Republicattak's LEGO Collection Theft

Submission 25,037

Part of a series on LEGO. [View Related Entries]

Overview

Republicattak's LEGO Collection Theft refers to the robbery of LEGO vlogger republicattak's LEGO collection, which had an estimated value of $18,000, leading to his shuddering his YouTube channel.

Background

On October 5th, 2018, YouTuber republicattak posted a video entitled "Bye." In the video, he explains that he would no longer vlogging about LEGOs because his collection of LEGOs had been stolen. The video received more than 744,000 views in three days.

Development

On October 6th, GoFundMe ^[1] user Ryan McCullough launched a campaign to help him "rebuild his collection." They wrote:

"Republicattak has been collecting LEGO Star Wars sets since 2004. In 2010 he started his YouTube channel where he would upload his custom builds to his channel for people to see. He had aspirations of becoming an AFOL and one day having his own LEGO room. On October 5th, 2018 that was taken away from him when his room was ransacked and almost all of his LEGO was stolen. It would be incredible to help him rebuild his collection."

Within two days the campaign received more than $18,000 of its $1,000 goal.

That day, Redditor ^[2] wompemwompem posted the video on the /r/videos subreddit. They titled the post "Guy who makes original lego designs as a hobby has his lego collection stolen and it's utterly heartbreaking." The post received more than 92,000 points (88% upvoted) and 4,800 comments.

Additionally, on October 6th, republicattak tweeted:^[3]

"I really felt alone when I discovered the robbery, and decided to make a video to express and 'release' myself to a handful of people knowing what it means… I'm really surprised by how compassionate you guys are and didn't expected anything like that. I don't know how to react."

"'Thank you very much everybody.'
This sentence is so poor in terms of words for the feeling I have right now… I don't know how to express my gratitude for your kind words and gestures."

"May see exaggerated, but literally had the worst 24 hours of my life, and you just gave me the will to move forward. A fan as much as me, @MandRtweets set a crowdfunding for starting from a new base. Please DON'T if you're under 22 or have MOCs projects."

"Wow… Didn't expected anything like this… Guys, we closed it. I mean it's really a lot. Your comments gave me the will to pursue, and I'm going to freaking build! I really want to be transparent with you guys on the financial aspects."