How many reconstruct lego builds?

[wolfwing]

Looking on Ebay I saw a couple of old school lego products rebuilt by collecting random parts and then putting them together to make the original product, so been contemplating making a sorta techno/ghetto *not sure what to call them* collection, build every set in history only buying the specific ones when they are unique to that set, not worrying so much about the colour as long as it's the right piece. And just seeing if I can make and photograph every single lego set, figured would give me new ideas and teach me some of the more subtlies of building lego, such as things I tend to never think about like good use of flat pieces and such.

[fred67]

I saw mini trains on Ebay, and not wanting to pay the outrageous price for a discontinued set of common pieces, I built it myself... I actually ended up building two (different colors) and adding a tender to one.

A few years ago I won an auction for a Sante Fe Super Chief train engine, long after TLG stopped selling the cars that would go with it. People wanted outrageous prices for the matching cars, so I downloaded the instructions and started building them on my own. The only really expensive piece was the ones they used for the roof, and only in that color... and you needed 32 of them (per car!), so it got real expensive real quick, so instead I bought the same piece in bulk directly from LEGO in black instead of gray (nobody on BL was selling many black pieces for a reasonable price), and ended up saving quite a bit, and I'm not unhappy with the black at all. I've built three so far, and have enough for a fourth, and probably about 80% of the last one.

Oh yeah... me being the cheap bastard that I am, after deciding I wanted a snow speeder, but didn't want to pay for the new set Wampa set, I downloaded the old snow speeder instructions and built one mostly of pieces I already had... I bought a pilot and a couple other pieces. I also liked the A-Wing in the Home One set, so, while this is a bit different, I built a couple of A-Wings following those instructions (using some color variations) and the only thing I bought was the canopies and a couple of pilots...

Oh... I missed a couple of Star Wars minis, so I made those, too... I really don't care when it's not the "real" set.

So, yeah, I've slummed it... and I'm not embarrassed to admit it! I wish I was more creative and had more pieces available in my own collection, then I wouldn't even need the instructions.

[Brickdoctor]

Oh... I missed a couple of Star Wars minis, so I made those, too... I really don't care when it's not the "real" set.

I'm doing that right now. I actually spent ages looking for one of the orange pieces in MINI Sebulba's Pod, and found out it had been Sharpied over in black a few years back. (don't ask why)

Mostly, I only rebuild when I want to take a comparison pic or do a review. A lot of times, you don't really realize what a good value some of these sets were. The ones that weren't good values... well, I never rebuilt them.