Brickficiency - Tips for bricklinking large wanted lists (1000+ items/

[Daphatty]

Now that I am in the throws of my second large Bricklinking effort, I thought I might share some of the tricks I've developed to help make Brickficiency as helpful as possible in identifying parts for the lowest cost on Bricklink.com. I developed these techniques while Bricklinking both the UCS Super Star Destroyer and, currently, the UCS Millennium Falcon. Hopefully these tips will help you save some time and money. If you have any tips of your own, please share.

If you don't know what Brickficiency is - click here.

As some of you may know, Brickficiency has a tendency to spend copious amounts of time calculating all of the possible combinations when pricing out large wanted lists. The more parts you have on your list, the longer it takes your computer to figure out what the best options will be. This is particularly true if you have an older computer! In some cases, the seemingly endless scan returns ZERO results. In order to make this process a bit more palatable, you need to do some Wanted List housekeeping first.

Step 1 - Create a Master Wanted List on Bricklink.com

You probably already have wanted list that contains all of the parts that you intend to buy. If you don't already have this list, go create one.

Step 2 - Identify the number of Sellers for your parts

Using Brickficiency, initiate a scan of your Master Wanted List. Allow the scan to identify the number of sellers available for each part on your list. Once this phase of the scan is done, Brickficiency will begin the process of calculating prices. At this point cancel the scan. You don't need prices yet.

Pro-Tip: If there are any discrepancies in your list, the scan will auto-cancel. Discrepancies can include missing color info, missing quantities, and/or parts that are not available by any sellers in your chosen region. You must correct these discrepancies before the scan will process correctly. I usually exclude these items from the initial scan and address them later.

Step 3 - Sort your Master Wanted list into smaller, unique lists.

Now that the initial scan is complete, use the Seller information provided by the initial scan to sort your Master Wanted list into smaller ones. Your lists will be sorted by Seller availability on a per part basis. Create a new wanted list for items with

1-10 sellers,

11-100 sellers, and

100+ sellers

Start by creating the 1-10 Seller Wanted List and move/copy parts into the new list accordingly. This will likely represent the smallest number of unique parts and will also be your most challenging parts to purchase due to the limited availability.

Next, work on the 11-100 Seller Wanted lists.

Lastly, create your 100+ Seller Wanted lists. Try to keep each of these lists at or below 30 unique parts. In my experience, I found this to be a sweet spot for a Brickficiency scan against a large number of sellers. Create additional lists as needed but stay as true to 30 unique parts as possible.

Step 4 - Scan/Merge/Rinse & Repeat

With your master list sorted, scan each new list individually. These smaller lists will be processed much quicker and will increase the likelihood of completion. It will also help you identify problematic parts that cannot be purchased within the confines of this program. Some parts have to be purchased one or two at a time due to scarcity. It is best to set those aside and deal with them individually.

At this point, I play around with the merging of the 11-100 lists into the 100+ lists while restricting the overall footprint to no more than 50 items per list. Adding a handful of items at a time then scanning the list will show you how far you can take your list before scan times become excruciating long or no longer yield results.

Step 5 - Buy stuff!

As I mentioned, I've used this process to break up my large wanted lists into more manageable purchases. While this is only a small part to the whole Bricklinking process, it does help minimize some of the tedium that is involved with working on Bricklink.com.

Hopefully this will prove helpful to someone. It has taken me quite a bit of trial and error to get this process worked out but so far I am happy with the results. Let me know if any of these steps are unclear or confusing and I will try to clarify them. Thanks for reading and happy bricklinking!

- Rob

Edited April 9, 2015 by Daphatty