Every LEGO Star Wars Exclusive at New York Comic Con
Every LEGO Star Wars Exclusive at New York Comic Con
Two sets, five years apart — and each one quietly became the most coveted of its kind.
A complete accounting of every LEGO Star Wars exclusive from New York Comic Con: the 2012 Luke’s Landspeeder that became the most valuable tin of its trilogy, and the 2017 Carbonite BrickHeadz that launched an entire range — and could only be won in a lottery.
New York Comic Con has the shortest LEGO Star Wars exclusive list of any major convention this collection covers — just two sets, released five years apart. But neither is a minor entry. In both cases, NYCC served as the New York leg of a release that spanned multiple events, and in both cases the version that landed in New York turned out to be the one collectors would chase hardest. A two-item event has no business punching this far above its weight, and yet here we are.
The Event
New York Comic Con is the largest fan convention on the East Coast, held each October at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Unlike the New York Toy Fair, it is a public, fan-facing show — closer in spirit to San Diego Comic-Con, which is exactly the model LEGO followed here. In both years it appeared, LEGO brought a single Star Wars exclusive and tied it to a release also running at other 2017 and 2012 events, making NYCC one stop on a larger circuit rather than a source of one-off items.
2012: Luke Skywalker’s Mini Landspeeder
New York Comic Con 2012 ran October 11–14, with a preview night on the 10th, and LEGO’s exclusive was Luke Skywalker’s Mini Landspeeder — a small build in a printed cylindrical tin. It was the third entry in the 2012 tin trilogy, sharing its format, $40 price, and 1,000-unit run with the San Diego Sith Infiltrator tin from three months earlier and the Star Wars Celebration Slave I tin. Distribution mirrored San Diego’s: 200 per day, first-come first-served, plus 200 on preview night, with a limit of two per transaction. Each tin was individually numbered, and this collection holds two sealed examples.
What separates the Landspeeder from its two siblings is the minifigure inside. Its Luke Skywalker is unique to this set and has never appeared in any retail release — and that single detail is why the NYCC tin commands a significantly higher secondary-market value than either the San Diego or Celebration tin. Of the three 2012 tins, this is the one to own.
2017: Boba Fett & Han Solo in Carbonite BrickHeadz
Five years later, NYCC 2017 (October 5–8, again at the Javits Center) delivered the more historically significant of the two: Boba Fett & Han Solo in Carbonite (41498), the first-ever LEGO Star Wars BrickHeadz. It predated the entire retail Star Wars BrickHeadz line that followed, came in premium slip-cased packaging with multiple printed elements unique to the set, and was the NYCC entry in LEGO’s 2017 run of convention BrickHeadz — alongside the Marvel and DC pairs at San Diego and the Detention Block Rescue at Celebration.
Getting one was its own ordeal. Access ran through a pre-convention online lottery that closed on September 28, before the show even opened; winners could then buy the set at the LEGO booth for $40. 5,000 were produced and individually numbered, and the set retired within three days. Designer Marcos Bessa was on hand to sign copies — the example in this collection, number 3026 of 5000, carries his signature on the back of the slipcase. Making the debut of an entire range a lottery-gated convention exclusive generated no small amount of collector frustration at the time, which only sharpened its standing afterward.
What Makes NYCC Different
The pattern across both years is consistent: New York Comic Con was never given its own standalone concept, but rather the New York stop on a release that was already touring other events. And yet both times, the New York version became the standout — the most valuable tin of the 2012 trilogy, and the set that launched Star Wars BrickHeadz. For an event with only two entries, that is a remarkable hit rate.
What We Don’t Know
- Whether the run truly ends at two — no LEGO Star Wars NYCC exclusive has surfaced beyond the 2012 Landspeeder and the 2017 BrickHeadz, but the convention continues, so a future entry isn’t off the table.
- The 2017 lottery scale — how many people entered the pre-convention lottery for the 5,000 sets has never been published.
Documented item by item from the collection. Production figures are confirmed by the individual numbering on each set. Each is covered in full in its own article, linked above.
