Any advice from the experienced builders...

[Follows Closely]

About a year ago I got my 30 year old LEGO out for my kids to play with. I fell back into love with the block. Now a year later I have accumulated around 400lbs of blocks via garage sales and such. The kids and I have been building Star Wars sets, and MOC’ing a few modular buildings. We all are enjoying out time spend playing with the brick.

As a kid I received the Kings Castle (6080) for Christmas one year, great set! I tried and tried to build a realistic castle, I never had the blocks.

Now that I have more funds, and means, I want to get into building castles once again. This time I hope to accomplish what I never did as a 12 year old. My question for you guys is how do I acquire enough Light Bluish Gray Bricks? I have found bricklink.com has high prices for that color, and the supply is surprisingly short. It would take 3+ stores to get enough 1x2, 1x3, 1,4 and 1x6 blocks. If that is the way to go, so be it. Any advice from the experienced builders?

[gogobig]

About a year ago I got my 30 year old LEGO out for my kids to play with. I fell back into love with the block. Now a year later I have accumulated around 400lbs of blocks via garage sales and such. The kids and I have been building Star Wars sets, and MOC’ing a few modular buildings. We all are enjoying out time spend playing with the brick.

As a kid I received the Kings Castle (6080) for Christmas one year, great set! I tried and tried to build a realistic castle, I never had the blocks.

Now that I have more funds, and means, I want to get into building castles once again. This time I hope to accomplish what I never did as a 12 year old. My question for you guys is how do I acquire enough Light Bluish Gray Bricks? I have found bricklink.com has high prices for that color, and the supply is surprisingly short. It would take 3+ stores to get enough 1x2, 1x3, 1,4 and 1x6 blocks. If that is the way to go, so be it. Any advice from the experienced builders?

Hello mate. I was in the similar situation as you are in. I always wanted to build a huge castle, but because of lack of funds during my childhood I never had a chance to buy any lego, so my "collection" were yearly lego catalogs where I would dream about getting sets and playing with them. However, I always had this obsession about castles and wanted to make a huge castle. About 4 years ago I started buying lego sets that I could not have during my childhood. I aquired most of them. After several thousands of dollars as mearly 4 years later I decided to break 'em and build that dream castle (still in progress-started bulding 3 weeks ago). I do cacth myself ordering from bricklink a decent amount every week. The thing is if you want a big castle utalize all your parts and get the ones you need. I find BURP, panels and 2X5 bricks to work well. Bricklink is pretty reasonable, it just depends on how big of a castle you want to make. My castle is the size of twin bed....yup. that would explain constantly running out of parts and replenishing my supplies. Besides bricklink garage sales are your best bet. I personally dont have time to go garage sale shopping but heard of some good finds. The most convinient is bricklink-it can add up but it will depend how big of a project and detailed you want to make. Make sure you utilize your own parts first.

[Follows Closely]

Hello mate... ...Make sure you utilize your own parts first.

What about the $70 boxes at your local LEGO store. Is that a better value than bl?

[DaleDVM]

If you can get to a lego store it is the best way to get light bley bricks. I find any brick with 6 or less studs can be bought cheapest this way. Right now 1x4 light bley bricks are available on pick a brick walls. Not all stores are smart enough to order that piece so call ahead and ask if they can get you a couple of cases. I have gone through 4 cases on my current project alone.

I use bricklink for specialty bricks and for odd colors.

[SuvieD]

You could also buy up a few of the huge deathstar set and either give the figures to the family or sell them off to recoup most of you costs thus netting you a large quantity of parts ion your desired color and for nearly free if not altogether depending on how well you manage the selling.

[gogobig]

What about the $70 boxes at your local LEGO store. Is that a better value than bl?

I live in Michigan...which means the worst economy...which means no lego store haha. I placed 8 orders from bricklink int the past month. I got a huge chunk of my castle done-would send them pics but dont want to spoil it. My last order came about a week ago. It was around 800 bricks. Gone. All of it. Every single piece. Off I go now to order more. Its like a never ending process....Just buy and buy some more, and then when yu are done buying-buy some more ;)

Cheers

[Follows Closely]

If you can get to a lego store it is the best way to get light bley bricks. I find any brick with 6 or less studs can be bought cheapest this way. Right now 1x4 light bley bricks are available on pick a brick walls. Not all stores are smart enough to order that piece so call ahead and ask if they can get you a couple of cases. I have gone through 4 cases on my current project alone.

I use bricklink for specialty bricks and for odd colors.

Have you been able to get a box of 1x2 bricks? These are my biggest need right now. They are $0.15 a block at lego.com! I figure that a box would hold around 2000-3000 bricks, that comes out to around $0.03 a brick. The LEGO store closest to me is all out of light grey. I am not one to be patient, I am so close to clicking Purchase on bl.

