Introducing www.SetShelf.com : A new, data-driven way to track and visualize your collection

[Follows Closely]

I’ve been a member of Eurobricks since 2009 (hard to believe it’s been that long!), and over the years, this community has been my go-to for inspiration, and deep-dive discussions. Today, I’m incredibly excited to share a project I’ve been building over the last few months that was directly inspired by our collective obsession with this hobby.

It’s a web platform called SetShelf.com.

As my own collection grew, I realized I wanted a tool that went beyond just checking a box to say I owned a set, ant other sets did not meet all my needs. I wanted something that allowed for deep organization, clear data visualization, and flexible workflows for managing my physical and digital shelves.

I built Set Shelf to solve those exact pain points. Here are a few features that are already live and active on the site:

• Custom User-Defined Tagging: You aren't locked into rigid categories, and you won't hit an arbitrary ceiling on how many tags you can use just when you're getting your inventory organized. You can tag, sort, and organize your collection exactly how your brain works (by display status, storage location, theme, etc.) without hitting artificial limits.
• The "Part Out Buddy" Tool: Ideal for when you buy a bulk lot and are trying to pull out the exact pieces needed to complete a specific set. This workflow streamlines the matching process, making it way easier to hunt through bulk inventory and track your progress without cluttering your main collection data. 
• Set Condition Workflows: Built-in tracking to manage the lifecycle of your sets, whether they are MISB, built on display, or broken down in storage bins.
• Data & Trend Visualization: I’m a huge fan of hobby data, so the platform includes custom charts and visual analytics to look at your collection's composition, color shifts, and historical trends over time. See https://setshelf.com/help for screen shots and more details.
• Robust Inventory Import/Export: Moving to a new platform shouldn't mean manually re-entering hundreds of sets. SetShelf supports easy bulk data handling so you can bring your existing collection data with you or back it up whenever you want.
• LEGO Color Timeline & Trend Analytics: I’m fascinated by how the system's colors have evolved. The platform includes custom charting that handles everything from the explosion of pastel hues in the late '90s to the great 2004 palette overhaul (the retirement of classic Light/Dark Gray and Brown for the modern Bluish Grays and Reddish Brown). You can actually visualize your own collection's color distribution shifts across generations.

Why I’m sharing this here: The site is just about ready to go fully live, but before it does, I want to get it in front of the most passionate LEGO fans I know. I would love for my fellow Eurobricks members to take it for a spin.

I’m looking for honest, constructive feedback. What features are missing? What details would make this your ultimate tracking companion?

Check it out at SetShelf.com. Registration is open, and I’d be incredibly grateful if you'd create an account, click around, and let me know what you think.

Thank you all for the incredible community, inspiration, and encouragement over the years. Happy building!

Some screen shots:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[Follows Closely]

I’ve been digging into the history of LEGO colors for a project I’m building, and I put together this visualization of how our favorite colors have grown and evolved:

• width = distinct piece count
• 2026 (half of the sets expected) through 1949
• all colors except Modulex 

(click to make bigger)

It’s pretty wild to see the data mapped out like this. You can clearly see the big shifts, like the "Bley" takeover in 2003 and the massive color explosion in 2006. I was also surprized to see the width grow a the pace it is - and the growth is both piece count and color count.

You can experiment (even visualize your own collection) here: https://setshelf.com/catalog/colors/river?groupBy=none&cap=all&events=0&metric=distinct

 

Edited June 19 by Follows Closely

[Follows Closely]

LEGO data visualizations are the heart of Set Shelf, and the site is packed with them: color rivers, sunbursts, theme bar races, palette timelines, piece-category streamgraphs, and personal collection charts, with new views being added all the time. The complete gallery lives at https://www.setshelf.com/visualizations, one card per view and each one deep-linked to the exact angle that view is best at.

A handful of the visualizations that I like:

Color River, normalized to 100% per year
A vertical streamgraph of the entire LEGO palette. Each colored band is one color (or family), thickness is its share of pieces that year. The Bley transition reads as a clean swap line; trans-clear flares out as Modular Buildings ramp up.

Color Timeline, Light Grey vs. Light Bluish Gray
Probably the single most-asked AFOL color question, in one image. The mid-2000s palette swap with both greys pre-selected so you can see exactly when the changeover hit.

Color Sunburst, weighted by piece volume
Hierarchical family to color sunburst sized by raw brick instances. Reveals which colors dominate by production, not by palette breadth (spoiler: black, the greys, and red eat most of the wheel).

Pieces by Category, theme-river over time
A new view that lets you pick any BrickLink part categories and stack them year by year. Pre-loaded with Brick / Plate / Tile so you can watch plates overtake bricks in the 2000s, then tiles surge as studless Technic and Modular Buildings take over.

Color Explorer Table
Every color with embedded mini-charts inline: family bar, introduction-year bubble, part/piece count bars, and a nightingale of years in production. Sortable, filterable, surprisingly addictive.
 
  

Bar Race: Sets by Category
The animated horizontal bar race over the full catalog history. Hit Play and watch Town, Star Wars, City, and CMF trade places year by year. Speed and sets-vs-pieces toggle in the panel.
 

A bonus, if you sign in and bring your sets in, the same gallery picks up a "My Shelf" section that mirrors a lot of these against your own data. My personal favourite is the My Sets per Year chart on the acquisition-year axis, which paints a translucent "Dark Age" overlay across the longest stretch where you bought nothing. Same treatment a GitHub-style activity heatmap uses.

My Activities, your LEGO life as a heatmap
Most collection sites treat an acquisition as a date stamp on "I own this." Set Shelf treats every acquisition as a first-class event with its own date, condition, price, and provenance, so owning three copies of a set looks like three rows, selling one later doesn't erase the history, and a returned copy and a kept copy can sit side by side. On top of that, building a set and tearing one down are first-class events too, logged the same way as a purchase, so the calendar tracks the rhythm of the hobby, not just the inventory. The My Activities page rolls everything up into a GitHub-style daily heatmap plus a radar chart that breaks the year (or your entire collecting history) down by action type: acquired, built, torn down, sold, rated. I'm not aware of another LEGO tracker that gives you that much resolution on what you actually do with your bricks.
 

edit: no link provided as this page requires an account

 

There are around three dozen cards in the gallery right now and the list keeps growing whenever a new way to look at the catalog comes to mind. As always, feedback, suggestions, and "I wish there was a view
   that did X" requests are very welcome. Hit me up here or via the Feedback link inside the site.

Edited Monday at 11:18 AM by Follows Closely