Starting fresh or?

[KyleJ]

Recently just come back to lego and I haven't even started building anything yet! Reason being is there's so many bumps in the road of me wanting to come back into it... I am honestly stumped in what to do and how I should do it. I brought some brilliant office type plastic 33 stacked storage drawers and I'm planning on buying another and plus other storage things, but the problem I'm having is with lego....

I've brought 3/4 sets and I'm planning on asking for and buying more (benefits of starting close to Christmas :P)

Here's the main question: I've dug out my old lego, which 3 quarters of it is my moms old lego, meaning bricks are scratched, some have got small chips etc. and a large majority or them are tainted because of years of use so what's supposed to be the same colour isn't actually the same colour.

I was thinking if it was best to just sell all of it in multiple bulks to get a good price for it and start again on brink link and sets... Meaning I get better quality pieces... Or should I just stick with it all? I'm really at a loss right now at how I should go about coming back into this... I wanted to come back and start building mocs and vehicles and things but I can't even get past the first hurdle... HELP!

Edited November 25, 2013 by KyleJ

[eurotrash]

Unless you're building a pristine, flawless creation I think once you start building you'll come to the conclusion that old bricks don't really matter - there's always hidden and obscure places where you can use them and save the newer ones for the areas of higher visibility.

Personally I like the older discolored ones - they're perfect for my decaying town and some of the older 2x4 bricks that are past their best are used as supports under plates, etc.

[meyerc13]

You're right, this is a great time of year to get back into the hobby. While I didn't have any of the sets from my childhood (my mom gave them to my cousins apparently), I have picked up some old sets at rummage sales. Personally, I think that approach is more trouble than it is worth. As you've found, discolored, chewed, dirty, all too common. The dirt you can get rid of with time and effort, but the discoloration and damaged bricks are the price you pay for 'well-loved' bricks.

Personally, if I were you I'd do this:

First, if you dare going out to Black Friday sales, you can pick up some great 'brick box' types sets. You'll get hundreds of pieces for far less than the decent ratio of 10 cents per piece. They aren't always great pieces, but if you are going to build you want a nice stock of basic colors in 1x and 2x bricks, and this will get you that.

The next step is hitting the stores the last week of the year. Many stores have massive clearance sales. The selection won't be great, but you need to ignore the set designs and look at the pieces. Pay attention to the colors and the detail pieces. For example, while you may not like Chima or Galaxy Squad, you'll find pieces in both sets that you wouldn't expect to find. For example, this car hood isn't available in this color in City sets, only in two sets from those themes: http://www.brickset.com/search/?part=4653722 It isn't unusual to find sets at 50% off after the holidays. Creator sets are especially good because they give you a nice variety of parts.

Finally, if you live close to a LEGO store, become a frequest visitor of their Pick-a-Brick wall. I live a hundred miles from the closest, but when I'm travelling I've stopped at the stores, and at least once a month I make a trip to the closest LEGO store. By doing this I've built up a nice variety of plates and interesting parts (wheels, tires, wheel arches, windshields, doors, windows, plates with clips, hinges, etc.).

If you can move beyond looking at a set for its design to looking at a set for its parts, you'll start to find good deals throughout the year that will help to fill the holes in your collection. In no time at all you'll have a nice selection of bricks on hand to build almost anything you want. And you won't have to resort to dirty, damaged used bricks to do it.

[WaysofSorting]

I, too, somewhat prefer the older pieces. They give some real character to a build, I think. What is the star wars aesthetic - a world used, aged and built from the ashes of another? Something basically like that... Think Army Surplus in space. Worn-in Sci Fi instead of super clean sterile Sci fi.

Then there's the question of quality. Here's a little anecdotal evidence from me (obviously biased) so take it with a grain of salt - but I argue that old bricks are better quality:

1) When sorting out of my piles of brick, I generally identify Clone Bricks by feel first - there's something just off enough that, when I find one amongst my bajillion of Vintage bricks, I "stop" and see what's going on. Usually it's a PVC vs ABS issue - so that's a no brainer. Now that I have "new bricks" mixed in with my vintage...I sometimes get that same hang up on them.

2) I "perceive" that newer bricks scratch easier. Plates bend and deform more with the newer elements. (however - they also don't just snap in half, and they usually deform back...so maybe that's okay in the long run). I also feel like the newer bricks interact differently with light - they aren't as opaque as older bricks. I think this has to do with the way they do the dyes.

Like I said - no real science, just my thoughts.

