A Goodwill in Pennsylvania just sold a rare 14-karat gold Lego piece for $18,101.
The piece, a small golden Kanohi Hau mask, comes from Lego’s now-discontinued Bionicle collection. It arrived at the Goodwill in Du Bois, Pennsylvania, last month inside a bag of jewelry.
“You wouldn’t think anything of it,” Chad Smith, the vice president of e-commerce and technology for Goodwill in North Central Pennsylvania, tells People’s Charna Flam. “It came in a little old-looking Lego box.”
Introduced in 2001, Lego’s Bionicle line ran for nine years, with a short revival in 2015 and 2016. While somewhat divisive, Bionicles gained a loyal fanbase. Known for their intricate backstories—the characters came from the fictional island of Mata Nui—they were closer to action figures than traditional Legos, and their ball-and-socket joints allowed for a wide range of movement.
Lego created just 30 golden Kanohi Hau masks, all released during a 2001 giveaway. In the Bionicle universe, the masks grant protective powers to the wearer, and the golden Kanohi Hau mask’s power is especially strong.
“There were 25 that were given away, and five remained for people who actually worked at Lego,” Smith tells CBS Pittsburgh’s Christopher DeRose. “So 23 years later, one of these resurfaces, and it’s really unique.”
However, Goodwill staffers didn’t know that when they first listed the mask on the thrift store’s online retail platform, pricing it at $14.95. Its value quickly became apparent: Soon after the listing went live, offers started pouring in.
“We didn’t know it was worth anything until people started asking if they could buy it for $1,000,” Smith tells WPVI-TV’s Sarah Bloomquist.
Staffers didn't know the mask was valuable until bids began pouring in. Shop Goodwill
In late February, Goodwill put the piece up for auction. One bidder offered $33,000 but ultimately failed to produce the funds. Smith tells USA Today’s Saman Shafiq that when the mask went back up on the site, he stayed up all night watching the sale and confirming that bids were legitimate.
After 48 bids, the golden Kanohi Hau mask sold for $18,101. The second-highest bid, at $18,100, was just a dollar short.
The one-inch-tall mask may be the most expensive Lego piece ever sold. The runner-up is a 14-karat solid gold Lego brick that went for $15,000 in 2020.
According to spokesperson Jessica Illuzzi, the funds from the auction will be used to support Goodwill.
“All of the money that we get from selling the item will go back into our mission,” Illuzzi tells USA Today. “It’ll help provide jobs and training opportunities, and everything else that our wonderful plant specialists do to build people’s competence and [give them] the skills that they need to succeed.”