sealed is always more valuable. I mean that with any type of, you know, item that can achieve more value than the less wear and tear, so to speak, it has. Gotcha. And it's a waiting game. Some themes, though, not so much Star wars. Great place. I mean, there was one gentleman. There's an app called Whatnot. It's like an auction ad. I don't know if you're familiar with it. And he's a former youtuber. Going to whatnot.
0:16:36 - (Greg Turner): Nope. Anywho, he sold another gentleman's collection. Had every single Star wars set ever made by Lego. It was a two day auction or three day auction, and I think the final number was around 300,000 in sales or something like that. Crazy. I mean, stuff was going for 50% higher than it was actually worth. It was a lot of bidding wars, but everything was immaculate. But we have Lego figures selling upwards of $10,000 now. I mean, I don't personally have any. I'd love to, but to understand that there are people that.
0:17:11 - (Colin Johnson): Really cool. Yeah.
0:17:12 - (Greg Turner): So spend this kind of money on abs plastic. At the end of the day, I was gonna ask. I have to laugh at it.
0:17:20 - (Colin Johnson): Like a gold. Yeah. Something.
0:17:21 - (Greg Turner): Well, there's a. There's a figure called Mister Gold. There was 10,000 made, sealed. One just sold recently for twelve grand, I think, at a Lego convention.
0:17:29 - (Colin Johnson): And this is just plastic or is it gold?
0:17:31 - (Greg Turner): It's just plastic with chrome. Gold. Chrome.
0:17:34 - (Colin Johnson): Just comb planet. That's awesome. Mister gold.
0:17:36 - (Greg Turner): Crazy.
0:17:37 - (Colin Johnson): So if you got a mister goal.
0:17:38 - (Greg Turner): If you got a mister gold, you literally have.
0:17:40 - (Colin Johnson): You got some gold.
0:17:41 - (Greg Turner): More than his weighting goal, it probably is.
0:17:44 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome. Yeah, I know. They keep coming out with more stuff. I keep getting surprised. Like, you're just like, how do you guys keep reinventing yourself? I mean, you know, it's like, at some point they're gonna. You think they would run out of stuff?
0:17:57 - (Greg Turner): Yeah. They put out way more sets than they ever used to. It's. It's. It's astronomical how many they put out now, given calendar year, because it's.
0:18:06 - (Colin Johnson): They're shipping it all over the world.
0:18:07 - (Greg Turner): And number one toy on the planet.
0:18:09 - (Colin Johnson): Number one.
0:18:11 - (Greg Turner): Number one selling toy on the planet.
0:18:12 - (Colin Johnson): That is cool.
0:18:13 - (Greg Turner): New, new. First north american production facility, I think, in 40 years is coming up here near Richmond.
0:18:19 - (Colin Johnson): Not really.
0:18:19 - (Greg Turner): Yeah. $4 billion investment.
0:18:21 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:18:21 - (Greg Turner): Completely renewable energy resource, everything.
0:18:24 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:18:25 - (Greg Turner): Yeah. Yeah.
0:18:25 - (Colin Johnson): Too bad. It's not over here in like, I know, gray or something.
0:18:28 - (Greg Turner): Wouldn't have been nice. Jonesboro. Yeah.
0:18:30 - (Colin Johnson): Telford. Lego bricks.
0:18:32 - (Greg Turner): Yeah.
0:18:32 - (Colin Johnson): Brick factory.
0:18:33 - (Greg Turner): That'd have been really good.
0:18:35 - (Colin Johnson): Well, at least it's close.
0:18:36 - (Greg Turner): It's close.
0:18:37 - (Colin Johnson): You run up there and just grab.
0:18:38 - (Greg Turner): A visit, you know?
0:18:39 - (Colin Johnson): It'll be worth a visit. Have you been to Legoland?
0:18:42 - (Greg Turner): We have a couple of times. We just recently went down this spring for spring break. I just took my two oldest by myself, which was quite fun. So we, we spent two days there this spring and had a blast.
