Tips for buying by the pound

[EamonnMR]

There are many sellers on ebay and such that sell parts by the pound. However, I'm generally focused on older parts/colors. Are there any rules of thumb that can be used to try and determine what era the pound lots are drawn from, or is it always a roll of the dice?

[Masked Mini]

In my limited experience buying more or less blind bulk... it's a toss up.
The more you can see of the lot the better a guess you can make.

A lot of ebay sellers will comb out minifigs and specialty bricks to resell separately for more money.
If they then combine the rest into a remains bin (to sell by weight) it will lose it's era cohesion quickly.

The best luck I've had at estimating eras was in person buying Ziploc bags of lego at antique malls and consignment stores.
Since their sellers generally do not bother to sort or mix lots you get baggies of classic heavy, 2000 ish star wars or modern stuff more than mixed lots.

[deraven]

I agree that it's basically a toss-up unless you do have other specific clues you can see in the pics.  If, for instance, there are a few key parts/colors visible in the photos AND still some minifigs from the same sets/era also visible, that's a much better bet that it's legitimately someone selling an un-filtered lot.  The biggest tell for me that the bulk lot won't be very interesting is when there are no minifigs visible or if the listing actually says "no people, just parts" or something like that.

[ReplicaOfLife]

Focus on auctions where people are selling their kids / their own old Lego. Make sure that there are good pictures of what you're getting (a lot of times, somebody will just take a photograph of a big box of Lego from above, which is pretty much useless for identifying anything). If you have found an auction with good pictures, look at them closely. Often you will still be able to make out some partly or fully assembled sets & minifigs that may help identifying what time the Lego is from. If you know what you're looking for, you'll be able to spot it. Then look at some of the pother stuff and find out if it was made at the same time.
It's also common to find Lego from two or more distinct periods in one lot, when someone gave their own old Lego to their kids and also bought them current sets.

Stay away from 'professional' sellers - most of the auctions "1kg of Lego" are pretty much useless. They often use 'example' pictures that have nothing to do with what they will send you (e.g. "you'll get one kilo randomly taken out of the pictured lot!", showing a box full of rare/expensive parts (you almost certainly won't be getting any of those)).

Edited February 22, 2020 by RogerSmith