ElCrab Posted December 10, 2013 Posted December 10, 2013 Hi, first time poster here. Just signed up today, after lurking for a bit. A quick little blurb about me, I'm 35 and my Dark Age(s) lasted from the late 90s until about a month or so ago. The last set I bought was the Bandit Hideout 6761 around the time that came out. My mom has still sent me random Lego she finds in her thrift shopping, and I recently started getting into the minifigs, once I found out they existed. Like I said, only recently have I gotten back into the hobby, and it's been crazy. I'm by no means rich, but I have a job that allows me to get Lego sets before I head home from a hard day's work. It's a bit dangerous, since it's so easy to order sets on my breaks and have them waiting for me at the front desk. Anyway, my main goal has been piece accumulation, primarily from the Star Wars, LOTR, Castle, and Lone Ranger sets. I would say it's due to the lack of gray/black/brown/tan elements from my childhood. I always wanted to build castles, but I never had a bunch of the older Castle sets. I mostly got Pirates sets as a kid, but I'm not complaining. I have Eldorado Fortress 6271-1 and Imperial Trading Post 6277-1, after all, and in my lurking I've seen those to be sought-after by those around here. I also picked up the 2012 & 2013 Star Wars advent calenders, and the 2013 City one as well. Those have been great fun, but hard to resist opening more than one day at a time! Plus I just scored the Architecture Studio 21050, brand new and sealed, for 80 bucks on Craigslist. My original plan was to sell it online, hopefully for a nice profit, but the urge to keep it won out. My interests so far in terms of builds would be castles, western themes, microbuilds, and perhaps space/undersea vessels at some point. I'm sure that list will expand at some point very soon. One of the first ideas I had was to recreate Custer's Seventh Cavalry, all 650-odd soldiers, civilians, and scouts, based on their strength and disposition in 1876. While I still would like to do that, the sheer logistics of such a project would require so much more money and space than I have at the time. But it's probably my holy grail build. Ok, onto the question I signed up to ask. I have no clue how to store my pieces, which also includes how to separate them. I have a few Rubbermaid tubs that my collection originally lived in, but I'd like to separate the collection to make for easier building. I have already begun the process of filtering out minifigs and accessories, but I could use some ideas or suggestions on how to separate the rest of the pieces. Some initial ideas I've tried are grouping by similar pieces, like all arches and curved elements together. I've also been putting all foliage and green elements together. I know it's all in how you want your collection, but I'm at a loss for how detailed I want the groupings to be, or what to get to put them in. I am leaning towards a solution of basic elements being grouped by style only, and certain elements being grouped by color. Or even primary colors being kept together, while having the shade elements being grouped by color scheme (blacks, grays, browns, etc). And while I do like the idea of easily finding what I need (or knowing I don't have it right away), a part of me wants to still have some of "the thrill of the hunt" aspect of my childhood builds left in my storage methods. The fiancée actually was on board with buying me 5 or 6 of the large stackable brick storage bins, but while that seemed like an awesomely Lego thing to do, it doesn't seem practical. I might take her up on one or two for storing a few things, like instructions and baseplates and what-not, but it didn't seem like an across-the-board solution. So I turn to you folks for ideas. Also, I've heard about a few ways to clean older Lego to remove the yellowing, and would love a bit more info on that. My older pieces sure could use the love. Thanks to those who read this and those who reply! I look forward to being a part of this community, and sometime soon I'll start sharing my builds.
Paperballpark Posted December 10, 2013 Posted December 10, 2013 (edited) Group by part rather than colour if you don't want to spend ages digging through a huge bin of black bricks looking for a specific piece. At the point you're at, I'd group similar elements together (windscreens, foliage, wheels, etc), then as you get more, sort them further into different elements. A lot of people use storage drawers, certainly for the small elements. You can also get 1-2 litre stackable tubs fairly cheaply, for larger quantities or larger bricks. I have a mix of the two, which serves me fine. Personally I sort by element rather than colour. So I have all my 1x2 bricks together, all my 1x1 plates together, etc. It's a lot easier to find a black 1x2 plate in a drawer of 1x2 plates than it is to find in a tub of random black elements. If I have a lot of one colour of an element (e.g. transparent red 1x1 plate), then that colour will get it's own drawer/tub, Start small, and scale up as and when needed. Edited December 10, 2013 by Paperballpark
Pandora Posted December 10, 2013 Posted December 10, 2013 Hello ElCrab and welcome to Eurobricks. In this very subforum Fugazi has created a spangly and comprehensive index, which includes reference to the main Storage and Sorting topic and also has a link for information about cleaning and de-yellowing LEGO. It might be best to have a read through the Storage and Sorting topic for ideas to answer your question. If you'd like to introduce yourself, the "Hello My Name Is.." forum is setup exactly for that purpose. I'm going to lock this for now, to keep all storage discussion in the one topic I linked to, but if you'd like to cut and paste your introduction into a new post in the "Hello My Name Is forum", please feel free.
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