0:18:55 - (Colin Johnson): Now they're building a Legoland too, on, on the universal studios, right. Or something like that.
0:19:00 - (Greg Turner): Well, there's a Legoland in Florida is the old Cypress gardens or one of the very gardens. Maybe it was like the first tourist thing in Florida down there in the fifties, I think. Cypress Garden. Anyways, so they have that one there. They have one in California.
0:19:19 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:19:19 - (Greg Turner): They have one in Denmark and Billen, which is Lego headquarters, Bill in Denmark and I think there's one in Germany, maybe a couple others. And then they have their discovery centers. The closest one's Atlanta.
0:19:31 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's where we.
0:19:32 - (Greg Turner): Not a big theme park where there's a more of a interactive.
0:19:36 - (Colin Johnson): We went there and it was cool.
0:19:37 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, I enjoyed that.
0:19:38 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that was fun. Are you a Lego movie fan?
0:19:42 - (Greg Turner): I've watched them all I've got. They're hysterical. They're funny, you know, I mean, they're well done.
0:19:47 - (Colin Johnson): You know, they are very well.
0:19:48 - (Greg Turner): Those kind of stem from stop motion filming was real popular with Lego figures. So that's kind of, you know, kind of a spin off of that.
0:19:56 - (Colin Johnson): So good. I mean, it's been so fun. Yeah, I think it'll be interesting to see where they continue. Oh, yeah, but you're saying invest in their stock because they're.
0:20:06 - (Greg Turner): Lego is not a publicly traded company, so you cannot. If you want to invest in Lego, you basically have to buy Lego and store they are. They never have been a publicly traded company.
0:20:16 - (Colin Johnson): So for some listeners are like, I want to get into Lego investing. What would you tell them to buy Star wars?
0:20:22 - (Greg Turner): Just don't open it.
0:20:23 - (Colin Johnson): Just keep it.
0:20:24 - (Greg Turner): Take care of it.
0:20:26 - (Colin Johnson): Put it in a nice tub, sealed up.
0:20:29 - (Greg Turner): You can wrap your sets. Storm on a shelf. The best way to store Lego boxes flat, not standing up. Storm standing up. Especially the larger sets. You can have what's called box bulge, where the bottom starts to push out unless you stack them tight and they cannot move. Don't drag your set off the shelf because what's called shelf wear. Creases is an issue.
0:20:49 - (Colin Johnson): Shelf wear, that's cool.
0:20:51 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, there's a lot of stuff on that. It does actually starting to grade Lego sets now. Like, they do, you know, Pokemon, baseball cards, et cetera, et cetera. So you can actually get stuff for the figures graded now, which will only make things go up more in the long run. And it's kind of. It's a split thing. A lot of people are like, oh, come on. They're a toy, right? Like, they're meant to be built and played.
0:21:15 - (Greg Turner): I know a gentleman through a line down in Florida that. That bottle, Mister Gold figure, sealed a few years ago and purposely opened it online just to piss people off. Cause he's like, they're toys. They're supposed to be playable. But the guy's really wealthy and he doesn't have kids, and he's like, whatever, I don't care.
0:21:29 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, we've got some friends. We collect bourbon and it's my SME drinks.
0:21:33 - (Greg Turner): Yeah. Yeah, right. You know, just what's, you know, what good is it just to have it if you're not gonna enjoy it? At least some of them, right? Oh, man.
0:21:39 - (Colin Johnson): Well, I wanna taste it. I'm like, what's that taste like? So that's part of it. So, okay, what would be, like, the next set to, like, Harry Potter after.
0:21:48 - (Greg Turner): Harry Potter is up there? Yeah. You know, the Star wars was the first license set or, you know, theme that Lego ever did. Prior to that, it was just their own designs, which they still do a lot of their own designs. Harry Potter is probably a close second.
0:22:04 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:22:07 - (Greg Turner): The botanical series they've been doing have been really popular, so a lot of them look very much like the real trees or flowers. Oh, that's plants. City line has been around for a long time. With Lego. It's a very popular theme, especially for young kids. You can buy your police station, ambulance, whatever, yada yada. The ideas line, which are things like, it looks like a typewriter. And ideas is a thing that. It's a fan submission.
