Vee

I am TIRED of trying to figure out which color is which! So, with the help of LDD, LDD Manager, Photoshop, OneNote and Excel (don't ask me why I needed all these apps...) I made this table that is supposed to be complete (for all colors available ATM in LDD). I guess this already exists somewhere but since I was not able to find something similar, I decided to do a conversion table myself. From BrickLink to Lego and vice-versa in alphabetical order.

I have a masterplan for my modular buildings and it uses the haunted house (HH) along with the modular buildings (MB). But the HH does not have a baseplate so it does not fit well. Also, it opens by swinging, differently from the MB - the HH is not modular!. So my solution was to place it on a corner (my layout is a mere row of the buildings, I don't have the space for something else) with a little gap between it and the next building and ... a baseplate that would allow the swinging! Being kind of a purist, I don't like to change a set, so what I did was to add stuff. The HH itself will be exactly as it is supposed to be, no modification except for the fence that was expanded. The HH will sit atop this base that I created (with a little help from my daughter). It was all created in LDD then later made into real bricks. I have two pictures only to show and the HH is not yet assembled. And please understand that I am an unexperienced mod'er/moc'er. I started creating with Lego two months ago. From the back From the front Question: how do I put a thumbnail of a picture here so that when I click it it will open the full picture in another tab or window? The tree and the car are from the Werewolf set. I am/was too lazy/beginner to design a nice tree. And Major Quinton actually is the owner of the house, He needs to take better care of it... This is how it will look like when with the house on top: Screen 1 Screen 2

I know there is no way to know what Lego is going to do and I know that chances of it happening are slim at best but as I am seeing a few, well a couple, of Lego sets being re-released, like the Death Star and the Winter Village Toy Shop, both re-released recently although slightly different from their originals, I was wondering if Lego would ever re-release one of the three first modular buildings, Cafe Corner, Market Street or Green Grocer. I guess they will never do it, it would make the parallel/secondary market mad at them. But I have hope, one day it may happen. Lego is a mean company...

Interesting. I never thought about looking at it this way, the parts. But then I also noticed that it is not uncommon, rather actually common, that Lego uses at least one never-before-released part in new sets, usually a part that exists but with a color that never existed before but also sometimes parts that never existed. I don't know how difficult and costly it may be to reuse a part that was "retired" but it should not be worse than releasing a brand new never before released part. The thing is that I believe there is a more than big enough amount of Lego fans that would buy those modulars because they became too famous and that Lego would never lose money, on the opposite, they would make more money in each of those sets if they were re-released than probably they make with new smaller sets that they keep flooding us with. These modular buildings are premium sets, they are expensive, they never get discounted, which means they give Lego high profits. Also, they don't need to re-release them exactly as they were, they could well adapt them to current molds and they would still look just as nice. They could release improved versions of them, buildings that look similar but have better interior and small adaptations for missing parts that they don't want to bring back from retirement.

Now I know why tan and dark tan tiles have become so expensive... :-) It is very interesting and massive but unfortunately I still prefer to look at the modular buildings in their original sizes. This very same city square with more variety of modular buildings would look nicer to me. All I would do is, as new modular buildings are released by Lego, I would reduce the size of one doubled building to its original 32x32 size, and make room for the new one, also at 32x32 (although the newest one, to be released yet, is, I think, 32x48.

A very very simple MOD: the Bridge of Sigh must be between buildings!.

Hi, I know about the bar 3L (part #87994) and the bar 4L (part #30374). Is there any part that could be used as a "bar 2L"? And "bar 5L"? There are so many lengths for axles, what about bars, only 3L and 4L? Thank you.

I am assembling my Haunted House, almost done. I am very pleased with the set, beautiful, and with my special 32x32 base that I have developed for it, it looks even better. But, this thread is not about the HH itself but about what happened while building it. When my daughter opened the box, sealed and bought from Lego itself (S@H), one of the plastic bags, a #3 one, was ripped, the pieces scattered inside the box. The box was pristine, so I thought: this should be no problem. Upon assembling the set, we, that had the ripped #3 bag always apart from the rest, just in case, found a missing piece, a 2x4 black plate (used on top of the windows in the set) that was supposed to be in that bag. First time ever I find a missing piece in a new Lego set. Well, I go to the Lego website, Bricks and Pieces, and I want to order the missing piece. Fortunately, I had one, just one, from my loose parts, and I was able to proceed with the build. But I wanted my piece from Lego anyway! Guess what? The piece is SOLD OUT! I was like, WHAT? A simple black 2x4 plate is sold out!!!??? Makes no sense (again... Lego never makes sense...). Well, I added it to the list and ordered it. They have to have it! Then I go to Pick a Brick and look for the same part, same code, 302026, and guess what? you guessed right, it is there, available, ready to sell! Then, some many hours later, I get an email from Lego Customer Support: Please, tell me that Lego is NOT trying to drive me crazy! :laugh:

