Just discovered that Lego trains are beyond my reach

[SteamSewnEmpire]

I finally parted and priced out a couple of my locomotives tonight and... wow... $600 for the Mercury, and $570 for the BoB class. I wasn't expecting this to be cheap, but I also was not anticipating HO scale brass locomotive prices, either. Even swapping for all used parts only dropped the overall tag about 40 bucks per loco. I didn't even bother finding out what the NYC J3-A would cost because the first two were so enormously disheartening. 

How do people afford this hobby? I'm not even trying to buy track, scenery, buildings, etc. - just put together two (not enormous; not, like, articulated locomotive-sized) locomotives (let alone passenger cars which I would expect, based on these results, to be 300-400 dollars per-car). I'd like to see some of my creations actually built and perhaps even running, but not at the cost of, like, food for a month.  

Edited February 15, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[Daedalus304]

12 minutes ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

I finally parted and priced out a couple of my locomotives tonight and... wow... $600 for the Mercury, and $570 for the BoB class. I wasn't expecting this to be cheap, but I also was not anticipating HO scale brass locomotive prices, either. Even swapping for all used parts only dropped the overall tag about 40 bucks per loco. I didn't even bother finding out what the NYC J3-A would cost because the first two were so enormously disheartening. 

How do people afford this hobby? I'm not even trying to buy track, scenery, buildings, etc. - just put together two (not enormous; not, like, articulated locomotive-sized) locomotives (let alone passenger cars which I would expect, based on these results, to be 300-400 dollars per-car). I'd like to see some of my creations actually built and perhaps even running, but not at the cost of, like, food for a month.  

Just cost for parts, that seems ridiculously high. One thing I would strongly recommend is that you go through the list of parts and find out why - generally you'll find that it's probably because you've got several parts on your list that are incredibly rare and expensive because of it.

Once you identify those high cost parts, there's two ways to deal with it. First step is to figure out if you've accidentally used a mold variant that's rare, but a near identical part is super cheap. Swap out anything you can. One example I can think of is a certain type of technic pin that's kinda spendy in Medium Stone Grey, but cheap cheap cheap in the old one. 

Your second stop after that is to review your model itself and see if you can work out the expensive parts for something else. At this stage I'd also recommend checking if you can streamline your parts used, too - see if you can reduce part count, and also see if you can optimize the amount of unique part types.

I wouldn't expect it should be anywhere near that $600-$700 unless you were pushing over 5k parts at least. I've built several large engines and I don't think, for just the basic parts, I've hit even half that cost until I also added in motors and custom wheels.

[Henry 991]

1 hour ago, Daedalus304 said:

Just cost for parts, that seems ridiculously high. One thing I would strongly recommend is that you go through the list of parts and find out why - generally you'll find that it's probably because you've got several parts on your list that are incredibly rare and expensive because of it.

Once you identify those high cost parts, there's two ways to deal with it. First step is to figure out if you've accidentally used a mold variant that's rare, but a near identical part is super cheap. Swap out anything you can. One example I can think of is a certain type of technic pin that's kinda spendy in Medium Stone Grey, but cheap cheap cheap in the old one. 

Your second stop after that is to review your model itself and see if you can work out the expensive parts for something else. At this stage I'd also recommend checking if you can streamline your parts used, too - see if you can reduce part count, and also see if you can optimize the amount of unique part types.

I wouldn't expect it should be anywhere near that $600-$700 unless you were pushing over 5k parts at least. I've built several large engines and I don't think, for just the basic parts, I've hit even half that cost until I also added in motors and custom wheels.

I’d do exactly that.

Your bill of materials is 2x what it based on my experience (4 steam locomotives with BrickLink parts) should cost.

Go through the parts list manually. It might also be that the rare/expensive parts have such limited supply that you end up paying premium from all other parts as well!

[SteamSewnEmpire]

1 hour ago, Daedalus304 said:

Just cost for parts, that seems ridiculously high. One thing I would strongly recommend is that you go through the list of parts and find out why - generally you'll find that it's probably because you've got several parts on your list that are incredibly rare and expensive because of it.

