Sourcing Discontinued Pirate Ships

[TheLegoChronicler]

I just finished adding a dream set to my collection by sourcing the parts for the long discontinued 6286 Skull's Eye Schooner. I was curious if anyone else had done this (I call it resurrecting a set) with the Skull's Eye or some other ship/set and what your experience with it was, specifically:

1. How much did it cost you? (I was able to beat the 1993 MSRP with the total project coming in at $116.53 in 2011 dollars which is the equivalent of about $79 back in 1993, not bad!)

2. Where did you get the parts? (For me it was eBay, Bricklink and extra parts from my collection)

3. Any special money saving tricks? (I painted a few parts as well as made my own canvass sails and flags which I felt came out really well although purists will have my head for replacing the plastic flag pieces with fabric)

4. Did you make any changes or additions to the set? (The Skull’s Eye is nearly perfect, however, I did feel it lacked a proper way to get from the front to rear of the ship so I added walkways on either side and railings in a manner similar to those which are included on the Black Seas Barracuda)

5. How long did it take you? (Between buying the parts, painting a few pieces and making the sails it took me about 2.5 weeks from idea to final product)

I am in the process of writing a set of blog entries (www.thelegochronicler.blogspot.com) detailing how I did it if anyone is interested in knowing and, as this project was so successful, am going to do a simultaneous resurrection of the 5 remaining ships that are still missing from my fleet. The final product is shown below:

[AkumaMax]

Nice I was thinking of doing something like this myself. For the complete set is going to $300+ in most cases. I have pieces of my old Renegade Runner that I am slowly piecing together with parts from bricklink.

[TalonCard]

Congratulations! I have to admit, as a purist I do take objection to the replaced sails. ;) That's a tough call, though, given that attempting to purchase the exact parts unique to this set will almost certainly lead to a budget comparable to just buying the ship at auction.

I'm pretty pleased with my reconstructed Imperial Flagship. (The original one.) I was lucky enough to get a great price on an Imperial Flagship lot that was incomplete, but had all the sails and set-specific parts. The most expensive pieces I had to buy on my own were the Admiral Woodhouse minifigure and the white and yellow window.

TC

[Pavel]

Thank you for sharing with us, I'm considering doing the very same thing!

For now I'm considering to start with Renegade runner, first to put together and then to MOD it a little.

[TheLegoDr]

I am actually in the process of doing the same exact thing with the same ship no less. I always wanted the SES, but never actually purchased it. I do have the BSB of the Pirates days before us. I am currently looking at certain pieces that I need to finish up the final product so I will be able to answer those questions in a future post when I am all finished.

Nice end result! The big question, did you purchase the jolly roger panel for the back of the ship? That one piece is so expensive, I plan on avoiding it.

[Sebeus I]

"Resurrecting a set" sounds creepy

I bought a second hands Skull's Eye Schooner a few years ago, I payed 100 euro's for it and I think that's a very decent price (considering it was complete and even the box was there)

I rather look for the set than its individual parts, but you might have a point here, I'm not sure what would generally cost more, a complete set or all individual parts

[TheLegoChronicler]

The big question, did you purchase the jolly roger panel for the back of the ship? That one piece is so expensive, I plan on avoiding it.

Yeah that piece was a bugger. My solution (which will again get me crucified by purists) was to create a sticker and apply it to a regular white panel piece. I used a drawing program and the "magic wand" tool to extract the image, scaled it and printed it onto clear sticker paper. Picture below shows the result. You can tell I used a sticker but the image itself looks great. Shoot me an email if you want to do the same thing and I can send you the scaled image.

[TheLegoDr]

The sticker looks great. I hadn't thought of that, but since one will be making their own sails anyway, might as well make a decal to go with it. Nicely done.

[Mr Misty]

I rebuilt the SES myself a while ago. I refer to it as "The Scratch Built Skulls Eye Schooner" rather than resurrecting but I only do so with the SES because it was the only one I rebuilt that I didn't have as a kid so I had to buy every piece. I got a SES Hull, Masts and lower sails on Ebay purely by chance while collecting parts for my Southern Cross and decided to restore her to her original glory. The cost was pretty up there since I bought original sails, Minifigs and the white panel with skull (I still cringe when thinking about how I paid $15 for it.) but it came out at a lower price than the ones I saw on Ebay and Bricklink. I wound up paying about $150, at the time the cheapest set was $160 on Bricklink and $175 on Ebay and the $150 included the shipping on the several parts orders from Bricklink so I guess I didn't do so bad.

The ship is all original with the exception of the windows in the cabin, they were just open holes originally and were just screaming for a pair of those nice arched windows with lattice so I installed a pair in red and black to keep with the ship's color scheme.

I also restored my old Armada Flagship, Crossbone Clipper and Redbeard Runner. Again I had to replace all the sails since I lost my originals long ago. That adds a lot to the cost depending on which sail you need, thankfully I had the hulls and most of the other pieces floating around and with the help of Bricklink for parts and Peeron for directions I rebuilt half of my fleet.

I also bought a couple of "Distressed" Ships from Ebay, these were the 6271 Imperial Flagship from 1992 and Renegade Runner. I picked them up cheap due to the fact that they were missing parts or had the wrong pieces installed. I've noticed that when people shop on Ebay they want the set to be complete or it's not worth their time so they were easy to get. After replacing some parts adding a missing sail on the flagship and some string they look as good as new.

[legomonk]

I tried the same thing, but started small with a 6268 Renegade Runner and it worked pretty well. I used bricklink and a small hull perches on ebay. It was considerably cheaper then buying it complete, coming in at around 30$ usd.

[Nightshroud99]

This is a really clever idea, thanks for sharing and telling us how much it cost.

The sails are also quite nice and I'm not a purist so I won't attack you or anything.

[SirSven7]

I got the 'Armada Flagship' last year on bricklink, all part included and it only cost a cool £35. I had to wait 1 week from order to the delivery arriving on my doorstep.

I was very pleased