New Kansas City area Lego shop offers joy, nostalgia and a mountain of bricks
With a discerning eye, Cortney Frazon picks through one of the heaping piles of Lego bricks and pieces at the center of her Lee’s Summit store and picks out a hidden imposter. The tiny piece at first glance appears to be Lego, but a closer look reveals it to be off-brand. Off it goes to the Bin of Shame with the other pretenders.
Her store’s large and ever-evolving bulk area is made up of pieces that come from old collections that previous owners have decided to pass on. After the pieces are cleaned and freshened up, they’re put back up for sale.
“People like to just dig through,” Frazon said. “Even if the piece is 20 years old, it still fits.”
Frazon’s Bricks & Minfigs location, which opened at the end of last year at 1201 NE Rice Road, offers a wide variety of all things Lego. Patrons can buy and sell sets, both old and new, shop for individual mini-figures and other pieces and sift through the bulk area, which might just have the exact piece a customer is looking for. The store has a rentable party room too.
One wall features shelves loaded with already-built, used sets. Here, the Concorde airliner and R2-D2 from “Star Wars” are for sale, there the Space Shuttle Discovery and the McCallister house from “Home Alone” can be snatched up.
“I get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing people get excited about sets,” Frazon said. “You’ll see it with little kids, but you see it from grown people who are so excited that they just got a new Star Wars set. Everyone says, ‘Oh, I’m in the business to make people happy,’ but I really did not expect seeing people happy would make me so happy.”
Frazon initially wanted to open a toy store, and after she and her husband fell hard into Lego during the pandemic, they decided there might be a business opportunity in the bricks.
“Eventually, I got sick of working for other people and just said, ‘Screw it. I’m going to do this,’” she said.
While researching the market, she found Bricks & Minifigs, a popular Lego resale franchise with a swath of locations across the United States and Canada. The Lee’s Summit store is the second franchise location in the Kansas City metro, alongside a Mission store. Other locations are planned in Overland Park and Lawrence.
Frazon immersed herself in the group’s training before opening her doors in September and kicking off business in earnest with a grand opening in late November. Alongside the Lego shop, she also juggles her duties serving in the National Guard and being a mother to her 9-month-old, who comes to work with her almost every day.
“A lot of people are really happy we’re in the community, that they don’t have to drive all the way to Overland Park or Kansas to get their Lego,” she said of the store. “Kids love it, of course.”
This story was originally published February 7, 2026 at 6:00 AM.
