How do you Manage Your LEGO Addiction?

[Burf2000]

There are soo many models I want, I mean I got a fair collection but there must be over 100-200 models I want to build, i need a bigger house already. How do others manage the lego addiction lol

[mtMOClug]

There are soo many models I want, I mean I got a fair collection but there must be over 100-200 models I want to build, i need a bigger house already. How do others manage the lego addiction lol

I think one simple word can sum it up for me... DENIAL

[Modulex Guy]

Easy... I don't.

Only time that I try not to buy LEGO is when my wallet is crying for mercy.

[Davey]

A college degree, a good job, a loving wife, and no kids.

[prateek]

I don't buy any

[HumanPackMule]

I normally wait for my birthday and Christmas. That's when I get the majority of my year's sets. But then again, I have a huge room with tons of space to display my constructions.

[Peppermint_M]

Poorly.

I set myself limits, i.e. Only buy the sets under £10, even then only if I love the theme/sets. I have all the pirate and Power Miner sets under £10, but most of the City sets just don't tempt me beyond the £2 impulse sets.

I avoid using Bricklink more than once every few months or use it purely for parts and colour refrence.

I don't buy online often, to avoid buying many sets over the course of a few months. If I buy, say, half of a theme in one go I don't feel I need/must buy more for months on end.

I suppose it is a blessing that the supermarkets that stock lego near me have very little selection. I find I buy a lot of lego during the start of the wave and really only get one or two impulse sets later on (to tide me over to a big blowout purchase) or sets from a theme I am not overly fond of because they finally won me over.

I also believe that being a MOCer I have slight protection from rampant Lego purchasing. I rarely buy the biggest sets in a theme (In fact, I must say that apart from in clearance, Agents is the only theme I bought the largest sets from) because I have so many parts and prefer to make my own things with what I have. Brickset calculated my boxed set purchases to amount to 22006 elements, not counting those sets I forgot and the boxes of hand-me down bricks, so I do take stock of what I have and whether I want a new set for the sake of it or for a real reason.

I will always buy Lego, and many (including my self) will cringe about the amount spent, but if no themes bother me particularly once Agents ends then I suppose I will spend £20 tops on each wave of a theme and only if I decide I must have it and said wave has sets under £10.

Now clearance is another matter, and it is a good job Legoland happens once a year and TKMaxx barely ever has anything other than Bionicle....

[Burf2000]

Well I have phases to be honest and I am back in my Lego phases, I recon last year I brought about 1000 - 1500 on lego maybe more (usually ebay) and this year I only got in to it this month and well maybe £200 lol (saving for a wedding)

I love buying peoples collections lol, sucker for them, plus i love technic, SHIPS (e.g pirate), mindstorm etc. I also managed to buy a collection with 130 city models, 50 bionicles in one go. The last buy involved a 3 foot long boat that someone built plus probably 50kg of lego, most new

My parents and wife to be buy me lego for xmas, parents brought me most of the new castle, mrs brought me some big star wars models, I think everyone together must of spent £500 lol

I somehow have this target to have most of the lego sets that they made, i no its silly but its sub concious

I think I need LA

[Oky]

Well, since I still live purely on the allowance that I get from my parents, I have a rather hard time affording all the sets that I want, so I just set my priorities. I buy the sets that I want most first and then slowly work my way down the list of sets I want, with the set(s) that are least important to me being at the end of the list. Usually I don't get to the end of the list before the sets are discontinued, and then I don't bother getting them for inflated prices. Sometimes I have to prioritize sets from the bottom of my list when they go on sale, which leaves me less money to buy the sets that I would have rather had. It's not great, but usually I manage to get about half the sets I want, which is satisfying enough.

[Commodore Hornbricker]

A college degree, a good job, a loving wife, and no kids.

Dito...except plus two kids...(who love Lego..but not nearly as much as I do)

[Burf2000]

No kids yet but when I do they not playing with my lego lol

[Commodore Hornbricker]

No kids yet but when I do they not playing with my lego lol

No way! You get them their own...then you steal parts from their collection when you need to...but you don't feel good about it...then you go out and buy them a new set or bucket...then you steal more parts. It's a circle of life thing

[Burf2000]

lol

[gondortoast]

usally if i see a set i want over 30 pounds (yup im a brit) i can rarely afford it (needz a jobz) so i beat myself senseless with a brick until i forget it then i go on here and see it so i beat myself again then i have to go see a doctor as ive developed brick shaped brusies on my head

[posades]

No way! You get them their own...then you steal parts from their collection when you need to...but you don't feel good about it...then you go out and buy them a new set or bucket...then you steal more parts. It's a circle of life thing

Funny you should say that, that's exactly what I did yesterday with my niece (I needed a dark bley horse hitching), and I felt really bad about it. Oh well, guess it might be time to buy her another brick bucket.

I tend to do the same thing as Peppermint_M, that is try to limit myself to smaller sets that aren't as big a hit on my wallet (pretty much all mind games though because they add up quickly). I also have a problem of getting "caught up in the moment" and start buying lots of sets on ebay even if I don't really need them, so I tend to steer clear of places like that now. As for Bricklink, I only go there when I'm missing some parts for a MOC or something, and I try to limit orders there to under $10.

[madoka]

I've filled my entire house with Lego. I've filled my entire garage with Lego so I can no longer park my cars in there. I've filled four separate storage rooms with Lego. Still, as long as I spend less than $10K per month on Lego, I feel I am okay. Addiction? What addiction?

