badchriss

What got you into collecting Lego as an Adult?

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My story is probably similar to a lot of adults as I built Lego as a child (I'm 47 now) and discarded my desire as I became a teen and my interests went other places. I picked it back up again about 7 years ago when my son received his first set (Hailfire droid) that he was to young for. I built it for him and put it back together numerous times as he vigorously played with it. He developed a passion for it a few years later and we started buying new sets and huge lots of bricks off EBay. We now have a giant collection of bricks that I spend most of my time organizing and he builds. I tend to over do things so when I say a ton of bricks, I mean a TON of bricks. He enjoys it and it makes me happy to see him have fun with it. One day I will build more but now it's just him.

LMW

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When I first saw (in my early 30s) that they had UCS Star Wars Lego sets I knew I had to buy and build those myself...I've been hooked the last year.

Naturally played with Legos as a kid but my mom gave them all away to Goodwill (someone got a super good deal I'm sure for thousands of pieces).

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To put it simply - the adult world wasn't really all that it was cracked up to be. Its pretty sad and disgusting, actually. I knew all of my answers before ever I got involved into it, and should have stayed true to who that smaller person was. I went back and found him, and have been able to move forward more honestly ever since.

Don't listen to those people who tell you to "... grow up". Its a trap, designed for the allowance of their own snide laughter, when your wing, too, is caught upon the fly paper. Your 9 year-old self will not lie to you...

Mine told me to find a red Classic Space-man, and to piece him together a Space Buggy, #886. And so I did. And so here I am - some 200 or so BrickLink orders later, and a much more balanced being now that my analytical and imaginative self has been restored to pre-sheep form.

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A couple of coinciding factors brought me back to Lego as an adult:

- Graduating from college and moving out of the dormitories (there is not a lot of room in there, to say the least).

- Getting a better job (aka, not minimum wage and having my work hours semi-limited by a class schedule).

- Seeing the Diagon Alley set and the 4th Harry Potter Castle set. I will never regret those being my first adult Lego purchases and I haven't looked back since.

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I think that this thread is similar to this. Maybe a moderator would like to have a look at it. :classic:

For the record, I always was a fan of Star Wars spaceships. I was collecting them as models when, suddenly, one day I saw this in a store:

10030-1.jpg?200709280625

Well... that was it. I could finally combine my Star Wars love with that old (forgotten) LEGO enjoyment, of making something yourself.

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Personally, it was when I saw the Lego movie. After the song was over I started to miss Lego. That started my descent back into the hobby. I really liked that film.

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I picked up the little Captain America set with his motorbike and the Chitauri.. after that I just had to get all of the Avengers... then it snowballed!

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For me moving abroad meant leaving all my Lego at home with family in the UK. Like most, i too went through the usual dark age period and lost interest. Living in China though made me nostaligic for familiar things. My girlfriend (now wife) and I were out shopoing on one of the weekends and saw a toys r us, we decided to go inside and have fun trying on face masks and taking photos. When I saw the Lego area. It wasn't a massive TrU and the Lego area wasn't huge too. But at that time the ninjago serpents wave was out and I really liked the look of what was available. My girlfriend and I talked about Lego, we both revealed we loved it when we were kids, so we decided to pick up the venomari shrine, jays blue electric fighter jet, and because we had spent over a certain amount, we got a free city theme small fire service 4×4 with one minifig and a trailer full of equipment.

We built it all that evening and we never looked back. On the morning of our wedding when we moved to the UK temporarily (back in China now) I rushed out to collect the wedding cake while she was with her bridesmaids getting ready. I went into the local Lego store at west field shopping mall in London and purchased the bride and groom minifig decoration set. It went on top of the wedding cake and she loved it. Its still on our display shelf to this day.

AFOL for life!

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Phase I: Getting back into LEGO

When I was 16, I pulled out all my childhood LEGO for a high school math project. It never made it back to the attic. My parents actually wanted to give it to my younger brother, who was about 5 years old at the time, but I made excuses, and kept it to myself. I built with it here-and-there, but didn't really build much until the summer following my senior year (at age 17).

Phase II: Buying more LEGO

My summer after high school, I worked as a camp counselor at a local day camp. We mostly did outdoorsy things like kickball and swimming, but some indoor activities like arts & crafts (and even a computer lab!).

We didn't have any LEGO at the camp, but one day, one of my campers brought this in (yes, this was the summer of 1994):

6949-1.jpg

I secretly lusted after it.

In the fall, I took a year off between high school and college, and got a retail job. Naturally, I didn't get much vacation time, so when the rest of my family went away for a week, I had the house to myself. And a car. And a steady paycheck with actual money that I could spend.

I went out and bought LEGO every night that week. I didn't want my parents to know that I was actually buying more LEGO, though-- so I tried to keep it secret. When they came back, I would occasionally do more of the same-- sneaking out to buy LEGO at Toys R Us, and hiding it in my room. I think they knew I was probably buying more, but I'm not sure if they ever saw the evidence directly.