0:22:33 - (Greg Turner): So you can submit your idea to Lego ideas website. If it receives enough, if it receives 10,000 votes within a timeframe, then basically Lego will take a look at it, decide if they want to put it in production as a physical set, they'll make their changes if they decide they want it, and then they'll release the set. So we have Lego ideas coming up soon. We'll have a buildable gizmo from the Gremlins, and we'll have a Goonies set as well, which will be kind of a neat thing. They did, like, an eighties theme I love. So those will be coming out next year sometimes.
0:23:03 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome. Have you submitted an idea?
0:23:06 - (Greg Turner): I've never submitted an idea.
0:23:07 - (Colin Johnson): If you were like, all right, I'm gonna approve it. What would you submit? Have you ever thought of anything that you like?
0:23:14 - (Greg Turner): I wish they made a. I like pirate stuff from my childhood. Okay. When I build my own stuff at home, it's typically related to pirate ships or some kind of an imperial soldier fort or castle. Like, castle stuff, too. So, you know, if I was going to do something, it'd probably be something along that lines, you know, I've never really thought about doing it. If you do do it, Lego doesn't make it. They own your design for three years, so you can't sell your. You could not sell your instructions online. There are some websites that you can do this through.
0:23:45 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, I gotcha.
0:23:47 - (Greg Turner): Kind of. I don't know, you know, like three years of the wild. You're gonna decline it.
0:23:52 - (Colin Johnson): I will start.
0:23:53 - (Greg Turner): I'm so busy, I don't seem to have the time.
0:23:55 - (Colin Johnson): Right, right. And you mentioned instructions, which was always fun to try and read those things. Cause you're like, is that a two block? And am I stuck in the right spot or not? But I'm sure they've gotten a lot better with that now.
0:24:04 - (Greg Turner): So, instruction. When I was a child, here's your bricks, here's your instruction booklet. Look at the picture. See what brick they added. Now it's by numbered bags going through whatever. And every piece in the picture is highlighted now. So it makes building a lot easier.
0:24:21 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:24:22 - (Greg Turner): I tend to still like to build old school. Just open all the bags and dump them in a box and build it. Because that was kind of part of the fun. It also slows the build process.
0:24:31 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:24:31 - (Greg Turner): So you're not speed building. I don't know. I like to take bucks with it. I usually, being that I have three young kids, it's rare I have the time to sit down and build outside of at the store, something I want to build. So we did the jaw set recently, and I let my oldest do the shark. I did the boat. We still haven't built the platform, but I built the boat over, like, four nights just because I couldn't sit down and do it all at once.
0:24:53 - (Colin Johnson): That's funny. Yeah. And tell us anything else about the store that you. That we haven't.
0:25:00 - (Greg Turner): So we're coming about mid October. We are opening in a birthday party event room. That's available to rent out. That's going to be really fun. We wanted to have it in our first store. And the room that was there was just not adequate for, you know, like ten or twelve kids and their parents or whatever. So now in the new space, the room is there. We just got to do the painting and the floor. It's about 330 sqft.
0:25:24 - (Greg Turner): We're minimum twelve kids. We could always hold. We're going to. Each birthday kid will get a free build their own minifigure to take home. We'll handle all the cleanup and there'll be a. We're getting a. It's basically a Lego Pinewood derby track.
0:25:40 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, man.
0:25:40 - (Greg Turner): So the kids will be able to build their own car and race them down the tracks. And the winter will get a little something. And these. These are chassis specifically made to run on a Pinewood Derby track. But you can build Lego on Papa.
0:25:51 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's fun.
0:25:52 - (Greg Turner): So that'll be a kind of a fun thing. And we might. It's a mobile thing. So we might look to doing some city events. We're going to actually be doing the new Johnson City days festival coming up in October. So we will have a booth at that with a build your own minifigure station and some other stuff in that. So that I think it'd be fun thing. Little inaugural festival to give it a shot.