Once you identify those high cost parts, there's two ways to deal with it. First step is to figure out if you've accidentally used a mold variant that's rare, but a near identical part is super cheap. Swap out anything you can. One example I can think of is a certain type of technic pin that's kinda spendy in Medium Stone Grey, but cheap cheap cheap in the old one. 

Your second stop after that is to review your model itself and see if you can work out the expensive parts for something else. At this stage I'd also recommend checking if you can streamline your parts used, too - see if you can reduce part count, and also see if you can optimize the amount of unique part types.

I wouldn't expect it should be anywhere near that $600-$700 unless you were pushing over 5k parts at least. I've built several large engines and I don't think, for just the basic parts, I've hit even half that cost until I also added in motors and custom wheels.

I'm working on that now. Honestly, Bricklink is not the easiest site to use... and it's giving me a problem. Every time I remove a high-priced item from my list, that item is still showing up in the carts of "auto-selected" stores. I can remove the stores, reload the part list, etc... and it's still generating these "phantom items" that are no longer in the list. 

How do I get Brinklink to forget about these items?

*Edit* Does the auto-select just not work on Brinklink? So, normally, I just buy North American. This is the store list it generated for me for the Mercury if I went with NA:

And here is the store list it generated if I went "anywhere":

So... according to Brinking... by clicking "anywhere"... I should be charged 300 dollars more? What the heck?

Edited February 15, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[Henry 991]

Do the following:

- select stores arbitrarily

- create carts

- open the carts, and review the parts and their prices individually

After the analysis, you may find some ridiculously expensive parts. Eliminate them and repeat the cycle above.

If there are some expensive but unavoidable parts that you want to have, better strategy might be to buy them separately from stores selling them only at good prices, and get the remaining parts though BrickLink’s automated buying.

As said, a target price for a large, 1:48 scale steam engine’s parts of high quality should be $250-300. I think I paid that much recently for Union Pacific Challenger with mostly new conditioned visible parts.

Edited February 15, 2020 by Henry 991

[SteamSewnEmpire]

14 minutes ago, Henry 991 said:

Do the following:

- select stores arbitrarily

- create carts

- open the carts, and review the parts and their prices individually

After the analysis, you may find some ridiculously expensive parts. Eliminate them and repeat the cycle above.

If there are some expensive but unavoidable parts that you want to have, better strategy might be to buy them separately from stores selling them only at good prices, and get the remaining parts though BrickLink’s automated buying.

As said, a target price for a large, 1:48 scale steam engine’s parts of high quality should be $250-300. I think I paid that much recently for Union Pacific Challenger with mostly new conditioned visible parts.

So far, I've been unable to get it much below 390. 

It's a 1900 piece loco - I doubt it's more part heavy than a Challenger, but who knows.

And it's still generating searches for items I have already removed from the list... not sure how to stop that.

Edited February 15, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[Giottist]

1 hour ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

And here is the store list it generated if I went "anywhere":

So... according to Brinking... by clicking "anywhere"... I should be charged 300 dollars more? What the heck?

I'm an European: Particular Give me A Brick is extremly expensive far from sanity even for rather common parts. If you look for yourself and do not rely on any algorithm, you will find them nealy allways at the top end of the price ladder. Nearly the same for Sta Laedla, sorry, they are one of the most expensive dealers at Germany.

Instead look for yourself and keep always the shipping charges in mind. (additional with international dealers the custom charge). After a while you will recognize, that just a handful of dealers have a reasonable good relation between part numbers and price. And please habe a look at the pick A Brick Service at the LEGO online store and mor important the Bricks & Pieces service. At least in half the cases original LEGO Parts are the cheapest way to get new parts in numbers.

Do not rely on the Bricklink algorithm: It does not sort the search results in economic order.

