Built by a papa.
Papa is where the name comes from. I've been a huge LEGO fan since I was young — this is how a box of childhood bricks, a toddler and one argument with my wife turned into one of Australia's biggest BrickLink stores.
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The early years
Hooked from the start
I played with LEGO all through primary school, and got into Technic in 1996.
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Papa mode
A familiar toy
Fast forward to getting married and having my first child. I bought my son lots of toys, but then I came across a familiar one: LEGO. I started buying LEGO for him, and when I told my mum, she found my childhood LEGO and sent it over.
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The CMF era
Wait — this is for me
I kept buying sets for my son, until one day I noticed I was looking at LEGO for myself. Before long I was buying sets of my own, even watching tutorials on how to feel CMF bags to find the minifigures I wanted.
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The sealed-set phase
"These go up in value!"
It escalated quickly, and soon I was buying sets to keep sealed. My wife told me to stop buying so much LEGO, but I said they go up in value. Her reply changed everything…
"If you don't sell them, the value hasn't actually gone up."
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2020
Redundant, not done
Then COVID-19 hit and I was made redundant, so I began selling parts of my collection. Around that time I found Pop's Block Shop on YouTube, watched hours of his videos, and opened my BrickLink store in September 2020.
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Today
The rest is history
More than a million items later, Gold Coast Papabricks is a top-10 BrickLink store in Australia — still packed by hand, one order at a time.
Proved her wrong.
Sorry, love. Here's what "just selling a few sets" turned into.