Bricks

[LumpHammer]

Where do people source their stock bricks from?

[samlr]

From disassembled sets, spare parts, lego Pick A Brick, lego stores brick walls, lots of bricks on ebay/garage sells/markets/etc..., Bricklink.com, BrickOwl.com, and other online brick stores. (It's all I can think of) :-)

[LumpHammer]

Okay. Sorry. Sounds like a bit of a noob question. I found using Pick a Brick a bit slow and cumbersome.

It would be nice if Lego's LDD had a built in shopping basket.

[large88]

You can export a parts list from LDD. The option to buy your LDD creation is something of the past... It was fun though, when you built something huge and then check the price

[LumpHammer]

You can export a parts list from LDD. The option to buy your LDD creation is something of the past... It was fun though, when you built something huge and then check the price

That's good to know!

[samlr]

Okay. Sorry. Sounds like a bit of a noob question. I found using Pick a Brick a bit slow and cumbersome.

It would be nice if Lego's LDD had a built in shopping basket.

I have to say, it did seem like a noob question. Sorry if I answered like that.

My personal solution to buy parts : is to export part list from LDD to Bricklink using LDD Manager and then use Brickficiency to select shops for lowest price. I stopped using PaB because of the limited catalog, the price and that horribly slow interface .....

[Nacho]

As another Newbie I can tell you it's difficult to build up a large collection of bricks easily!

[large88]

Financing is the main issue I guess... One advice I can give is to not buy sets for the parts, you will end up with many parts that you will rarely use... Order parts from BL, you will get more use full parts for your money.

[THERIZE]

I don't know where you are from but in holland there are some places that sell second hand lego and separated parts. Cheaper then bricklink lol.

[alois]

Financing is the main issue I guess... One advice I can give is to not buy sets for the parts, you will end up with many parts that you will rarely use... Order parts from BL, you will get more use full parts for your money.

But on the other side, buying sets for parts is a great way to learn to know new and unknown parts.

[rodiziorobs]

But on the other side, buying sets for parts is a great way to learn to know new and unknown parts.

Exactly what I was going to say! If you buy a set just for parts, perhaps don't pay full price for it. Wait for a clearance or a 2-for-1 or something.

Also, I have used eBay (judiciously) to buy bulk mixed lots or imcomplete sets, or sets without minifigs. Trick with eBay is to not just buy whatever you see, but to wait for a really good deal.

Edited June 17, 2015 by rodiziorobs

[Frazzle5291]

Hi. I am based in the UK and have decided to undertake what is probably an overly ambitious project which involves mainly basic bricks, but a lot of them and many in dark red which I have found difficult to find.

So far I have called on my childhood collection and several small online purchases but when I see how little progress has been made I have quickly realised this is not sustainable.

I have a few very basic questions that I hope you experienced AFOL types wouldn't mind answering. I'll start off with...

1. Is there a place I can buy in bulk (preferably not breaking the bank) specific bricks? Most bulk sets I have found online involve a lot of pieces that I would never use and the pick a brick facility looks like it could end up quite expensive and time consuming if I'm looking for thousands of bricks. I'm not fussy about genuine LEGO bricks.

2. What is the biggest size of base plate around? I have a couple of 32x32 but as the scale of the project becomes clear I would need at least 28 of these (probably 35 more realistically) so a massive base plate would be a great help.

Thanks in advance for any words of advice.

[Boettner Builds]

I can't help with the brick part but there is an "XL" baseplate on lego.com it's something like 45x45.

[anothergol]

To gather bricks, I would never bother with PaB because it's expensive for a way too limited choice. I don't even think that Lego will ever do this properly (but that would be great).

To me it's all BrickLink, & possibly BrickOwl (much better interface, and useful "used state") if it ever grows as big as BL.

Ebay.. too expensive.. except if you buy sets without the minifigs, maybe. But ask yourself how much you can use of a set, I know what I use and I know that many parts aren't of any use to me, so buying a set for 5c/part isn't necessarily better than buying only the parts that you need at 10 or 15c.

My advice would be, if you buy a set, buy it for what it builds (or for the minifigs, for the collectors out there), not for the pieces.

I'm sure that grabbing parts by the weight at flea markets can also be good & cheap, for the ones who are ready to waste their time washing crap. I know I wouldn't want to be the one who'd buy *my* own 30-years old collection full of teeth marks & germs.

Buy new unless you don't have a choice (old molds), you will see that recycled parts are generally NOT cheaper than new ones, and strangely sometimes more expensive, even within the same shop. Never buy used printed parts, of course, unless the label states that it's in good shape. You definitely WILL get used parts that look like new, but that's totally random and you will end up throwing crap as well.

Edited July 14, 2015 by anothergol

[Naijel]

The largest baseplates are 48x48. Almost nothing in LEGO is in sizes that end in a 5 (5, 15, 25, etc).

BrickLink is definitely the way to go for bulk bricks, often from German stores. But if you are working on such a large project it would be a good idea to at least make a rough version in Lego Digital Designer and use it to tell you how many bricks you need. From experience building my first big MOCs it is very easy to grossly under estimate the amount of parts needed. If there is a lot of repetition in the build you can use copy and paste to quickly build up a rough version in LDD and then you can have a much better estimate. Humans are often good at extrapolating distance and area but not volumes and the volume of something grows much more quickly than the area. So as a build idea gets bigger it can quickly get out of hand without you realising it. The positive dreaming and scheming side of our thoughts may come to the fore at the expense of the more negative critical and analytical side.

[fred67]

Whatever you do, do NOT ignore LEGO Shop at Home's Pick-a-Brick entirely. It's true that I get the vast majority of bricks on bricklink, but ESPECIALLY if you need non-basic colors (like Dark Red, Dark Blue, Medium Blue, etc.) in large quantities, you're likely to actually get a better deal at Shop and Home and be guaranteed they're new bricks. I'm trying to assemble the only modular I don't have, and found buying a lot of medium blue bricks on Shop at Home was cheaper than anywhere else I could get them in North America in the quantity that I needed, and with a large enough purchase, shipping is free.... I even got the bonus of the little astronaut car they're giving away at this time - I didn't even know it until after I ordered.

It's not the first time I've discovered shop at home was cheaper. Most bricklink sellers don't look at shop at home, they look only at what other bricklink sellers are asking... but more rare parts/colors then often go up very high in price for sellers that have good quantities.

I ended up with four bricklink orders and one shop at home order.

Of course, the best way is if you live near a LEGO Store and get lucky with the PAB wall.