PxChris

I started building my Pirates collection in true earnest in early 2020 with the repurchase of a couple of my childhood sets (6274 and 6276) from some vendors at Bricks Cascade that year. This was right before the pandemic started. 6276 Eldorado Fortress was incomplete, so I worked on piecing the rest of that one together and started buying more and more sets. As with so many other folks, I didn't have a whole lot else going on during the pandemic, so ramping up the collecting was how I filled a lot of time. By the time that the 2022 Bricks Cascade convention came around my Pirates collection was pretty big, but certainly not complete. But I was able to that year display the 1989-91 range of sets, the 1994 Islanders, and a scattering of other sets (mostly ships) from the remainder of the run. I purchased the last set I needed to complete the classic Pirates theme in around July of 2022. So it took me a little under two and a half years to complete the collection. I did have some Pirates sets as a kid for sure, with 6274 Caribbean Clipper and 6276 Eldorado Fortress being my firsts which were gifts from my mom and grandma. But I never had a huge collection of Pirates sets back then, I think in total I may have had about 6 or so. Other than some of the pieces and figs, they mostly did not survive intact into my adult years. So pretty much my entire collection now is sets that I acquired as an AFOL. I did acquire the sets from quite a variety of sources, Bricklink and eBay probably being the biggest two. However I also purchased sets off of Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, Bricks and Minifigs stores, other in-person vendors at LEGO conventions, and other locations as well. I also pieced together a few of the sets.

I first started going to Bricks Cascade as a public attendee on the public expo days in 2012 with my son. It took me until 2019 to finally make the jump over to attending the full convention as an AFOL attendee. I've attended every year since. I actually am more involved than ever as this year I was also a coordinator for our theme at the convention which is "Classics". In the Classics section we focus on displaying and showcasing LEGO history and classic (which we loosely define as pre-2000) sets as well as classically-inspired MOCs. I'm not a huge MOC builder (though I do dabble a little) so the Classic section is definitely where I feel most at home within the convention. Helping to showcase the awesomeness of classic LEGO (be it Pirates or other) is pretty awesome to me. My only advice to people who might be interested in participating in a LEGO convention, in any capacity, is to just put yourself out there and do it! My struggle (why it took me from 2012 until 2019 to make the jump) was always the feeling of not being "good enough" of a builder to participate. Frankly, that was just a huge bunch of B.S. and completely silly negative self-talk. It doesn't matter what your supposed skill level is, just do it. Like I said, it was really important for me personally to find my "home" at the convention, which is in the Classics area, but whatever your interest is, you just need to do it. It doesn't take some hugely elaborate MOC to be able to attend a convention and get a wonderful experience from it. I know lots and lots of people who only bring one or a few small MOCs, and some people who don't even bring anything at all, just attend for the sake of community and hanging out with fellow AFOLs. In my experience, the LEGO community has always been incredibly friendly and inviting regardless of what type of a builder you are.

Technically this is the very first time I've done this display, at Bricks Cascade or at any other convention. I had a quite different style of classic Pirates display at Bricks Cascade in 2022, which was of course brilliantly covered by a C-P blog post. But this was a very different style display with very different intents and purposes. The purpose of this Timeline display was to cover the entirety of the LEGO Pirates theme in all of it's incarnations from the beginning in 1989 until the present day. So in it we covered the complete classic Pirates theme of 1989-1997, as well as the main two reboots in 2009 and 2015 in full, and the most modern reboot of what is currently ongoing at this present time (PoBB, the Eldorado Fortress remake, etc.). We also covered some of the many incarnations of Pirates outside of those main iterations with the Juniors Pirates of 2004, a token nod to the 2011 Pirates of the Caribbean, and the many "pirate-adjacent" items of the 2010s-2020s such as MetalBeard's Sea Cow from TLM, the Ninjago Sky Pirates, Mixels Pyrratz, Creator Pirates, and Vidiyo Punk Pirate. My 2022 display was very, very different. First off it only featured classic Pirates and primarily focused on the 1989-91 wave as well as the Islanders. It also featured quite a bit of modifications/additions/MOC work added to the builds to flesh things out. There was a lot of scene work put in, and even lighting. The focus was on creating a very immersive and engaging display scene. Whereas this Timeline display only featured completely unmodified "pure" sets. To touch on your other questions though, I've been presenting at Bricks Cascade in some form or another since 2019 (making this my sixth year) although not always Pirates related displays. Last year I didn't do anything related to Pirates (I did a huge Western display) and I certainly won't touch on Pirates again at all next year. Probably not for a couple years again at least. We try to keep things fresh and interesting every year at the convention and don't like to recycle concept very much. I hope that helps clarify some.

Of course!

I've now uploaded the full album of photos to my Flickr account: https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBkWya Here is a sampling: Additionally, I have some video posted on my YouTube account:

That's awesome! Thanks @Mister Phes! I finally got started on sorting through photos. I hope to maybe start getting the ones I want uploaded to Flickr (plus a video or two to YouTube) this week and then I will work on getting a post together.

I'm on the far left in the yellow shirt, my collaborator Paul is next to me (his Instagram is https://www.instagram.com/kemachoinach/ but I'll forewarn you that it's not a strictly LEGO-based account) and then the other two guy are Josh and John from Beyond the Brick.

Well, the packing process was spread out over a couple weeks. It took a total of 13 of the large/long bankers boxes, plus 1 regular sized box, and a number of additional containers to pack it all in. Here is where things started: The setup process took roughly 12 hours I would say in total, spread out over two days. I do have a bunch of photos to share, I just haven't had the time/energy yet to get them organized. But, a full post will be coming soon I promise! And thank you to everyone for the kind comments so far, I really appreciate it!

I was interviewed by Beyond the Brick for my complete Pirates Timeline display covering the full history of the LEGO Pirates theme from 1989 until today as displayed at the Bricks Cascade convention in Portland, Oregon! I will have more to post about this fantastic display soon, but for now, please enjoy this great video that Beyond the Brick shot.

I will try to get some this weekend with the massive Pirates display I'm putting on at the convention!

@zinnn thanks for the offer, but I've got it worked out for this year. Out of all the options, the classic map piece just didn't work out well for my needs. The graphic from the back of the SES was really good, but overall, the map image from Pirates III I shared above just looked the best overall. I'll be sharing all of my convention signage along with my full post on the con setup sometime next week probably (the convention starts in just a couple days).

There are a lot of really great choices here, but ultimately I went with Sabre Island... I love that set! But I'll probably change my mind soon. I would honestly take ANY of these as a remake GWP with glee!

Might actually be a HP set I purchase!

Thank you @TalonCard super helpful!! Do you know of a better quality scan of the SES instructions than the commonly available set online? Just to share the resources with other interested parties, I also found this graphic from the Pirates III line which is quite nice as well. https://www.flickr.com/photos/75447641@N05/16095377407/in/photostream/

I mean, I'm a Classic guy... so always the classic printed baseplate.