‘It’s here for you to play and have fun!’ Local man excited for opening of new LEGO store
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AMMON
Community invited to celebrate opening of Bricks & Minifigs LEGO store this weekend
AMMON – For Arthur Miner, owning a LEGO store is like stepping back in time and letting his inner child run wild.
The 41-year-old Shelley man and his wife, Gen, are the owners of Bricks & Minifigs at 3160 East 17th Street in Ammon. The business, which buys, sells and trades new and used LEGO, is the franchise’s first location in eastern Idaho. It opened Friday, but its official grand opening is Saturday, Feb. 24.
The store has quite an array of LEGO sets, mini-figures, individual LEGO pieces, and a special room for birthdays and other occasions for customers to play in. In the room is a track similar to a pinewood derby track where customers can race cars they build out of LEGO. Take a tour in the video above.
“We have it all,” Arthur tells EastIdahoNews.com. “Come on in and dig in the bulk bin. It’s here for you to play and have fun!”
One item Arthur is excited about is the ship-in-a-bottle LEGO set, which came out in 2018. It’s an item Arthur has in his personal collection, and its creator, Jacob Sadovich, lives in Idaho.
Sadovich says the idea for thatset came about after putting together an actual ship in a bottle. He’s loved LEGO for “as long as he can remember” and wanted to make a LEGO version.
“I thought about it for a year and a half before I actually tried it and I ended up building it,” Sadovich says.
It was a big hit when it came out, and Sadovich remembers attending a signing event at the mall in Salt Lake City.
Today, Sadovich is a LEGO artist. He declined to get specific about projects he’s working on, but he continues to be involved in creative projects.
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Like Sadovich, Arthur is also a serious LEGO fan. He started collecting them as a kid. In December, he told us his mom — who worked in a toy store — would often bring LEGO sets home.
That love of building things out of LEGO led to his initial career in masonry.
He started working as an insurance salesman when the recession happened in 2008. It’s a job that made a good living for his family for 13 years. During that time, playing with LEGO was still a creative outlet for him.
After turning 40 in 2022, he decided it was time for a change.
“Our midlife crisis was deciding we wanted to open a store to sell Arthur’s LEGO. We know there’s a really great brand out there called Bricks & Minifigs. We looked into it and found a spot in (Ammon) that was available,” Gen told us in December.
They’re excited for this new chapter and invite fellow LEGO fans to visit the store.
The Miners will kick off the grand opening with a ribbon-cutting Saturday morning at 9:30. LEGO sets will be given away as raffle prizes.
Bricks & Minifigs is open 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Saturday.
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