Phase III: Finding other AFOLs

I didn't have much space or time for LEGO in college. I bought a couple things here and there, but mostly kept it on the back burner. But towards the end of my senior year in college, I met another student who loved LEGO. And he showed me RTL (the newsgroup... k'now... newsgroups? Sorry, I'm old). I lurked there a while, and watched.

Then, after school was out, I found a job, and also found LUGNET. Suddenly, I was a full-on crazy LEGO guy. And any secret shame about being an adult who was into LEGO went out the window.

DaveE

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when still at Uni, a few years ago i was out shopping with a friend and saw the 7965 millennium falcon and had to have it straight away, and shortly after i bought myself the vw camper van for my birthday. i would occasionally buy a small set, but it was really last year, when i moved into a flat with no internet access (hugely annoying btw) that i became hooked again. i worked in a bar and used my tips to buy lego for something to do ^_^ . i never really lost interest throughout my teens, but with things like guitars and going out being more interesting to a 15-23 yr old, it took a back seat. sometimes wish it stayed that way lol but it's good fun. better spending money on lego than on booze ;)

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I am just a couple of months out of my dark ages, so I've found reading this thread fascinating!

I think I probably stopped playing with LEGO fairly young... maybe 8 or 9? But I do remember absolutely loving all building toys - one of my earliest memories iks of my Dad (an actual builder) teaching me to bond bricks properly with Duplo. Looking back I wonder if my Mum may have put the LEGO away when my older brothers grew out of it, and assumed that as a girl I'd have no interest. Then of course teenage years, exams, a lot of other creative interests - writing, drama - intervened. Then I was a very poor undergraduate student and then a poor newlywed and just didn't have the funds!

An increase in income has certainly helped, but what I'm looking for out of my hobbies has also changed. I'm currently a PhD student so all my old relaxation activities - mainly reading and writing - started feeling like a bit of busman's holiday. I needed something that wasn't staring at a computer screen or reading more books... really, something to play with and make mistakes and produce something satisfying solely for my own enjoyment!

LEGO ended up filling that gap after a relative gave me a small 3-in-1 Creator truck for Christmas as a desk toy. I felt more relaxed doing that tiny build than I had in months! Then I looked at the LEGO store and found there were so many amazing sets out there. I'd muttered about getting the Doctor Who Ideas set (I'm a big Whovian) when it was announced and I just decided to go for it. :classic:

Something I do regret slightly is that apart from the DW set I was a bit too embarrassed early on to buy what seemed like 'childish' sets, so my other early sets were deliberately sombre choices - Architecture, mainly - when really I'm an absolute raging geek and don't really want 'grown up' models. :laugh: But I have fortunately since lost my initial embarrassment and am now happily delving into the whole wide colorful world that's out there!

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I remember walking by Lego stores in the mall and my eye catching the Maersk train and ship. I went on my way thinking that's cool, maybe some day I'll have kids.

This year, in early January, I was in a Home Depot parking lot on a snowy day, and I thought to myself it would be a cool day to set up an old train set like I had as a kid. I thought, well, why not make it a Lego train set. I decided to buy a Lego train set, my girlfriend and I went to the Lego store and I was super embarrassed but it felt like a calling. We immediately grabbed the two train sets for sell 60051 and 60052 and it was wonderful. That was around January 8th I believe.

Since then I spent between $3500 to $5000 on Lego both current and retired from eBay including some sets I always wanted as a kid. No regrets! Although I am slowing down now and focusing more on buying pieces from bricklink to create some interest train/seaport related MOCs someday.

I find Lego to be therapeutic, there's something enjoyable about "collecting" and organizing said collection, I used to try to do it in video games but this is far more rewarding and I have not played a video game since. I'm driving home in a few months to visit and my mom has been waiting for 2 decades to give me my Lego sets from the 1980s and 1990s because she somehow knew this would happen.

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My son asked for the Jurassic world Indominus Rex breakout set for his birthday last fall. I built it for him, and decided it was time. I had planned on taking it easy, but after buying the Iron Man Vs Ultron set at walmart, I decided I needed all the minifigures from that series, and now I have around 100 minifigures.

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I dont consider myself a collector, nor a builder (my building skills are rather on the lower end of the barrel). I am interested in historic lego like castles and pirates.

What got me into it? Viewing MOCs on the internet. When I was a child a had one of those lego castles :) my mother actually didnt like lego too much so she didnt buy me a lot of it.

Anyway when I viewed those MOCs I thought this is gonna be easy, when I started I realized that I didnt have enought bricks when I got more bricks I realized that I either lacked the skills or didnt have enough bricks. Right now I have more bricks, but not enough :), my skills improved, but not enough.