Sorry if I ask too many questions but there are so many things regarding Lego that puzzles me that I can't help but ask for others' opinions to try to make sense out of them. My next Lego puzzle is: why Lego online shop keep showing in its website sets that are "sold out" and I'd say with a 99.99% probability of ever coming back? The above is just a sample from the site, there are lots more. I know that a few "sold out" items may make a come back but do you really believe that the ones above will ever come back? They are not supposed to, right?, so why keep showing them? And also I believe there is some bug in Lego S@H website because it has been showing some "Sale prices" for the sold out items that I believe never really happened, like the 10230 set @ $40, did it really sell at this price at some point? (there are more of these very low suspicious sold out sale prices in the website).

I am very biased towards houses and buildings. And I am a Lego fan! So when I saw for the first time Ole Kirk's House, a Lego house with a bit of a Lego history, I was frustrated that I could not buy it. Because it was an exclusive gift to Lego's employees (and also to some tour participants), the current asking price is too high and I thought that buying an original new set was not worthy, considering that the house uses mostly common parts, so I decided to BrickLink it. The only serious part that makes all the difference is the sticker, and it is a cool sticker! Well, no sticker for me then. Since I was going to BL it, it was a non-original house from the start, I thought, what the heck, if I am BL'ing it, I will then make it a little more to my taste, meaning, I will not make it all red. That too much red always bothered me. So I decided to change the bricks from red to some other color (if you look at pictures of the original real house that inspired 4000007, you see that the external wall, made of real bricks, obviously do not have the same color as the roof). Soon I decided to change the color of the roof too because I don't like very much bright red roofs. Then, by choosing some not-so common colors, some bricks were either nonexistent or too expensive, so I had to make some minor modifications to the structure of the house, like replacing a 2x8 brick with two 2x4 bricks, so on, but always maintaining its overall structure as original as possible. I started to buy the parts for the house more than one month ago but unfortunately, one of the BL sellers, the main one that I used for this project, took weeks to ship my order, so only recently I had all the parts to finally start building it. And in the meantime, while I waited for the parts, I kept creating more and more stuff to enhance the house, mostly a landscape around it. In this thread I plan on showing pictures of my build. Since I am slow to build, it will take time for me to have the house completed. So, as a start, I show you the one picture below. The base of the house! You can see some differences already from the original. I am using a 32x32 green baseplate so I can have more area to the back of the house for some landscape; the original set uses 3 dark bley baseplates that are equivalent to an area of 32x24. I decided on a green baseplate because I wanted the house surrounded by green, not dark bley; but then, the inside of the house becomes also green, which is not good; that is why I covered all the inside with dark bley tiles, to keep the inside look of the house similar to the original one. Some adaptations already in the black 1xN plates; I had to "break" the black plates into smaller pieces because on top of them there will be smaller bricks. There will be nothing inside the house, just like the original,. Maybe in the future I will add something, but chances are slim. Too much money already spent on the tiles... More pictures will come as I build it, but again, I am slow to do my things, very very...

I had the opportunity to see the Ole Kirk's house, in Billund. It was sort of a disappointment, I was expecting to find it in some isolated part of the city but found it right there in the town center, mixed with stores, very near where they are building what will be the Lego House. And the house now is like the end of a much bigger building that it is part of. Anyway, it closes my short Lego Dark Age nicely ("Lego Dark Age" for me, opposed to what should be the norm, is the time I _was_ addicted to Lego). Sunset in Billund, Denmark, Easter Sunday, 2014, street where Ole Kirk's house is located. The "famous" lions in front of what was the Ole Kirk's house, now a Lego museum.

