Starting A Lego Club and a New Collection

[Dannylonglegs]

Note: If this topic is too similar to the "What set should I buy" Topic, feel free to merge it.

Hey all. I'm thinking about starting a Lego Club at my college next fall. I've spoken to allot of people on Campus who seem interested in Lego (even someone who's a sometimes member of this forum) , and I've been told by at least one person that if I started a Lego Club, He'd join it in an instant. My School has plenty of specialty clubs (Magic the Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, a Pirate Club (that ended, but I keep hearing about it)), and I've already been a President of Clubs in the past, and I think a Lego club would be a great addition to my College's collection of Clubs.

In addition to visits to the local Lego store and discussing Lego, I think it would be fun to have a Club-Supply of Lego for the purposes of free-building, and maybe even building contests. The problem is though, I've heard I'll probably only be able to use 100$ of club funding per semester (and I'm not particularly wealthy myself) I may also have 10 dollar dues to add to that, but the problem remains, starting with nothing, how do I build a large-enough and varied-enough collection of Lego to enable the hosting of small building contests and allow for fun free-building and MoCing with only about 100$. I'd like to keep it to sets/Lego purchased in-store and not online too. I've thought of several ways I could approach this. I think I'll either try to build a collection that does have minifigures from most of the themes, or one that doesn't focus on them and build the collection of minifigures on a contest-by-contest basis, adding a set or two to the collection as an aspect of the contest (ie: use this minifigure and make a creation around it, or use only pieces from this set to make a coherent creation, or make a creation in this general theme) and spread the collection to incorporate minis from different themes in that way.

So, my question is, which sets do I buy from those that will be available in stores this coming fall or now to achieve a small collection with only about 100$? What do you all think?

~Insectoid Aristocrat

Edited February 20, 2013 by Dannylonglegs

[Leo604]

For starters you can build up a large quantity quickly using Pick-A-Brick, which should be a decent deal at first. After that, I'd start going for City sets since they're mostly cheap and keep building on from there. Once you start getting more people, and hopefully more donations you could maybe buy a few licensed sets with iconic minifigures or sets themselves. After that, maybe rinse and repeat? It's what came to the top of my head just now; I haven't ran a Lego Club before no firsthand experience here.

Good luck!

[Phoxtane]

Why not start an informal LUG? My home LUG, CoWLUG, doesn't require members to pay dues, but it doesn't have a public 'pool' of bricks for people to use in competitions and things either. We supply our own bricks... and I'm sure that at any college of reasonable size, you're more than likely to find enough people into Lego to start up a LUG. Perhaps you could cut the dues to $5 per person and use that to pay for things like food and beverages. Based on the college students I know, they're not ones to turn down free food, especially when it happens to be provided along with discussion about a hobby they love.

[TanTile]

Why would you need to supply the bricks at all, I bet the Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh clubs didn't turn up and expect free cards to play with, they would have brought their own. Same with a Lego club, bring your own then work out a way to donate any amount into a pool and let it build from there, or just bring your own pile of bricks and do contests with and take them back home at the end of the day, or better yet when you get a few members up chip in and bid on a bulk lot on eBay or something and spit the cost fair and there is your stock to build with, say you have 5 members they chip in $20 a week or fortnight or month and go hunting for bulk lots. I'm sure you'll get a great range for $100. do that once a month and before you know it you will be swimming in Lego. If funds are hard skip lunch once or twice a week.

[Jargo]

You could always start off with virtual bricks and set an LDD task at each meeting. No lugging (no pun intended) masses of bricks around, just a laptop and I'm sure there'd be plenty of those around at a college.

[dr_spock]

My wife started one at my son's elementary school. It was a bring your own bricks club.

You could find used bricks at garage sales, online, etc. Or look for sponsors to fund your venture.

[tedbeard]

One way to build a "club stash" might be to forgo dues but include a "club" pick in monthly drafts. Doing drafts would, I think, be a popular activity especially for a new club allowing your members to build their personal collections.

If your members agree then every round "the club" gets a pick just like anyone else. This could be someone who may not be participating in that particular draft or by consensus amongst the participants or something else.

[Zeya]

One thing I always have my envious eye on are parts drafts. That's where a group of people pool their money together to buy several copies of some set that happens to be on discount. (The trick is finding a nicely discounted set.) Then you do the draft where you go around in a circle and each person gets to pluck out X number of elements. There are different methods, but that's the general idea. I've always wanted to be part of a parts draft; maybe one day.

I wouldn't stress too much about the $100 founding fee. If you put up flyers or get the word around, I'll bet you can scrape up the member base to cover that fee. From there, you all can decide about pooling your money together to buy bricks, trips to conventions, and stuff like that.

You'll have a good bullet point for your resume after college (put towards the end of your resume though).