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Were waaay into Lego as a child and between 1991-1998 I was crazy about it then high school started and it faded and now after I saw The Force Awakens I just went out and bought the Special Order Tie Fighter on impulse back in january of this year and boom I was back. And now that I got a child on my own I got the perfect building partner.

Edited by raarghh

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As per many, I collected as a child, went through a dark age around 1991 aged 13, but kept all my bricks in my parents loft, about age 21, my girlfriend got me back into Lego by buying me a set for Christmas, and I've not looked back, I now have a healthy collection, and a lack of space to store it all!

She probably regrets it now!

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Always been a big Nintendo fan, my only hobby that never stopped for more than a year. A few years ago, a WiiU game called Lego City Undercover came out, published by Nintendo. Bought it and loved it, especially because seeing a living Lego city was what I wanted so many years ago on the living room floor. Saw there was a tie in set available, 60007, with Chase McCain. Bought it (shocked by the price when I took it to the cashier, but not about to stop), and loved it. Started looking into other City sets, saw many of them match vehicles from the game. Bought some more. Saw the Grand Emporium was a real set, after seeing it represented in the game. Buying that was when I fully committed to being an AFOL! Now I'm hopelessly addicted, but never been happier.

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Got into them with son. Had built a complete airport on his bedroom floor. Used colored electrical tape to map out the airport land. MOCed little hangars and some aircraft. Sadly some how most of those sets pieces were accidently left in a house after a move. and not noticed missing until recently when I got back into Lego for myself, and grandkids. I do mostly Technic and Creator for me, City for grandson, and Friends for Granddaughter.

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I Used to have Lego when I was little but 'forgot' about it as I got older. then a couple of years ago my young son started collecting SW Lego and I enjoyed building it with him. As a lifelong fan of OT Star Wars it kickstarted my interest in OT SW sets! I think o started off buying a couple of battlepacks to get hold of Stormtroopers, and took off from there! Strictly OT though, apart from 75038, cos I like that little ship lol

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I loved building Lego houses as a kid in the 80s. I had a tub of my older brother's discarded Lego bricks which were just a collection of the 6 pin and 4 pin bricks with two small base plates (one which was incredibly thick for some reason!) I basically just built the same house over and over and made rudimentary furniture for it. No idea where my obsession with houses started but I just love the architecture of them.

Having left Lego behind in my childhood, fast forward to 2004 where I was visiting my brother in Birmingham and happened to pay a visit to the Lego Store in the Bull Ring shopping centre (my first trip to a Lego store). There I came across one of the most amazing things I had ever seen...the Building Bonanza 4886 set. It was love at first site, my eyes lit up and I was as excited as a kid at Christmas. It was amazing. I had to be teared away from it and convinced myself that as I was now an adult I wasn't allowed to buy Lego anymore (I had no idea about AFOLs at this point). I dreamed about it for days and eventually decided to convince my brother to get it for me, which he did and said it was a present. So he is partly to blame for the end of my dark age of Lego!

These days I'm quite picky about my Lego sets and generally go for houses, aesthetically pleasing sets or ones that have a feel good factor like The Simpsons or Ghostbusters.

My 6 year old daughter has a collection of Disney Princess and Friends sets and my son who is 3 is obsessed with Lego minfigures, especially burglars, police and pirates. He plays with his Swamp Police set none stop :-)

Edited by KateB

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Loved loved LOVED LEGO as a kid. It was probably around 12 or 13 that I moved onto other things (Star Wars figures and playing guitar). It was probably a combination of seeing the sets on shelves at Walmart (I always check the toy aisle and always have) and seeing the LEGO Movie that I realized how much I missed my little yellow-faced friends. I still have probably 85-90% of my childhood LEGO and got really heavy into the Batman/DC Superheroes set. Oh! And when I left my job at Value Village, I was presented with the Knowhere Escape Mission set. I was so flattered because the other production guys had gotten booze when they left, but the girls at VV knew me better than that. So yeah, now I'm back to being a diehard, and I couldn't be happier. My wife isn't too pleased though... :grin:

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My story is probably similar to many. Loved LEGO as a kid, was completely hooked on Town, Trains, Classic Space, and Castle. Did many chores to be able to buy 7740 (Intercity) and 375 (Yellow Castle), and was smart enough to hold on to them, along with the rest of my childhood collection. The 1980s were great for me until I hit my dark ages. My kids got me back into LEGO in the early 2000s and I haven't looked back since. Moving half-way across the world hasn't stopped me, so I don't think anything else will. :wink:

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I lost interest in my teenage years when it was not "cool" to play with Lego. At that age it is so easy to bow to peer pressure.

My son was given a Star Wars set for his birthday a few years back. He got hooked and pulled me in, now when we get a new set I don't know who is more excited.

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I never really got out of it. Even in college I always had some small set (crane 6361 was a favorite) sitting on my desk in my dorm. When I got an apartment, I just bought bigger pieces (6274 Caribbean Clipper) to have around just for show.

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