LEGO Repairability Dataset: part+colour scarcity across the official catalog, 1949-2026

Two tabular datasets quantifying how replaceable LEGO parts are. lego-part-color-frequency.csv (91,512 rows) lists every part+colour combination in the official LEGO catalog from 1949 to 2026, with the number of distinct sets each combination appears in. Spare parts are excluded. lego-repairability-sets.csv (11,891 rows) provides a repairability score for every real building set meeting a statistical threshold of 30 or more parts and 15 or more distinct part+colour combinations. The score is the share of a set's part+colour combinations that appear in three or fewer sets in the entire catalog, a threshold at which second-hand sourcing of a replacement becomes practically impossible. The principal finding is that of the 91,650 distinct part+colour combinations LEGO has ever put in a set, 46,619 (51 percent) exist in exactly one set, and a further 20 percent appear in only two or three. Only 34 percent of the single-set combinations are printed or stickered parts; the remainder are ordinary moulds in a colour that was never reused. Known limitations: spare parts are excluded throughout; minifigures are modelled as separate entities in the source data, so minifigure component parts are largely absent (under 1 percent of rows); and sets released in approximately the last two years have had less time for their parts to reappear in later sets, which inflates their scores. Derived from the BrickMissing catalog database, which is based on Rebrickable catalog data with additional curation. This deposit is a July 2026 snapshot. The published study reports 91,650 combinations against this deposit's 91,512 rows; the study used a June 2026 snapshot and the catalog changes daily.