[Glacarcheo]

Well, I tend to buy large amounts of Bionicle, usually on Bricklink. So to control that I can buy one line (ie. the six Bohrok) a month. I've pretty much broken that rule to jumpstart my collection... I also buy the new sets that come out, but usually get them for gifts and stuff since they're easy to obtain.

[Burf2000]

I actually brought a shed to put my unsorted lego in lol there are a lot of 50litre containers in there

[brickzone]

Well, I did at one stage buy a lot from ebay - but there is a simple solution to that - not to search listings! I don't do much impulse buying in shops, but that is helped by a lack of city centre or shopping mall Lego retailers (at least with decent prices) and I don't get to the retail parks much (Smyth's Toys - the main Lego seller here).

S@H shipping is high enough for Ireland (€15 for orders over €70) to discourage random buying from there.

I have however found a lot of recent themes very attractive (I have the full original Agents line-up, much of Indy, and almost all of Castle) and I do tend to put in a couple of "bumper" orders during the year, and buy a few sets online from UK retailers or deliberately from shops.

The main thing now is that money is tighter and the future more uncertain, so I've simply had to deliberate beforehand as to what to buy. I am still hoping to buy one or two more large sets this year. Hopefully some of the smaller ones might arrive as birthday/Christmas presents!

Space Police 3 is a casualty of my smaller pockets - I've bought the smaller sets and with more cash I'd buy the rest in a shot, but as it is I just can't put them ahead of Orc's fortress, Temple of Doom (holding out for getting that one cheaper though) and possibly the Endor SW set (probably not though but it seems a nice idea). Some of the City sets I'd love too if I could splash out - the Highway repair sets, Wind turbine transport, etc. All will remain down the wishlist. I've given up on some older City sets I'd kind of like such as the petrol station and fire station.

Edited July 14, 2009 by brickzone

[Eilif]

I don't have a specific plan. I just have some general guidelines for acquiring LEGO "within reason".

1) I try to shop Resale shops alot.

2) For the most part I avoid bricklink and utilize in store PAB and grab bags for my bulk brick.

3) I buy a couple sets a month, and I can often get my wife to ok the frivolous purchase of large sets that she thinks are really neat. (Cafe Corner, Market Street, etc, etc)

4) I also check the sales at the LEGO store often.

[Mraz Skintas]

I buy mainly Star Wars sets, and my birthday is on July 24th, I get the Summer Wave then, and sometimes the January wave comes out around Christmas, so I get them then. When they do release in January, I just wait.

[LegoPigeon]

You should build your main primary lego models first; best place for storage is the loft or shed or a spare room or even the garage :)

[Vee]

I am very new to Lego addiction, I am not sure I got addicted already but I am worried. The last three weeks I have been spending too much time thinking and doing things related to Lego, and spending too much money. But I want to believe that all that I am doing, that I think is kind of crazy considering who and what I am, is part of a plan that I devised in the beginning of those three weeks. Once I have achieved my plan, I plan to stop acting like an addicted and go back to my normal me.

Of course everything is relative and what I consider an addiction some others may consider normal. But to understand why I am afraid of being addicted, I put all our lego sets bought so far in brickset and the website says all my sets have a retail value of US$ 1912 (1st set was bought in 2004), not counting around a couple of hundreds I spent in spare parts from ebay and bricklink. That is not much under certain points of view but I have an Excel sheet where I am controlling all my new purchases, derived from that plan, and in the last three weeks alone I have spent $1.2k. So, we, as a family, spent $900 in 9 years and now, I alone, in 3 weeks, spent 1.1k. That IS worrisome. To make things worse, to finish my plan I still have to spend $540, so my total will reach US$ 1.6k+.

I have been a little embarrassed in front of my family but luckily they are fine. When I explain why I am doing this, what is the plan, they kind of accept it. My biggest worry is that, after my plan is done, I can't refrain myself from buying more legos than the usual 1-3 cheap sets that we buy a year for our kids.

The good thing is that in general I am very spartan in my life. I rarely spend too much money in anything, and we have no debts, on the opposite, we do have savings. My only other subject that I, every 3-4 years, spend good money, is in computer. I build our own computers every 3-4 years and usually I spend 3-4k in each build. And I never regret.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Vee

[Dr Leg O Brick]

I don't.

In all seriousness, I try to follow Chief O'Brien's advice on searching for engineering spares, from Star Trek DS9:

"Must haves, could use, and would be nice".

That went out the window this month, however, I usually look up a few sets I want on eBay that are EOLed, see if Amazon has any sets on a discount, or any other deals. The only exceptions are when a set I really want, i.e. a new Marvel set or an exclusive, are released, or anything from a Charity shop (Aka a thrift shop) for a reasonable price. Where do I put it all? Where the dining room used to be, now home to a thriving population of miniature yellow people.

[Andy D]

In the past two years, not too well!

But I am getting a handle on it. I have a closet full of unopened sets that I need to either build or part-out or sell (feeling guilty about parting-out some sets, should sell some instead as they are sets some really want)

I have slowed down on buying (sort of) as I don't buy it just becases, or maybe, I try to only buy what I really want, not just sort-of want.

This new buying pattern is working, sort-of, maybe it will work better in 2014.

Andy D