Sorting old grey

[Lucien70001]

I bought a bunch of Sterlite drawers recently and have been sorting my collection from bags of color to types of pieces. My bag of old grey (classic space) has been left untouched however. I'd like to know the community's opinion on sorting old grey parts into your collection.

[obsidianheart]

I've got big drawers for larger parts, but I keep the old greys and browns in gallon ziplock bags stored in the drawers. For smaller parts, I've got two columns of smaller drawers, and old greys and browns go on the left (along with a selection of other, non-similar colors), and new Bleys go on the right.

[Lucien70001]

Going through my bleys, I found greys as well. So now we have light & dark grey, bley & old grey. Too confusing. I'm reluctant to add my old grey to my drawers because it will be too difficult to tell the difference.

[dr_spock]

I try to keep old grey separated. Sometimes it is hard to tell with the bad lighting in my basement.

[Doom2099]

I try to keep old grey separated. Sometimes it is hard to tell with the bad lighting in my basement.

I agree completely, keeping them separate from the start will save lots of wondering later. When you bring in new/old Lego, just sorting it out then in good light would be my suggestion.

[antp]

I try to keep old grey separated. Sometimes it is hard to tell with the bad lighting in my basement.

For easily sorting these without natural light, the light on my Lego desk is a Philips "Daylight" bulb, as it produce a white light (unlike the common ones which produce a yellowish light, making old & new grey difficult to distinct).

As I sort by color before part type, I only have the problem at sorting time, and not once stored.

Edited January 27, 2014 by antp

[naf]

For the most part, I only MOC with new Lego, so I have my old greys in plastic bins that I keep separated from the rest. The only time I get it out is when I want to build old classic space sets.

[JGW3000]

O/T: There is a joke here concerning some of us being 'old' and 'grey' and not wanting to be 'sorted', but I can't quite figure out the punch-line...

I find that with using old-fashioned tungsten lights, or halogen lights intended for studio photography, the differences between old grey and bley is quite readily apparent - helps if the bricks are sitting on a neutral white background. Compact LED's, halogens, etc... are really not that good for illuminating objects when trying to discern subtle color differences.

Edited January 27, 2014 by JGW3000

[WaysofSorting]

I mix both types freely. I sort by color only. The only problem I've had in bad lighting is with the bin of black. It's like feeling around in a void. So for those bins I started adding colors I have very few of (Sand colors, Pastels) with the black - The colorful bits pop out, and the black ones now have other things to stand out with.

I was cursed to take color theory in art school a couple times (failed the first one - go figure) with the side-effect of having my eyes trained in recognizing very subtle differences in hue and value - so to me they are drastically/completely different because of the temperatures of the color (blue v yellow). If I grab the wrong one, I can put it back - but I like having both in the same drawer - depending on overall color scheme I think there's a time and a place for both grey flavors. Also, many of my MOCs live in the "dirty old world" aesthetic where things are built/rebuilt on the ghosts of old creations, so to me two greys is like "weathering" or rust - so I don't mind at all.

[Hrw-Amen]

I find I am able to distinguish between dark grey and DBG quite easily and have a large selection of bits from both. As I sort by color and type I have numerous pots of dark grey and DBG each in their own containers.

I do find it really hard to tell the difference between grey and LBG though unless it is good daylight. At night in artificual light I am hopeless and cannot tell one from the other. So I have to do any sorting in the daytime the the respective pots.

As for browns and reddish browns I find that there is so much variations in hue that it is virtually impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins as they are so simiar, therefore there are no seperate pots and they all go in together, but as I cannot tell them apart it does not matter. No one has picked me up on it yet.

[dhc6twinotter]

I have a hard time distinguishing between the greys when I'm using incandescent light, but if I'm using fluorescent or LED lighting, it's pretty easy. I keep my old grey, but haven't really used it much.

One of these days I may sort through my black parts, although that difference is so minute it's probably not worth it.

[splatman]

I treat old and new gray as separate colors. Like yellow and orange. DG/DBG and B/RB likewise.

Telling them apart is usually not a problem.