I was also surprised by this low number. Even if we go low and assume only a 10% profit margin on LEGO sets and assume the average LEGO set costs $46.31 (https://brickset.com/article/31370/a-decade-of-lego-in-graph...). And assume this set costs $1,000 for LEGO to produce (low economics of scale).
That means donating 600 sets will cost them the profit of selling:
(600 sets * $1,000) / (10% profit * $46.31 per normal LEGO set sold) = 129,562 LEGO sets.
(129,562 / 220,000,000) * 1 year = 0.0006 years ≈ 5 hours and 20 minutes of profits.
If I calculate my income over a 5 hours and 20 minutes period (based on dividing my monthly salary by working 36 hours per week), it would be equivalent to me donating €160 to a good cause. Not something I'd publish a proud blog post about.
> And assume this set costs $1,000 for LEGO to produce (low economics of scale)
This makes no sense unless you think they are making pieces that are only for this set which is almost certainly not the case considering others have posted rebrickable links for essentially the exact set[1]
I was assuming here that they need to create a build instruction, box etc. and ship all these out for only 600 sets instead of millions like normal sets.
Of course I have zero insight into LEGO's operational processes and logistics. Which is why I took numbers that would make LEGO look more generous than they probably are: low profit margin, high cost per MRI set.
That means donating 600 sets will cost them the profit of selling:
(600 sets * $1,000) / (10% profit * $46.31 per normal LEGO set sold) = 129,562 LEGO sets.
Assuming 220,000,000 sets sold per year (https://www.google.com/search?q=lego+set+sold+per+year, this number comes back a few times) this means LEGO donated:
(129,562 / 220,000,000) * 1 year = 0.0006 years ≈ 5 hours and 20 minutes of profits.
If I calculate my income over a 5 hours and 20 minutes period (based on dividing my monthly salary by working 36 hours per week), it would be equivalent to me donating €160 to a good cause. Not something I'd publish a proud blog post about.