[izx]

To successfully use Bricklink's Buy All functionality (manual or Auto-Select) it is critical to set max prices or you end up with GIve-me-a-brick (PT)

• In your wanted list, sort by Item no and set display to 100 items per page.
• Check box at top to select all items on page.
• Set condition to Used/New if necessary.
• Click on Price and set it to As Price Guide...Last 6 Months...Average & Apply.
• Go to page 2, rinse and repeat.

Now Buy All, check the Exclude: Lots over Max Price box and you should start seeing reasonable prices. I'd also start with Anywhere instead of just USA because for large quantities where Priority Mail would be e.g. $20, $20-30 is often the average from Europe.

Another thing is you'll eventually learn which sellers (especially in the US) sell below average and can make them favorites so they show up first in the search results. If look at a cluster of 2-3 sellers with the same number of unique lots and click select, you'll get a quick popup with the cart price.

(PS: There are NO customs charges for importing toys into the US)

Edited February 15, 2020 by izx

[SteamSewnEmpire]

Just now, izx said:

To successfully use Bricklink's Buy All functionality (manual or Auto-Select) it is critical to set max prices or you end up with GIve-me-a-brick (PT)

• In your wanted list, sort by Item no and set display to 100 items per page.
• Check box at top to select all items on page.
• Set condition to Used/New if necessary.
• Click on Price and set it to As Price Guide...Last 6 Months...Average & Apply.
• Go to page 2, rinse and repeat.

Now Buy All, check the Exclude: Lots over Max Price box and you should start seeing reasonable prices. I'd also start with Anywhere instead of just USA because for large quantities where Priority Mail would be e.g. $20, $20-30 is often the average from Europe.

Another thing is you'll eventually learn which sellers (especially in the US) sell below average and can make them favorites so they show up first in the search results. If look at a cluster of 2-3 sellers with the same number of unique lots and click select, you'll get a quick popup with the cart price.

Thanks. Any idea why parts I have already removed from the list keep ending up in carts?

[izx]

5 minutes ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

Thanks. Any idea why parts I have already removed from the list keep ending up in carts?

The carts created from BL's Buy-All aren't auto emptied. Delete them all from the Global Carts page (top right corner).

Also, a good idea to get a ballpark for a design is to first use the free offline Brickstock software. Export your raw BL wanted list (without any prices, etc.). Upload the wanted list to a custom Parts list on Rebrickable. Export that list to a Brickstock .BSX file and open in Brickstock. Now select all parts, right-click and set price to price guide average. No bothering with 100 items per page, etc. You can sort by price, total price, etc. to figure out what the expensive parts are. In the end, Brickstock will let you export a BL wanted list to the clipboard with condition/prices set.

Rebrickable will also estimate an average price for your parts list. ALSO try the Buy functionality on Rebrickable which shows you sellers in descending order of parts availability with prices. If one seller has 87% of the parts you need for $400, while two down you find someone who has 84% for $175, you know which one to favorite in BL. Each seller also has a button that will popup the missing parts.

Edited February 15, 2020 by izx

[izx]

The way a lot of us operate is to gather parts over some time instead of auto-select and buy at once. BL will let you apply orders (purchases) to a wanted list so that you can complete it gradually. Remember also that most relatively new or recently reintroduced parts will often be cheaper from SAH Bricks-n-Pieces than from any Bricklink seller. SAH's somewhat higher prices for common pieces are also worth it if you only need a few to complete your list because their shipping is $2.95 flat (and if you are close to/over the $35 free shipping threshold, just add a small item - keychain, stickers, etc.) to get free shipping.

[Phil B]

Some more tips:

1. Put your part list in Excel and make a column for the LEGO S@H price for the piece (lego.com > Support > Replacement Parts > Buy Bricks). You need the part number for this so make sure your part list has these

2. Add a column for each vendor you find in BrickLink or BrickOwl to compare prices

3. Look at each vendor’s shipping terms because shipping costs and handling fees can vary a lot between sellers.

4. Then use this to find what seems to be the best balance between vendors for your parts list

5. If you want to go less labor-intensive, import your parts list into BrickOwl instead of BL. BO’s auto-price feature works much better than BL’s. You basically get a list sorted by # of matching parts, with total cart price including shipping. Once you select a seller, it shows you sellers for the remaining parts. As you go along and select more sellers, it will optimize your baskets at each seller to find the cheapest combination of parts from each.