0:26:09 - (Colin Johnson): That'd be fun. Yeah.
0:26:10 - (Greg Turner): But we're. We're excited about the birthday party. Oh, man.
0:26:13 - (Colin Johnson): Could you imagine if we had an opportunity to have a Lego birthday party?
0:26:16 - (Greg Turner): Oh, I know. It'd have been great. It would have been awesome. I think we went to McDonald's.
0:26:20 - (Colin Johnson): Yes, I did. McDonald's. Yep. I had like a hamburger cake or something.
0:26:24 - (Greg Turner): I had to look at grimace on the playground or something. Yeah, right?
0:26:26 - (Colin Johnson): Yes. Gotta get on the seesaw. We get to go on.
0:26:29 - (Greg Turner): See.
0:26:30 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's cool.
0:26:31 - (Greg Turner): So, yeah, we're excited about that. And, you know, we. We always have new stuff coming in. I mean, we. We buy a lot of collections. We're buying from a former Lego employee 2000 set collection and stages. So we've always got something fresh coming in from him. Um, yeah, we just. We're just having fun with it. This is a hobby business. This was not living on. I have another business. I do that with this Washington. This was a get it out of the house. Make the. Make the wife happy.
0:27:01 - (Colin Johnson): Yes, sir.
0:27:02 - (Greg Turner): And, you know, just kind of have fun with it, you know, so something for the community, really.
0:27:06 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome.
0:27:07 - (Greg Turner): And we're looking to start some more community of build events and stuff like that. So that'll be fun. So, yeah. If anybody's got any ideas, let us know.
0:27:13 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Yeah. How can they connect with you online?
0:27:16 - (Greg Turner): Um, you can find us on Instagram. Get underscore brick. Underscore JC. I know, it's crazy. I couldn't get. Just get brick. And then on Facebook, it get bricked JC. You can also give us a call at the store. You can find us on Google Maps, et cetera, et cetera. We do have our domain page, but we just don't have a website up and running yet. 20 years of being in brick and mortar. You can probably tell I like to talk, so I really like the personal interaction.
0:27:43 - (Greg Turner): I'll never focus heavy on Internet sales. It'll pretty much be in person.
0:27:49 - (Colin Johnson): I think that's just what AI can never change, right?
0:27:54 - (Greg Turner): Yeah. Nothing scares me.
0:27:57 - (Colin Johnson): No. Yeah. Right. And how much fun would it be? Oh, here's a. I've got an AI robot to build your set for you. You know, it might be cool to watch it, but that's about it. It's not gonna be. Yeah. Fun. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to see your store sometime in your downtown. What? Which one of your. All right, let's jump. Pivot a little bit, because you're a downtown Johnson city store owner and your wife, what do you guys love most about downtown Johnson City?
0:28:23 - (Greg Turner): It's easy to get around. It's easy to park, especially where we're located. I mean, we have the pavilion, we have the park lot. Across the pavilion. We have another big parking lot next to the bus station. You know, there's, there's. It's. The downtown is growing. I mean, after 20 years in Asheville, I've had my plethora of fancy restaurants and tons of retail and yada, yada, yada in the headaches that come along with it. Not to knock Asheville, but, you know, this is a quaint, nice, easy to walk downtown.
0:28:52 - (Greg Turner): That's really growing. I mean, you live here, you know, there's a lot of people moving here. I mean, it's. It's. This area is changed in five years. And. And that's okay, let them come. Just let's. Let's keep what we have, what we want, right. And what we have, and not change it to make it look like here. Because that's what you remember. Let's make it our own. And it's nice. We're. We're independent businesses downtown. You know, there's no corporations downtown. And, you know, I feel still kind of like that as well. But there's very few cities in this country where you don't see a Starbucks. I don't care how small the city is. Oh, yeah, they're about everywhere, and, yeah, you can find them, but, you know.
