Xan326, on 24 July 2012 - 07:28 PM, said:
Okay well I'm getting into trains now and since I missed the Emerald Night, I'm going to build my version of it. I'm thinking the printed slopes would be good for a whole train so I might just buy most of them
Now to search for other pieces.. Oh and is there a chart comparing the prices of LEGO vs. BL? Like a price for certain pieces?
Well then that makes sense - usually places with larger quantities charge more because they know you can make up some of the difference on convenience and shipping. What I tend to do is get the pieces I need immediately, but keep the piece on my wanted list so that when I bulk up future orders I can see what pieces a store has for reasonable prices and get them just a few at a time.
Let me explain in case you don't know what I mean - often you need just a few pieces, so you get killed on shipping and handling, so a lot of people will bulk up their order with interesting pieces even if they don't necessarily need them right away.
There's no chart - it's been suggested on BL that BL occasionally scrape the LEGO S@H page for people to price compare, but neither the BL admin nor the shop owners want you to be able to easily compare prices with S@H. BL nearly always beats S@H, but there are a number of pieces actually cheaper on S@H, and sometimes the prices are comparable - but you can get a quantity all in one shot from S@H.
Maybe a "scraper" is something I can do on my own... I have a number of ideas for useful online LEGO tools. Otherwise, you're stuck looking in the catalog on BL to compare prices between stores. That works the best, because if you need "X" number of some piece you can quickly see who has that many and how much they are charging.
Beware the catalog for prices on full sets, though. You'll see unrealistically cheap ones, even listed as "new," but when you go look you'll find the shop owner has taken all the minifigures out or something along those line, and yet they screw up the catalog statistics by listing it as a set. I also take issue with shops that collect all the parts for a set, then sell it as a set. A number of sellers are doing that for the LEGO store promotional set. It's unethical, IMO, unless it's clearly listed as a reproduction.
Skipper, on 25 July 2012 - 01:27 PM, said:
Can anyone recommend some good Bricklink stores to me? I'm using Bricklink for the first time, and can't seem to find a store with all/the majority of what I need--whenever I find a store with enough of one piece that I need (120 of the plates with a clip on the end, for example), it doesn't have anything else that I need.
The bricks I'm looking for aren't just the regular 1*2 or 2*4 bricks or whatever, so am I just going to have to accept buying from dozens of stores? Really don't want to pay separate shipping for each.
I'd appreciate it if someone with some experience could help me . . . Thanks!!
It is what it is... if you create a wanted list with minimum quantities of what you need, then the wanted list "By Shop" tab will list the stores with the most matches. The problem is they are not necessarily the cheapest or best stores, so it may be worth it to move down on the list and compare several shops.
But this is the nature of BL... people part out sets and get pieces from the PAB wall at LEGO Stores... any individual seller is only going to have a fraction of all the available kinds of pieces, and they usually have limited quantities, which is why sometimes S@H can be a better deal even if their prices don't beat BL - you can get all your parts in large quantities in one order.
It takes a lot of work to get the best deals.
10
Cheers to Whitefang (for the merging) and fred67 (for the tip which no doubt will come in useful) aswell 