6. Definitely review your model, as others suggested. Rare color/part combinations, cheaper alternatives for interior bricks that are not showing etc. will bring your price down.

and the most important but least positive tip:

I have never built a digital model that I was able to build in real life without making a change to the design once I started putting bricks together. You absolutely will have to go back to BL/BO and place extra orders after your initial order. You can mostly eliminate this by building “tryout” samples of your key build components using any color brick you can find, but even then there is always something you forgot or that looked ok and simple digitally but doesnt work that way “in the brick”.

 

[zephyr1934]

I've never used the BL autofill options, I typically pick what I think are the most rare or most critical parts and find the sellers with those, then add as needed. It is a slower process though, so whatever I save in $ I probably lose in $/time.

Probably the biggest cost savings you can do is to take the list of parts and delete anything you already have in hand. Also, buying parts in quantity from BL can get expensive, if you need 60 of one part there might be dozens of sellers with 10-20 for cheap but only a few with the full 60 and they are charging a lot of money (which is why they still have 60).

It definitely pays to keep track of rare or expensive parts. As I build digitally I am always checking the price of parts (I think stud.io can do that for you, but I use LDraw). That lesson took me several years to learn. You can do it retroactively, but then you have to redesign large parts of your model.

Finally, I think some of your digital builds use parts that are rare or in some cases never existed in sets. Parts can still exist in unreleased colors on BL (e.g., small batches made for the model shop occasionally get out, I've even heard tales of TLG paying coders in rare brick in the early 2000's).

3 hours ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

So far, I've been unable to get it much below 390. 

It's a 1900 piece loco - I doubt it's more part heavy than a Challenger, but who knows.

That's coming out to be about $0.20/brick, a little on the high side but $0.10 for common brick is not unreasonable. You might be including motors and any other PF stuff in there, which might be cheaper from S@H.

 

[dr_spock]

7 hours ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

I finally parted and priced out a couple of my locomotives tonight and... wow... $600 for the Mercury, and $570 for the BoB class. I wasn't expecting this to be cheap, but I also was not anticipating HO scale brass locomotive prices, either. Even swapping for all used parts only dropped the overall tag about 40 bucks per loco. I didn't even bother finding out what the NYC J3-A would cost because the first two were so enormously disheartening. 

How do people afford this hobby? I'm not even trying to buy track, scenery, buildings, etc. - just put together two (not enormous; not, like, articulated locomotive-sized) locomotives (let alone passenger cars which I would expect, based on these results, to be 300-400 dollars per-car). I'd like to see some of my creations actually built and perhaps even running, but not at the cost of, like, food for a month.  

I grow some of my own food. 

You can also try Pick a Brick on LEGO S@H  https://www.lego.com/en-us/page/static/pick-a-brick

PAB could come out cheaper than BL.  Free shipping if your order is above $35 and VIP points. 

 

[izx]

4 hours ago, Phil B said:

5. If you want to go less labor-intensive, import your parts list into BrickOwl instead of BL. BO’s auto-price feature works much better than BL’s. You basically get a list sorted by # of matching parts, with total cart price including shipping. Once you select a seller, it shows you sellers for the remaining parts. As you go along and select more sellers, it will optimize your baskets at each seller to find the cheapest combination of parts from each.

Thanks a ton for that tip, Phil! I've made carts but never bought from BO. Will try this out, especially since most BO sellers have a corresponding BL shop with the same inventory. (ReBrickable does a similar thing--sort by parts/total price--and will then create BL/BO carts for you)

3 hours ago, dr_spock said:

You can also try Pick a Brick on LEGO S@H  https://www.lego.com/en-us/page/static/pick-a-brick

PAB could come out cheaper than BL.  Free shipping if your order is above $35 and VIP points. 

