price to piece ratio?

[john cleese]

alright im buying 1867 new elements from bricklink. Most of the elements are specialized pieces. Some of the more expensive elements include a brown pitchfork, two light grey panels with portholes, 1x1 windows, yellow castle red knights helmet, four Dark Gray Panel, Sloped 4 x 6 x 6 Sloped with Rock Pattern, 4 1x3x6 doors in green, 2 yellow curved topped windows, 2 green curved top windows, four green lattice window panes, and every classic pirate ship hull along with the time cruisers ship hull. The whole order is going to cost me $426 US- about $493 CAN. Should I buy it?

[JINZONINGEN73]

It's a bit pricey honestly.

The real question is, do you have plans going crazy, bouncing around all over in your head with these specific parts?

Are you in a rush to get these parts, for your creative juices are panicking that every second lost might mean 1 of a thousand brilliant configurations will be forgotten?

I'd only be able to justify that price if there was some clearly defined masterpiece I was close to finalizing in my brain.

[snefroe]

just looking at the numbers, i'd have to say it's rather high.

i just made an order for about 900 parts for 60 dollars, including postage and shipping; so without thnking about specialised parts or anything, i think your price/part ratio is really, really high.

but then, if you take a look at your hull pieces... hm 3 dollars a piece... how many would you order in all? about 20? sure that pushes prices up...

my only concern is that you may be buying parts at rather high prices because you want (or bought) them all from one shop. Maybe you chose this shop based on prices of one particular part and then just looked into the rest of his inventory list, eventually leading to this list of 400 dollars. Sometimes it's better to open up a second BL window and to do a general search for a part again, just to check how expensive your shop is for other parts you're buying. if he's expensive for other parts on your wanted list, it may be wise to look for a second shop and see if you can get cheaper prices for a large portion of your list. i'd also look for countries not too far off, because importing a package like that into the EU will most likely cost yet another few pounds or Euros, depending on where you live...

Jonzo is also quite right: are you sure you all want these parts right now? i very often get an order that's waaay too high, so i remove parts or decrease the number of items wanted...

I'd also check for insurance, cos a deal for 400 dollars is quite big, you never know...

[SuvieD]

Too high. Aim for $0.10 per piece or less if possible. That is the "average" price in brand new in the box LEGO parts. Obviously, rare, older or unique parts will cost more but many others should cost less. You listed less then 10% of the pieces as being more expensive.

You will be better off if you create a wanted list on BL and list the parts you want/need at the maximum price you are willing to pay for them and then just check that by store. You will find the store that best meets your needs more quickly and save a lot of money. Just be careful you don't end up buying a bunch of stuff you will never use.

If you really want a fair price you should look to people like Ed. He doesn't post here much anymore but he has traded and sold with many people here and I have never heard of him giving someone a bad price or trade. Just PM him and I am sure he will get back to you.

Always try to get something at a price you yourself could sell it for the following week if you had to. That way you will not be permanently out of your money if emergency or by chance some sort of dark age comes on you.