0:29:32 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, the restaurants are great, the coffee shops. We've got more and more retail starting to come.
0:29:36 - (Colin Johnson): Favorite coffee shop downtown.
0:29:37 - (Greg Turner): I'm sorry?
0:29:38 - (Colin Johnson): Favorite coffee shop.
0:29:39 - (Greg Turner): Favorite coffee shop. I'll be honest, I drink at home. I very. I told somebody today, I think this is the first coffee I've bought out of the house in two years.
0:29:48 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:29:49 - (Greg Turner): I just drink a half a pot more, and I'm kind of done.
0:29:54 - (Colin Johnson): That cost me $20. But if I.
0:29:56 - (Greg Turner): But downtown, I like open doors, and els got us.
0:29:58 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:29:59 - (Greg Turner): If I'm one of those.
0:29:59 - (Colin Johnson): Yep, those are two good ones. Some restaurants you like downtown?
0:30:03 - (Greg Turner): Um, not in downtown, but Mela is a favorite of mine. Uh, for lunch. Frybergs. I mean, you can't get a better deal for lunch.
0:30:11 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, my gosh.
0:30:12 - (Greg Turner): The, um, Mulligan's pop. Actually, their fish and chips are out of this world.
0:30:16 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:30:16 - (Greg Turner): Um, the. Was it one c. Ow is good like them. The. Gosh, my brain's not working right now. The barbecue joint.
0:30:25 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, southern craft.
0:30:27 - (Greg Turner): Southern craft. So, yeah, we.
0:30:30 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, a lot of options now.
0:30:31 - (Greg Turner): There's a lot of options. I mean, it's in there good. You know, it's. If they're not. They're not going to make it. That's a tough business. My family was in that business. If.
0:30:41 - (Colin Johnson): If you're not any good, you don't.
0:30:42 - (Greg Turner): Know what you're doing in that business, and your food's not good and consistent, you won't be around. For sure.
0:30:48 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, for sure. Okay, so, again, how do we connect.
0:30:54 - (Greg Turner): With you online or so you can find me on Instagram, get Brick JC. Underscore between get Brick and JC, and then get Brick JC on Facebook.
0:31:02 - (Colin Johnson): And then come by the store.
0:31:04 - (Greg Turner): Or come by the store. 120 West Main street. We're open seven days a week. We're, you know, come in, take a look around. We have a little small kids table for them to build Lego free of charge. Come build your own minifigure. You don't have to buy it. Just come have fun. We've got a lot of people that will come in and kill an hour. We don't mind at all. My staff is great. They love the kids, too. They're all young, and I don't have kids. But me being a family man, we love children and we love people of all ages, kids, little kids.
0:31:32 - (Greg Turner): We've sold to three year olds. And I think our oldest customer that bought from themselves was like 95. Four. So, yeah, we.
0:31:40 - (Colin Johnson): 94.
0:31:41 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, we sell to all ages and we've got something for everybody. I mean, you can spend $5 or you could spend over a thousand on one set if you'd like. It's kind of whatever you're looking for. We have something for every budget.
0:31:53 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Well, that's what I always thought was cool about it. You can buy a little set or a big one.
0:31:57 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, yeah. You know, we don't want anybody to come and go. Oh, I can't afford anything.
0:32:00 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, we have for years. We would always get our. When the boys would go to different birthday parties. Right. We'd always buy a Lego set because it was just something fun. You knew they're gonna. It's. They're not on screens. It's just.
0:32:15 - (Greg Turner): It's a good thing to keep them occupied with. It is, you know, it really is.
0:32:19 - (Colin Johnson): Engages your imagination.
0:32:20 - (Greg Turner): As long as they'll clean it up. They can be rough on the feet in the middle of the night.
0:32:24 - (Colin Johnson): They can be rough on the feet in the middle of the night. You're like, well, it's a movie where you had that. They were like, oh, you had to walk across like, you know, that was hilarious. It was hilarious. Well, anything I forgot to ask you that you wish I had on. On the podcast?