To answer your question - I'd save the energy sorting and selling the old and just go for new stuff. It accumulates faster than you think...

[KyleJ]

Using them in old aesthetic MOCs is a nice idea, it's just these bricks might be a little more tainted then you might be thinking. For some reason I just personally don't like the idea of for instance building a blue building and it being 7 shades of blue because they're tainted. Money isn't a massive issue, nor is time, I can put time into something and I work hard plus have a hard working family that agree to helping me on the financial side of it.

Although I'm starting to understand what you mean... if I'm buying sets and pieces at the rate I am (planning), it won't be long till I have a nice assortment of different pieces (that are new).

[Chilis]

I`m born in 1979 and had a great Lego-time in the happy 80s + 1990, 91 and 92. I cant get rid of any of these bricks! Can`t sell, can`t dispose. I`m very close to all my Legos and have alot of good memories playing with them.

I went back to Legos in 2005 (when my oldes kid got his first set, aged 5 years old) and for real in 2009 when I discovered the Grand Emporium/modular line in one of my local toystores. Since then, I`ve build up a massive collection of sets and "PaBs." The point is that all the old Lego is just sorted by color and stacked into bins. Today I only use new bricks (PaBs) for MOCing and new sets for building and displaying. Soon starting to build up a huge CITYlayout.

I would never mix old ones with new ones. Happy building!

Only time I use old bricks is to rebuild old sets. That is cozy, recall old memories..

[Pizzareno]

I sometimes find that bricks from the 80s look terrible and wish they were all pristine but sometimes I have even found new bricks can vary slightly in colour. If money wasn't an issue for me I would like to replace my discoloured ones. But like Chilis I just can't bring myself to get rid of the old bricks either!

I think pieces chewed by the cat and cracked do look bad and try to avoid them unless I can hide them in the middle of something.

Just as an aside I bought the Creator 7346 and some of the green bricks in the Palm tree have cracks and they have only been assembled once and it has only been out of the box for 2 months!

[ShaydDeGrai]

There's no such thing as bad LEGO; every brick fills a need an serves a purpose. The trick is figuring out what to use when.

My collection of LEGO has been growing since the late 1960's and a lot of the stuff from 30-40 years ago is in pretty rough shape (scratches, yellowing, some of the old Samsonite parts are even broken) but it's rare that a piece gets so weathered that I actually get rid of it.

If you're into MOC'ing, having well loved parts can actually be a bonus. When I built my Pillars of the Kings sculpture (one statute of which is my avatar) I deliberately mixed old scratched up light gray parts in with the new light blueish gray ones I bought specifically for this project because I wanted the finished project to look like old, weathered stone and the using all pristine brick would have made things look to "plasticy"

The other major use I have for older bricks is for internal structure. If you build MOCs of any significant scale, there will always be bricks that are needed for structure but are never seen in the finished product. Why waste a nice new brick you could be showing off, when an old scratched up one will do just as well?

I grew up Lego-poor, so I can empathize with feeling limited by the size of one's collection and the desire to have more, but unless you've got something very rare (and know how to find someone willing to pay top dollar for it) selling off the old stuff to buy new sets will likely just shrink the size of your collection overall. If you really want a particular set, need the money and don't really care about MOC'ing, maybe this is the right choice for you, but I'm of the opinion that Lego Collections should only increase in size, even if some of those bricks are really old.

[meyerc13]

Just as an aside I bought the Creator 7346 and some of the green bricks in the Palm tree have cracks and they have only been assembled once and it has only been out of the box for 2 months!

Contact LEGO customer service. They'll generally replace the bricks when this happens, and they really need to know about instances like this. There are several threads here on Eurobricks about this issue and unfortunately it seems to be happening all too often. I've seen it myself - bricks on a recently built new set cracking just from being assembled. I think the more data LEGO collects on this issue that the better their manufacturing/QC around the issue will become (unless of course it's just cheaper to replace the bricks in cases like this than to find and fix the root cause, but even so the more often LEGO is force to replace bricks perhaps the more likely they'll be to fix the problem).

[KyleJ]

I am thinking of selling it in colour sorted bags for reasonable prices, it's not as if I'm going to always buy sets and brand new pieces... I'm sure finding things on bricklink and bellow cheap things on eBay means I will stock pile old and new pieces, but personally I seem to be more attached to the less scratched, less tainted pieces. I do guess it really does depend on the person, and the financial ability and their free time... but as I'm personally not struggling (but not unlimited) to them I do think I will go down the route of having the larger majority of my collection be newer then older.