In my quite limited experience, I prefer Bricks-&-Pieces (Buy Bricks) over SAH PAB because of the vastly larger collection and similar prices to online PAB for elements that both have in stock. Does require a little more legwork knowing the design ID which can often differ from BL's part number (entering the BL number at ReBrickable gives you a nice cross reference including the LEGO design ID).

[John Hill]

Most of my collection is comprised of sets I have bought over the last 45 years and from 'collections' I see advertised on our local 'TradeMe' auction site.

It seems people might collect Lego over decades then eventually their stuff goes to auction and a great bargain for other Lego fans.  Of course sometimes I need something that is not in my collection and it is very convenient to buy that at BL.

 

Building a whole project from BL purchases?  Bound to be expensive.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

10 hours ago, izx said:

The carts created from BL's Buy-All aren't auto emptied. Delete them all from the Global Carts page (top right corner).

Also, a good idea to get a ballpark for a design is to first use the free offline Brickstock software. Export your raw BL wanted list (without any prices, etc.). Upload the wanted list to a custom Parts list on Rebrickable. Export that list to a Brickstock .BSX file and open in Brickstock. Now select all parts, right-click and set price to price guide average. No bothering with 100 items per page, etc. You can sort by price, total price, etc. to figure out what the expensive parts are. In the end, Brickstock will let you export a BL wanted list to the clipboard with condition/prices set.

Rebrickable will also estimate an average price for your parts list. ALSO try the Buy functionality on Rebrickable which shows you sellers in descending order of parts availability with prices. If one seller has 87% of the parts you need for $400, while two down you find someone who has 84% for $175, you know which one to favorite in BL. Each seller also has a button that will popup the missing parts.

This wound up being immensely helpful, thank you, but prompted another question. When I let Bricklink auto-select stores and then get this:

How do I know what parts haven't been assigned at that point? And how do I get Bricklink to assign them? 

You've already more than halved the price of the Battle of Britain loco, so provided I can get this last confusion resolved, I am going to go for it.

[izx]

38 minutes ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

How do I know what parts haven't been assigned at that point? And how do I get Bricklink to assign them? 

This was confusing for me too when I started out.

Click the Wanted Items tab on the left, which should make it jump to the Wanted List with a graphic view of the missing items as shown above. If you didn't exclude partial lots, check "Show Wanted Qty" so that it will show parentheses with the number of each part you actually still need.

This situation happens basically because Bricklink can't find these items within the price or full-lot constraints you selected. So at this point, you can also try unchecking the price and/or lot exclusion boxes which should expand the available sellers. Click on a seller and sort the cart preview popup by price (this setting will be remembered), scroll to the bottom to see the most expensive parts. Try with a few more sellers in the list and if a part is universally expensive, substitute it or check Lego PAB/BNP if available.

Also, don't forget shipping! For sellers that don't have instant checkout on BL, look at the shipping terms carefully and ask questions if necessary before committing to an order. Some sellers will insist on using a Priority Mail Flat Rate Box...see if you can get them to use a Padded Flat Rate Envelope instead, it's very sturdy and will accommodate a ton of parts for $8 anywhere in the US.

Edited February 15, 2020 by izx

[SteamSewnEmpire]

13 minutes ago, izx said:

This was confusing for me too when I started out.

Click the Wanted Items tab on the left, which should make it jump to the Wanted List with a list of the missing items. If you didn't exclude partial lots, check "Show Wanted Qty" so that it will show parentheses with the number of each part you actually still need.

This situation happens basically because Bricklink can't find these items within the price or full-lot constraints you selected. So at this point, you can also try unchecking the price and/or lot exclusion boxes which should expand the available sellers. Click on a seller and sort the cart preview popup by price (this setting will be remembered), scroll to the bottom to see the most expensive parts. Try with a few more sellers in the list and if a part is universally expensive, substitute it or check Lego PAB/BNP if available.

Also, don't forget shipping! For sellers that don't have instant checkout on BL, look at the shipping terms carefully and ask questions if necessary before committing to an order. Some sellers will insist on using a Priority Mail Flat Rate Box...see if you can get them to use a Padded Flat Rate Envelope instead, it's very sturdy and will accommodate a ton of parts for $8 anywhere in the US.