0:32:39 - (Greg Turner): No, I think we kind of covered everything. Just. Just come see us. Come have fun. Come enjoy the space.
0:32:44 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, man.
0:32:45 - (Greg Turner): We're having fun with it. We want the customers to have fun with it, the community to have fun with it, and, you know, and we're going to try to keep going above and beyond. You know. I don't plan on moving anytime soon. I hope not.
0:33:01 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Now, are you shipping a lot of stuff out, out of town, too?
0:33:05 - (Greg Turner): A little bit worse. Looking to start doing some of the whatnot auctions with minifigures.
0:33:09 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:33:10 - (Greg Turner): But again, I mean, I'll ship anything for anybody. So if you follow me online, you see it, I've got 20 years of shipping minerals. I can ship the most fragile thing on this planet and make sure it arrives intact. So Legos are very easy. Yeah, I'm a over pack my boxes. I do pack better than Lego does a lot of damage. Boxes from Lego. But, yeah, no, we definitely. If you see us online, Instagram, you see something posted, just let us know. We can more than happy to get a shipping quote and send it out to you.
0:33:40 - (Colin Johnson): I'm excited to save to come check it out. What's the one thing that gets you super fired up? Doesn't have to be Legos. It could be fall, could be whatever. Oh, or it might be Legos. I don't know.
0:33:53 - (Greg Turner): I think for me, it's the high, it's the treasure, it's the finding. It might be Lego. Well, for instance, yesterday with Lego, there's a part I've been looking for. I haven't wanted to pay the money because it's dollar 50. It's a feather. That's like 4 mm. It's in one set. I don't want to pay dollar 50 to complete the set that I've had for years. I was looking through a bull clod I had bought, and lo and behold, there's the feathers. Like black gold. Black gold is a little black feather. It's black, golden and as stupid as that base.
0:34:23 - (Greg Turner): I was so excited because I've been looking for it for four years, since I got back into Lego. And I'm like, eventually it'll. I'll find one.
0:34:30 - (Colin Johnson): That's like the missing puzzle.
0:34:31 - (Greg Turner): There it was.
0:34:32 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome.
0:34:32 - (Greg Turner): But it's. It's kind of like the hunt that, you know, with the minerals. I used to. I've been to some crazy places looking for minerals. Places where they had not seen, you know, in South America, green go as much at all or ever or in years. So it's like finding that treasure, that needle in the haystack. I think the hunt, you know, after the hunt, the thrill is gone. Right? I agree. So it's like on to the next thing.
0:34:55 - (Colin Johnson): Yes.
0:34:56 - (Greg Turner): But the biggest thing about, like, my family, my kids.
0:34:58 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, man.
0:34:59 - (Greg Turner): That's what gets me up in the morning. That's what keeps me going. I mean, the number one thing, you know, is that for sure.
0:35:04 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. Well, I think you guys should definitely go to get bricked and meet Greg. He seems like a super good dude. And so thank you guys for listening. Thanks for learning about Legos with us. And I'm sure you got a set somewhere. Go dig it out of the closet.
0:35:21 - (Greg Turner): Yeah, dust it off.
0:35:23 - (Colin Johnson): Go play with it. Any tips and tricks for, like, cleaning Lego storing dish. So little dish.
0:35:29 - (Greg Turner): They're pretty indestructible. I mean, sunlight's not good for them. Outside of that, pretty much about anything.
0:35:35 - (Colin Johnson): Then you can get a faded set.
0:35:36 - (Greg Turner): You can get yellowing, as we call it. That's right.
0:35:39 - (Colin Johnson): That's right. I got these vintage yellow ones. Maybe not maybe. Well, thank you guys for listening. I've enjoyed this conversation so much. And if you're looking to move to Johnson City and you want to meet Greg, reach out. I'd love to help you buy a home here or sell a home and upgrade or invest in real estate. We do a ton of that, too, and a ton of property management. So if you're wanting to build wealth, we'd love to help you with that. Until next time, I'm Colin Johnson with the Colin and Carter group, and have a great day.