Thanks for the advice guys.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Follows Closely

[Norro]

Not more bley ;)

Serious suggestion, sell me your old grey (from garage sales etc) to offset your cost of acquiring bley...

God Bless and all the best with the castle,

Nathan

[beans]

Having a similar dilemma as OP here...are there any sets that work especially well as basic bley (1x2, 1x3, 1x4, 1x6, 1x2 corner) parts packs?

[Brickdoctor]

I'd check PaB first. In January, I went to claim my Holiday Brick Box from Black Friday, and ended up getting (nearly) nothing but light bley 1x3s. After that, Bricklink is always good, and the new Kingdoms sets are definitely a good starting point.

[Follows Closely]

I'd check PaB first. In January, I went to claim my Holiday Brick Box from Black Friday, and ended up getting (nearly) nothing but light bley 1x3s. After that, Bricklink is always good, and the new Kingdoms sets are definitely a good starting point.

I just picked up two 7946 at TRU BOGO. I will sell the figs to help finance more blocks. I picked up a box of bley 2x6 and a box of bley headlights the past weekend. I am slowly getting there.

[Follows Closely]

Not more bley ;)

Serious suggestion, sell me your old grey (from garage sales etc) to offset your cost of acquiring bley...

God Bless and all the best with the castle,

Nathan

I will be hording all my old gray, as they look more realistic being slightly different colors. However I say that but I am a bit concerned about mixing the old and the new. Have you found that mixing the old and new on a large scale looks ok?

[blueandwhite]

I will be hording all my old gray, as they look more realistic being slightly different colors. However I say that but I am a bit concerned about mixing the old and the new. Have you found that mixing the old and new on a large scale looks ok?

It can be done, but it has to be done carefully. The biggest problem with having a smaller collections is the desire to stretch your collection too thin in an attempt to build an oversized MOC. If your looking to mix new and old colours I find that that the best way to achieve mottling is to pick a base colour (i.e. old light grey) and mix in smaller amounts of other colours (old/new dark grey, tan, sand green, sand red, etc.). Arbitrarily mixing colours can have a nasty effect and may result in a very splotchy looking MOC. Also, when building walls try and use as many 1x2 or 2x2 bricks as possible. Longer bricks when mixed with different colours can have the effect of creating stripes which look very unnatural.

Generally speaking, if you don't have a large quantity of old grey, don't make the mistake of mixing it with the new stuff if you can avoid it. While it is possible to mix new and old colours, the effect isn't always desireable or effective.

[Tycho McKorley]

However I say that but I am a bit concerned about mixing the old and the new. Have you found that mixing the old and new on a large scale looks ok?

I suggest that it doesn't work very well. In fact, in my own most recent creation I had to make some compromises on the final floor and include some bley bricks to finish the project. Suffice it to say that every time I see that particular bley area it drives me nuts. It makes everything look yellow and ugly despite the fact that I only have six or seven bley blocks amidst a sea of old grey.

[Belchher]

I suggest that it doesn't work very well. In fact, in my own most recent creation I had to make some compromises on the final floor and include some bley bricks to finish the project. Suffice it to say that every time I see that particular bley area it drives me nuts. It makes everything look yellow and ugly despite the fact that I only have six or seven bley blocks amidst a sea of old grey.

It might just be how you've used them ( and to be honest, I couldn't spot the part you where talking about in that set, can you give us a hint? ). I've seen MOCs where a smattering of old light grey was used randomly throughout light bley walls ( or vice versa ), and it helped give the walls a weathered look. I don't think it would work if you used small quantities of one of the greys in a big group amongst the other style grey though ( unless there was some particular effect you where going for that for the life of me I can't think of ).

[castlestrike666]

Goodday!

For my last castle: Click!, I needed a lot of bley bricks too. I was fortunate to find a shop on bricklink selling a few hundreds of them. But I know, it is hard to find enough bricks in only one store. I also have to buy from several stores if I need a large quantity of them. In fact I used about 5 different stores to get enough light & dark bley bricks 1 x 4, 1 x 3, 1 x 2 and 1 x 1.

Otherwise I think you can get them on Pick-A-Brick too (www.lego.com), but it's quite overpriced.

I'd recommend Bricklink.

Of course, if you want to reduce shipping costs, you can combine your order with several people. That way you can divide these shipping costs among these people. I mostly do it that way.

For instance you can ask people you know (or on this or other forums), if they are interested in buying stuff from a particular store. And if you have 3 or 4 people interested, they can send you their wish list, you order the parts and afterwards devide shipping costs.