10217 Diagon Alley Leftover pieces?

[adello25]

I recently bought 10217 Diagon Alley. I just built Olivanders wand shop and upon finishing it I noticed I had 8 1x2 Black tiles left over. I looked through the instructions several times and cannot figure out where they go. I put the tiles on top of the windows on the first floor and I also put them underneath the first floor windows as well. Could it be that they just sent me an extra 8 tiles? Anyone else have this "problem"?

[Matn]

I also had a couple of black and dark bluish grey 1x2 tiles left when I built Diagon Alley. I traced every step of the building instructions, but I hadn't made any mistakes. Guess we're lucky, you never can't have enough tiles.

[Vindicare]

Ya know, its been a little while since I built mine, but if memory serves me correctly i remember getting them also. I don't remember how many, but I had quite a few leftover too. Mystery.

[adello25]

Well I would never complain extra parts!! Thanks for the responses

[Aanchir]

It's not unheard of for a set to have an unusual and/or inexplicable number of extras for a certain piece. I remember when my family built the Taj Mahal, we were surprised to find nearly a full bag of 1x6 white plates. We couldn't find anywhere in the instructions where we'd missed them, and sure enough, we checked Bricklink to find that it was normal for it to come with seventeen extras. This was even stranger than in the case of Diagon Alley, since larger, heavier parts almost never come as extras-- the function of extra pieces is generally to ensure that lighter parts don't go missing without being caught by the weight check, so the function of these extra plates in the Taj Mahal was a mystery.

[brickmack]

It's not unheard of for a set to have an unusual and/or inexplicable number of extras for a certain piece. I remember when my family built the Taj Mahal, we were surprised to find nearly a full bag of 1x6 white plates. We couldn't find anywhere in the instructions where we'd missed them, and sure enough, we checked Bricklink to find that it was normal for it to come with seventeen extras. This was even stranger than in the case of Diagon Alley, since larger, heavier parts almost never come as extras-- the function of extra pieces is generally to ensure that lighter parts don't go missing without being caught by the weight check, so the function of these extra plates in the Taj Mahal was a mystery.

Well for the Taj Mahal, it is one of the biggest sets ever released. Perhaps the extra weight of all the parts made it more difficult to accuratly check the parts inside for some reason? Or perhaps they reasoned that since there were so many parts it would be harder to find the particular parts needed, so they included a bunch of extras of some parts so you wouldn't spend half an hour looking for one part if you didn't sort the parts before building (With big sets this can be quite a problem, I once spent 45 minutes looking for a single plate when working on the Tower Brige)

[Vindicare]

Well for the Taj Mahal, it is one of the biggest sets ever released. Perhaps the extra weight of all the parts made it more difficult to accuratly check the parts inside for some reason? Or perhaps they reasoned that since there were so many parts it would be harder to find the particular parts needed, so they included a bunch of extras of some parts so you wouldn't spend half an hour looking for one part if you didn't sort the parts before building (With big sets this can be quite a problem, I once spent 45 minutes looking for a single plate when working on the Tower Brige)

That can definitely be a problem. I hate searching and searching and then I finally come to realize that it's right in front of me. With big sets though, I get on a big table and put each bag in a pile, that way I'm not wasting so much time looking.

[Hoboman]

That can definitely be a problem. I hate searching and searching and then I finally come to realize that it's right in front of me. With big sets though, I get on a big table and put each bag in a pile, that way I'm not wasting so much time looking.

I like the newer sets where each bag is numbered and you build them in order. That way I only have to deal with one bag of parts at a time.

Edit: I can't type.

Edited July 9, 2011 by Daniel's Dad

[Vindicare]

I like the newer sets where each bag is numbered and you build them in order. That way I only have to deal with one bag of parts at a time.

Edit: I can't type.

Yeah, I like the numbered bags as well. My usual building table isn't all that big, so it's nice building sets in sections.

[CaptainBermuda]

i think the more of a piece used in a set the more the extra pieces of that piece will be distributed. but 17 sounds a little extreme.

[Aanchir]

i think the more of a piece used in a set the more the extra pieces of that piece will be distributed. but 17 sounds a little extreme.

From my experience, it's that there will be one extra of each piece below a certain weight for each bag that piece appears in. So the Taj Mahal was an extremely unusual case-- they were all in a bag together, which contained nothing but 1x6 plates.