How to best start building up a part collection?

[Mars Arka]

Hi everyone! I want to get more into Lego, building my own little towns and villages, which is kind of a childhood dream of mine. I haven't decided on a clear direction in terms of theme yet, but I'm leading towards Creator/City or medieval, and I basically want to get my feet wet. Now the thing is, I barely have any sets that I would feel comfortable taking apart to use, so my question then is, how best to go about procuring a variety of parts?

One recommendation I've seen, is going to Lego stores, but there aren't any near me, though I could order parts on the Lego website and BrickLink. However, if you're just starting out, you kind of need/want... everything. Bricks, plates, slopes, plants, etc, all in varying colors, sizes, and quantities, which might become pretty expensive if you want to get a decent collection to choose from. However, not being a big fan of second-hand, the only other option would be sets I suppose, which aren't cheap either, of course, and might come with a lot of parts I might never use.

An advantage I see which sets however, is that I assume, that reselling them would be easier, should I decide to stop this new hobby in a few years. I doubt that I would easily get my money back selling loose, used parts in bulk on eBay, but if I use a set's parts in a display model of mine and later recreate the original set to sell it, I'm hoping I'd be able to at least make back a decent chunk of my investment, if not even make profit, should I have picked up something that became rare.

One set I'm eyeing for example, is the Ninjago City Gardens (71741), which I could buy for ~285€ around these parts right now. That would give me ~5700 parts to work with, in various configurations, for a price per piece of about 0.05€. And were I to sell the figures, the PPP would lower to about 0.03€, based on my research. It seems to me like it rarely gets much cheaper than that, and I feel like this approach, supplementing it with buying specific parts off Lego/BrickLink, could hopefuly give me a base to work with. But again, there's tons of parts in there that I will presumably never use, and I'm not a fan of Ninjago or anything either.

To summarize, ideally I want to get new parts to start my adventure with, with a nice variety, that I can also easily sell again, should that wish actually arise. With my thoughts layed out, can anyone give me some advice or share their experience? Is it better to buy specific parts for the initial part collection, or to use sets and live with not using all the parts? Can you easily sell parts in bulk without losing a lot of money? And if sets are the way to go, do you have suggestions for ones that would work well as a general base to use for a variety of purposes? I get that this is Lego of course, and using stones for anything is kind of the point, but I mean, like, a ton of Lavender bricks won't help me build a medieval world, whereas gray, green, black, white, etc, can basically be used anywhere. You know what I mean I'm sure :P

I'd appreciate any tips.

[Flak Maniak]

You're correct that complete sets are the easiest to resell, and that you can often recoup most or all of the price that way, after a few years of the set being retired. If you're reselling bulk parts as a single lot on eBay, don't expect to get much back. If you're reselling the parts individually on BrickLink, well, that's a hassle, isn't it?

And yes, some of the very large sets like the Gardens can provide a good base of parts to work with. Not only are they cheap per part and per gram of plastic, but often they'll give you large quantities of particular parts or colors, which is especially valuable. For example if you just wanted a ton of parts and didn't much care what they were, some of Lego's "Classic" range is very cheap for the amount of, well, Lego. But you look at it laid out, and it's ten parts of this color, twenty parts of that color, repeat for a ton of colors, which is if you ask me a lot less useful than "just 200 parts of one color".

If you are averse to buying secondhand parts, then you can still get a lot of things on BrickLink, as many of the biggest sellers specialize in new parts. I suppose you'd be against the yard-sale-trawling strategy (and in this pandemic!), but, well, I was never really one for yard-sale-trawling myself.

You can also buy specific parts directly from Lego, via either online pick-a-brick, or Bricks and Pieces (yes yes, I know, confusing that they have two overlapping services). Bricks and Pieces is in the customer service part of the website; click the button that says "buy bricks". (But that would be getting ahead of ourselves; Bricks and Pieces is for the real ABS junkies, what with having to enter part/set numbers to even find anything.)

