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How Many 2x4 Bricks in a Pick a Brick Pot?

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Simple enough question...(this may be when I realize that lego is an addiction) but I am trying to find the most economical way to buy bricks, in particular 2x4 bricks of any color in large quantities.

My Local lego store sells me a complete box of 2x4 bricks for $110 which includes tax. In those boxes on average I receive 540 bricks. That works out to 0.20 cents a brick

The online pick a brick is .30 cents for a 2x4 brick, plus tax so essential .33 cents.

This evening I tried to fill a Pick a Brick cup the best way I could with 2x4 bricks and I managed to squeeze in 123 bricks.

At $16 plus tax (for the large cup), so $17.60, that equates to a cost of .14 cents a brick

If you factor in bringing your old cups in and saving 50 cents it would be $17 (plus tax0 divided by 123 would be a cost of .138cents per brick

So with my fuzzy math - it is much cheaper to purchase via the cup rather than the box (thats if you choose not to use Bricklink.com).

So here is my question: How many 2x4 bricks have you been able to fit in a large PAB cup? Do you have any special techniques?

Thanks for reading this far :)

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Seems like there should be more than 500 2x4s in a K box, but I guess they are pretty bulk and don't settle well. I doubt a PaB cup would do you better than the box (at least not by much of a margin), so probably your best bet is Bricklink: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=3001

You can refine your search for the colors you want and showing only sellers with a minimum quantity (say, 250+, depending on how many you really need an how many orders you're willing to place). Looks like you can do OK at $0.13-17 each, plus shipping. If you stick to the low end of that range and order in decent quantity, you should beat the K box pricing.

Of course, depending on your project, there might be other ways of accomplishing things more economically than buying thousands of 2x4s. Never underestimate the economic value of filling space or building unseen support structures from Duplo, for instance. :classic:

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I always use the PAB large for 2x4s for my builds, for me I think they work out cheaper than BL.

I'm UK based so primarily I tend to buy from UK sellers and in this instance I select "New" rather than used. My last big build needed 514 bricks and using today's availability I notice that there are 69 sellers with 961 bricks between them, with the prices ranging from 0.04 to 0.19. One thing to bear in mind is the cost of delivery from BL sellers, so with that in mind I only selected the highest quantities which reduced the number of orders to 8.

The 514 bricks on BL would cost £71.78 (without shipping), which is 0.13965 / brick

Using the PAB method http://www.fbtb.net/...php?f=15&t=1882 here I can get 142 2x4s in a large cup. You can find others that get over 160, but the cup will not close without lots of tape. In the UK a large cup is £11.99, which works out to 0.084437 / brick. The 514 bricks costs £47.96, which is 4 large cups (its actually 3.6 cups).

Of course the PAB walls only have limited colors compared to BL.

Edited by CamelBoy68

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How many can you get in a small cup? The comparisons I've seen show that the small one is better value.

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Wasn't that before the recent price changes?

Also, it was for volume when completely filled, which is more easily done with small parts than big ones.

For the original questions, there must be some people who tried to fit the most possible 2x4s in the cups, but that info is lost somewhere in the 63 pages of http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=27795

Edited by antp

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Don't forget with the PAB cup, you can also fill in the empty spaces with small pieces like studs, tiles, etc. If you sell them off on Bricklink, you can factor that into your overall price per 2x4.

As for how many in a cup, while in comfort at home grab a PAB cup and a pile of 2x4s and try out different packing configurations. See which works best for you based on how much time you normally have at the store.

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Thanks for the replies, after I posted last night I found the 65 page thread but I thank you for answering here.

I have not even tried with the small pot, may be worth an effort too.

The box I can be certain on as I bought four for a Hoth Scene in January, that's what for me thinking about it as I now need more.

I like the idea if building unseen structures with Duplos, don't have any though. I am thinking about building frame works out technic bricks and then fill around, I may do some math on what is more economical there too. Cheers guys!

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I know you are mainly interest in 2x4 but from a PAB cup you wold also get smaller bricks to fill the gap. Therefore your 2x4 actually costs less. Don't you agree?

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I wrote an article on this subject a couple years ago...which needs to be updated due to price increases everywhere, but you can find it here if interested: http://www.1000steine.com/brickset/miscellaneous/Documents/PABCostComparisonAnalysis.pdf

The price per ounce including the lid is now just about even in the US, but the small cup still has advantages that I see including: they are easier to stack (if you keep the cups vs reusing them), they are shallower and thus easier to fill (the bottom of a large cup tends to be tricky to fill easily), the ring at the bottom is wider and more accommodating of larger parts (especially 2x4 bricks).

According to info I have, there should be 675 bricks in a LEGO bulk box that retails for $100 if your store manager will sell it to you. That equates to $0.1481 per 2x4 brick. Using the link CamelBoy68 posted above you get 142 2x4 bricks in a large cup which is $0.1092 each factoring in $0.50 cup reuse discount. I just did a quick test to see how many 2x4's I could fit in a small cup and easily fit 86 2x4 bricks in it which is only $0.1016 per brick, factoring in the $0.25 cup reuse discount, which is obviously the best value. Here is the way I got 86 bricks in the small cup: 16576499541_2724537431_b.jpg

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I wrote an article on this subject a couple years ago...which needs to be updated due to price increases everywhere, but you can find it here if interested: http://www.1000stein...sonAnalysis.pdf

The price per ounce including the lid is now just about even in the US, but the small cup still has advantages that I see including: they are easier to stack (if you keep the cups vs reusing them), they are shallower and thus easier to fill (the bottom of a large cup tends to be tricky to fill easily), the ring at the bottom is wider and more accommodating of larger parts (especially 2x4 bricks).

According to info I have, there should be 675 bricks in a LEGO bulk box that retails for $100 if your store manager will sell it to you. That equates to $0.1481 per 2x4 brick. Using the link CamelBoy68 posted above you get 142 2x4 bricks in a large cup which is $0.1092 each factoring in $0.50 cup reuse discount. I just did a quick test to see how many 2x4's I could fit in a small cup and easily fit 86 2x4 bricks in it which is only $0.1016 per brick, factoring in the $0.25 cup reuse discount, which is obviously the best value. Here is the way I got 86 bricks in the small cup: https://flic.kr/p/rfNTNe

Thanks for the info! I will try the smaller cups, good idea!

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The time I got a k-box of 2x4, I think I got something like 640 bricks. It might have been slightly higher priced compared to optimally packing cups, but only if your time isn't valuable.

At $110 it's an absurd price. I agree with B Whitty. Parts like this should be relatively cheap... but then if they were, people would buy fewer sets for parting out.

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