Lol, thank you!

[TJJohn12]

Take a look at parts that aren't visible - stuff that's just structural. I typically set the color of these in my wanted list to "(Not Applicable)" which will then make Bricklink fulfill those parts with the cheapest color. It's not foolproof, and you need to pay careful attention to each cart. But I've trimmed off some cost on LDD models I've uploaded when the structural bits I used were for some random reason rare in the color I used. The real struggle with virtual building is overusing the rare and not realizing it.

Another tactic I use is trying to know what parts I already have in stock and build from stock. This can really cut down on what you need to buy. Then I "buy" from my collection first, and mark the "have" quantity on my BL wanted list as 999.

One more idiosyncrasy I've found is when removing an item from your wanted list. If you simply set the quantity to 0, the system will still try to find stores that stock that unneeded part.

[sed6]

Lots of great tips so far! I'll add, DON'T GIVE UP. I've designed many models in LDD and built them all with BL purchases. With hundreds of recent orders my experience is parts will cost $.10 on average and shipping $4 per order in the US. Your 2100 part loco should run $210 plus shipping plus motor and battery and PF gear. 

As stated above you need to do two things; substitute rare or expensive parts or colors and then shop wisely on BL.

Good luck, you can do it!

[SteamSewnEmpire]

I managed to get the Mercury down to about $200 (minus battery boxes and motors, for which it is cheaper to buy shipping-free from Amazon), so that's what I ordered.

I got REALLY screwed when, about 3/4ths of the way down my buy list, I discovered a vendor with 5 lot limit (really? Into the dustbin your store goes, guy), and Bricklink had dutifully assigned him like 50 of my lots. So I would up spending a full 45 minutes creating a new wanted list for just those parts to clean up the mess he'd made for me. Thanks, bud. Big wishes on your success in the future.

So, optimistically, I'll be able to start building sometime in late March. I'd like to eventually do all three of my most recent locos, but I just can't swing the ~$600 USD that the parts, S&H, and additional motors/battery boxes will cost for the additional two right this moment.

Thanks again for everyone who helped - especially izx. I'd upvote you if I could, but we don't have that feature here :/.

Edited February 16, 2020 by SteamSewnEmpire

[Phil B]

32 minutes ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

I got REALLY screwed when, about 3/4ths of the way down my buy list, I discovered a vendor with 5 lot limit (really? Into the dustbin your store goes, guy), and Bricklink had dutifully assigned him like 50 of my lots. So I would up spending a full 45 minutes creating a new wanted list for just those parts to clean up the mess he'd made for me. Thanks, bud. Big wishes on your success in the future.

 

You can add this store to your Least Favorite stores list (My BL > Fav Stores > Select "Least" in the top right corner under the menu bar .. then add the store name based on the username of the store owner) so you will no longer select this store when using the "Buy All" feature.

[SteamSewnEmpire]

22 minutes ago, Phil B said:

You can add this store to your Least Favorite stores list (My BL > Fav Stores > Select "Least" in the top right corner under the menu bar .. then add the store name based on the username of the store owner) so you will no longer select this store when using the "Buy All" feature.

Oh, I did. Immediately.

[izx]

Awesome...very glad to have helped! Can't wait to see it come to life. Power Functions battery boxes/motors will be cheapest directly from Shop At Home if you reach the $35 free shipping limit.

Last general tip: The Bricklink Global Cart (accessible from the top right)--but not the regular cart--lets you sort a store cart by price in ascending order. Do that and skip to the end to get an idea of the most expensive lots/parts in that cart. Because searching for parts on Lego Bricks-and-Pieces is a pain, those expensive lots/parts are typically all I check for on B&P (except those which are clearly retired).

1 hour ago, SteamSewnEmpire said:

So I would up spending a full 45 minutes creating a new wanted list for just those parts to clean up the mess he'd made for me.

There should have been an "Add to Wanted List" button at the bottom of each cart (and that store's global cart) which does this for you.