I'll end with this, though: If you mostly want to build your own creations, then you will inherently end up gravitating towards places like BrickLink, and just buying a lot of parts there for specific purposes. And yeah your house will fill up with bricks that are not easily resold. It happens. You might keep costs under control, though, by designing in a CAD program (probably stud.io at this point; is Lego Digital Designer even halfway useful at this point, with how many years it's been deprecated?), and ordering just the parts you need for that build... (But wait! This BrickLink seller has a lot of this part, and they're oh so cheap, and wouldn't it be a shame not to buy some extras at this price?)

[Stuartn]

 

The Ninjago gardens would be a good start because of all of the plants, assembled trees and tiles, so it would be a good place to start. You would have to sacrifice some sets as unresellable (without effort reassmebling) for creating a layout.

The modular buildings would be good because you can place them into a layout easily. There are a lot of elements of the build that wouldn't go well in a medieval layout if that is what you decide, but the colours of the parts in these sets are generally muted so would work well for MOCs.

I'd start simple, buy some baseplates and smaller sets, and start up from there, making larger investments as you go along and plan the overall layout.

The new blacksmith shop set may also be a good starting place as a cheaper option as it has similar design features to the gardens set but is half the price.

Edited February 12, 2021 by Stuartn

[koalayummies]

Since you're after new parts specifically as opposed to second hand and are already calculating the price per piece I think you're well underway. That method and the values you're going by have held for a while: decent is ~$0.06, anything less is usually good and amazing is around 2-3¢ a piece or less. All of this weighed against the parts in the set and how desirable they are to you of course. Pull up brickset if you're trying to decide whether a sale is worth it in terms of PPP and the full parts list.

And yes get used to not using all the parts all the time. You never know when that one piece you tossed aside as being weird or not applicable a while back will spontaneously have the perfect use in your latest idea.

[MAB]

Selling multiple different sets on bricklink in the future will not be easy if you mixed them all up. It will be a massive chore sorting them out again. If you are thinking you will give up and need to do this, then buy 10x the same set. At least then it is a bit easier to sort out when you come to sell. And if you are missing parts you will hopefully be able to make 9 sets.

[Kit Figsto]

I'm also someone that prefers all of my pieces are new, so you're not alone there! 

Buying the Ninjago Gardens and parting it out sounds like a good idea, especially if you do what you said and sell the figures to make back a bit of that money.  If you get lucky, too, sometimes you can find the bulk brick "sets" on sale, I remember here in the US there was one of the large $50 sets of random bricks that people were finding at Walmart for incredibly cheap.  Those are a bit more unusual to find on sale, but if you are able to get those, it's nice for just basic bricks of different colors, which are sometimes more difficult than you might think to acquire.  

As far as acquiring more specialized or rare elements, your best bet is to use Pick a Brick or Bricks and Pieces, there's a topic over on the Licensed Themes subforum where people talk about specialized parts from sets (printed tiles, minifigure accessories, that sort of thing) available on Bricks and Pieces.  It's fairly affordable to order off of there, the biggest downside is that once they run out of parts to sell, they almost never restock (my guess is that it's extras that they had from their inventory of replacement parts, so they need to retain some to send out as possible replacements and can only sell a certain amount).

[Man with beard]

Buying official sets is awesome for finding parts that you didn't know you need until you have it in your hand. Lego has introduced so many new molds in recent years that whenever I buy an official set, I get cool new parts for building that I never knew existed! Some of the most fun that can be had with Lego is using the pieces of official sets to build something new, as sets usually have a good assortment of parts that can all work together color-wise.

One thing to be aware of: if you buy a bunch of sets, part them out, use them for custom creations, and then try to resell the sets a few years down the line, it is very likely that one or two parts will go missing in that time. It just happens.

[hagridshut]

Today, I think the best way to get started is to buy Creator 3-in-1 buildings and experiment.  Many sets are moderately priced, but provide a wide array of useful pieces in nice colors. 

Something like the new Surfer Beach House (good review here: https://youtu.be/h7Nx3jP1PkA) is what I would recommend for beginners.  

[Flak Maniak]

If you want sets with a ton of plastic for the price, the "Classic" line is hard to beat. It might be hard to sell the parts later for a significant fraction of the price (unless you're into running a BrickLink store as a hobby), but... If you just want lots of parts for cheap...