On Thursday 17 September, Vectis Auctions in Thornaby holds its LEGO & Construction Toys sale — and 36 of the lots come from one collector. Nick Saunders has spent years building a Star Wars-heavy LEGO collection that includes three of the largest Ultimate Collector Series sets ever released and a full-size former BRICKLIVE cockpit he rebuilt into a working retro arcade simulator. He is selling all of it to help fund further IVF treatment for his family.
It is our Auction of the Week, and it stays on the Auction Eagle homepage until the hammer falls.
What’s in the sale?
The headline lots are the kind of sets that rarely come up built, boxed and from a single owner:
- Lot 215 — UCS Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser (75367). The Clone Wars flagship at 5,374 pieces, and still one of the largest Star Wars sets LEGO has made.
- Lot 217 — UCS Imperial Star Destroyer (75252). 4,784 pieces and well over a metre long; the set most collectors run out of shelf for.
- Lot 226 — UCS Millennium Falcon (75192). At 7,541 pieces the biggest of the three and, for many, the definitive LEGO Star Wars set.
- Lot 227 — the BRICKLIVE cockpit. See below. There is nothing else like it in the catalogue.
Elsewhere in Nick’s lots look for the Executor Super Star Destroyer (Lot 202), Slave I (Lot 220) and the UCS TIE Fighter (Lot 223), alongside a run of minifigures. The full sale runs to many more lots from other vendors, so anyone hunting toys and models at auction has a long catalogue to work through.
The cockpit (Lot 227)
The most unusual piece in the collection started life as a BRICKLIVE / Robson Kay show display. Nick bought it at auction and restored it into a working retro arcade simulator: a Samsung main screen and centre LCD, LED lighting, a Raspberry Pi running the games, proper arcade controls, aircraft-style seats and the backdrop — all of it forming part of the lot. It is a full-size build, so the winning bidder will want a van and a plan.
Why it’s being sold
Nick and his wife have been open about their fertility journey. NHS-funded IVF gave them their son; the further treatment they hope for has to be paid for privately, and that is what the collection is going towards. The story has run in PEOPLE, the Daily Express, the Manchester Evening News and Stockport Nub News. Nick’s reason for talking about it is a simple one: infertility can be an isolating experience, and hearing other people talk about it makes it feel a little less so. He would rather the bricks did the talking here, so we will leave it at that — other than to say we hope every lot flies.
How to bid
The sale takes place on Thursday 17 September from 9.30am at Vectis in Thornaby, Stockton-on-Tees (North Yorkshire), with live online bidding through Vectis’s own platform. Register ahead of the day rather than on the morning, and read the Vectis catalogue for condition notes, estimates and the buyer’s terms — if you are new to this, our guide to the buyer’s premium explains what gets added to the hammer price.
You can follow the sale on Auction Eagle here: LEGO & Construction Toys at Vectis, 17 September. Good luck, Nick.
