Lego’s business cards are made of Lego—but not for long

Michael Renvillard was backstage at a New York City festival featuring Alicia Keys and Hugh Jackman when the longtime Lego representative noticed something odd. Strangers were bypassing celebrities and approaching him.

“They were wondering if I had one of those funny business cards,” he recalls.

Within minutes, he had emptied his pocket of a dozen or so tiny Lego figures designed to look like him—with his name and the company logo on the chest and his phone number and email on the back.

For years the Danish toy company has made customized minifigures for managers and other employees who deal with the public to use as business cards. Representatives of the Lego Group and Lego Foundation, for which Renvillard worked, handed them out at conferences and in meetings.

Obsessive Lego collectors, of course, began obsessing. Popular or rare versions of the tiny plastic employees can sell for as much as $1,000, according to some collectors. Renvillard’s was listed on eBay this month for $275.

Stefano Debreri, a collector from Rome with a day job in finance, says he keeps most of his roughly 150 employee minifigures in a glass display case at home. He isn’t in it for the money, he says. “I’m a romantic,” he explains. “I collect for my pleasure.”

Now, a little-noticed move in company headquarters is rocking this tiny collectibles market. Lego is moving away from the iconic plastic calling cards. Since last year, distribution of the minifigures has been limited to certain senior executives, a Lego Group spokesman said. He cited rapid growth in Lego’s workforce and a corresponding jump in employee requests for the cards.

“Continuing to make them available to all colleagues, who are already connecting digitally, became a substantial and complex use of company resources,” he said.

Among adult fans of Lego, who refer to themselves as AFOLs, employee minifigures are a niche interest. The collectors who focus on them often know each other personally, having met at fan conferences or traded the figures through online forums.

Most say they aren’t in competition, though many keep track of how their collections stack up. Jesper Andersen, a Danish Lego fan who believes he once had continental Europe’s largest collection, says he is looking to catch up after two rivals bested him while he was distracted with his family’s move to a new house.

“I’m hoping to get back in the game,” he says, acknowledging that it may be an uphill battle. One rival collector has friends who work at Lego, and the other is an employee himself.

Lego’s minifigures date to the 1970s, when the company first produced plastic figures with yellow heads, bendable arms, and legs made from traditional Lego bricks. Later, the design was updated, and the figures became so popular they are sold separately from Lego sets.

Employees say the company began turning them into business cards more than a decade ago. Staffers could order different styles, specifying facial expression and hairstyle. Some sport beards and glasses.

Jesper Vilstrup, a longtime Lego employee who left in 2022, says his raven-haired minifigure started drawing comments after his real hair began to gray. He didn’t change the hair, he says, but he once ordered a bigger smile. “I had a feeling I had the best job in the whole world, so why not have a business card where I look very happy,” he says.

Collectors give considerable thought to how best to approach an employee.

Some say they wait until a business card is offered because they don’t want to seem too eager or make an employee uncomfortable.

“I try to have a kind of connection,” says Lluís Gibert, a tech worker and lifelong Lego fan from Barcelona, Spain, who has about 100 employee minifigures.

Gibert says he snagged many of them during his years editing a Lego fan magazine, when he often interviewed company employees. Like other collectors, he says, he made a knockoff version to use as his own card—and for trading with Lego employees and other fans at Lego conventions.

Marc-André Bazergui, a Lego fan in Montreal, refers to his collection of about two dozen employee minifigures as his “mini Lego LinkedIn.”

One of his most prized is of former Lego Chief Executive Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen—a member of the family that controls the company—which he got at a fan event. When he lined up with other fans a year or two later to get another, he says, Kristiansen seemed to remember him. “He said, ‘You’re not getting another one,’ ” recalls Bazergui.

Debreri, the collector from Rome, says he once emailed about a dozen Lego employees to ask for their business cards. None responded directly, he says, though he did get a separate note from someone in Lego’s legal department asking him to stop contacting the company’s employees.

A few weeks later, he got a package in the mail with two employee figures. There was no note.

One British collector estimates he spent more than $100,000 buying roughly 500 of them in the secondary market. He stores them in a brick building in his garden that is equipped with security cameras.

In 2022, Lego moved to protect its intellectual property by informing the adult fan community they weren’t allowed to put their own logos, sometimes using printing shops, on the figurines.

Michael Friedrichs, a collector in Germany, says he retired his personalized minifigures after the policy change because he didn’t want to get into trouble or offend anyone.

Like many collectors, Friedrichs has family members who are mystified by his hobby. When his parents found out what the figures might be worth, he says, they advised him to cash in.

“Get the money and buy something better,” he says they told him. “Buy something cool.”

Write to Kim Mackrael at kim.mackrael@wsj.com