I am feeling the dumbest person on Earth! I bought an expensive humidifier, trying to make my office more "livable" and to get less static shocks (I hate these shocks) and the darn thing, in a couple of days, tainted all my things with the darn white dust! Now my assembled sets are all white dusty! Now I have a Herculean job of cleaning all of them, probably by disassembling them all, one by one, cleaning the most important parts, like the trans-clear pieces, and reassembling. If regret would kill, I would be dead by now (this is a translation of an old Brazilian saying... "Se arrependimento matasse, eu já tava morto!").

WHOA! I don't know if it's normal but I wonder how long did it take for you to go through 1384 million possibilities. I usually gave up much sooner and try to figure out a way to "help" the application by pinpointing the "problem" (usually some rare parts). Oh you just said, more than half a day...whoa, that is a lot of patience on your part.

Hahaha, yes, maybe it is time... Despite its age, it has only 65k miles.

Fishy definition as given by a Google search: 2. informal arousing feelings of doubt or suspicion. I could not have used a better word. No retracting from me. I am actually glad that these "unexplainable" parts exist in BL, and I may have even bought some of them (although I try my best to avoid them but sometimes... well... human weakness...) since it is the only way us mere mortals can have (very expensive) access to them but I still don't like what I see as a principle. I would never get jealous over a Lego thing, it is just not me. There are much better reasons to get jealous although I don't remember the last time I got jealous. Oh, no, I remember, when my wife, still as my girlfriend, a few decades ago, started what I thought getting interested in another man. Fortunately, I was wrong..

It may be insulting but it is what I think and you just made my point clearer to me since you offer no real explanation on the methods to getting these "special" colors from TLG. I understand that you want to keep it safe, keep it secret, but while it is safe and secret, it will look fishy and suspicious to me, and I can't help it since I have no good info and reason to make me think otherwise.

I was expecting to find a MOC of my car:

I always found very suspicious that some BL sellers have these "rare" and NEW parts, parts with colors that were never released to the public. For me, it does not matter how they managed to get them, there is something fishy and very wrong about it.

This is weird...

http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/end_early.html#fees "... ... Ending an auction-style listing early once it has received a bid can lead to disappointed and frustrated buyers who may be less likely to bid on listings the next time around, so you may be charged a fee if you end a listing early. This fee is equal to the final value fee (not including shipping charges) you would have paid if the listing had ended on its own and sold for the highest bid received when you ended the listing.... ..."

My strategy with ebay: - if I want the item so much and it has no bid yet, I will place the first bid at the minimum price just to avoid the seller from removing the listing; while the listing has no bids, the seller can always remove it and I have seen listings being removed quite often which drove me mad because I wanted to try to win the item; - if there are bids already, wait for the last seconds, no need for an application to help you because you need to figure out what is the maximum value you want to pay for the item such that even if you lose it for 10 cents of dollar, you will not regret. That is what I do. Once I have my highest value, I wait patiently for the last seconds, literally, like 5 seconds before the end, and I will place my bid. If I win, great, if I am outbid, no regrets, decision had been made before. This is the best way for me because it avoids me from playing the "bidding game", when you lose for some some cents or dollars and you get mad and you just start placing higher bids, higher than you would place in a normal state of mind, just for the sake of winning (damn stupid human nature). But, usually, what happens is that before the end of the auction, price will already be higher than the highest amount that I was willing to pay so I just give up. Also, as said here million times, those that bid before the last minute, days in advance, are dumb people that only help the seller and ebay itself by driving the price up (again the damn stupid human nature). I have seen many zero feedback buyers driving prices up like crazy by placing bids after bids until they are "winning". They are either very stupid dumb people or the seller him/herself artificially driving the price up. ebay is a great place to buy stuff, you just need to know how to use it and never lose your mind to the "bidding game".

Having lived for half a century now, I think I stopped swooshing a long time ago.

Very original idea!

When I was building, in LDD, set 10182 (CC), the official instruction pdf that I found in the internet was so bad, so difficult to discern some colors, that I ended up taking screenshots of many pages and treating them in Photoshop, so that I could see what was what.

That is a wise thing to do, because if you let the buyer keep the item, you are only encouraging more people to knowingly buy from the scammers, since they run no risk of losing money - paypal guarantee and the like - with a great possibility of keeping the item for a very low price. But then, you will need to return the money to the buyer.