NateStraight

Well, I mean, yeah it's nice... if you're going for photo-realism. Also, what an incredibly cool cityscape / skyline.

Looks great!

This is so wonderfully bizarre.

I've been picking up a few random Chima sets and love the figures and basic set ideas, but I wanted to push it quite a bit further into LEGO Space territory. Here's a ship I built to try to give one the Raven tribe guys a better ride than the awfully ugly chunky things their tribe gets in the official sets: I've dubbed it a "Bateleur"-class warbird, kind of following some of the ideas from #70003 Eris' Interceptor. Comments welcome. I'm pretty new to MOCing. The middle canopy holds the little speeder [come on, every LEGO spaceship needs a speeder!] folded up. The rear canopy has a winch and container, since I couldn't come up with anything better. The SNOT junctions holding the head on seem to be off somewhere by maybe a fourth of a plate, as it works itself ever so slightly loose. I'm not stoked about the wedge plates / wings around the rear canopy; a bit chunkier and more disjointed than I'd like, but I ran out of larger wing plates. The wings will bend up about 25 degrees on ball joints; didn't get a picture of that feature... ah well.

I'd love that, but nope. Not even close.

Some sort of Creator sets probably, eh?

Hey all. I just pulled all my old space sets (1989-1997 or so I collected) out of the closet and underwent the task of sorting and organizing all my bricks. I obviously have a ton of bricks in most of the classic brick styles, but since I stopped collecting before what seems to have been a boom of new colors and brick styles in the 2000s, I don't have quite the variety of parts I'd like for building newer / more detailed stuff. What's the best way to go about getting a variety of the newer styles of bricks (mostly I'm after "modified" basic bricks like wedges, curved bricks, etc) in traditional colors, as well as useful assortments of bricks in some of the newer colors? Any sets that would be cheap and have a good variety to look out for? I know about BrickLink etc, of course, but since I don't really have anything in particular in mind and just want a variety, putting together an order for just a whole ton of random bricks seems like an aggravating chore. I eBayed a few mixed lots at decent prices, but seems most sellers there still sell by a specific part rather than assortments like I'm after. Any advice?

Is there any kind of modern replacement in the same form factor as the old reversible / flashing 4771 (also the 1x2 equivalent) light brick from the old late 80s / early 90s sets? This part here: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=4771 Even just a way to rig up replacement LED bulbs into the old part? The old bulbs were apparently incandescent / filament style, and mine are all burned out. Thanks.

(EDIT: Errr... that title should read .. "Timecruisers out?)" ) Brand new user; apologies if this forum isn't right. I just pulled all my old space sets out of the closet to start playing a bit with my son (ok, also by myself). I'm looking through what I have, what I missed, and what I'm interested in doing with them, and wondering if anyone more familiar with the current secondary market (and any trading forums?) could give me just a little bit of advice. I have pretty much every set from the first Space Police run on into the UFO series (about 1989 to 1997 or so, I guess), with the major exceptions being the Unitron sets and the first large SP ship. I have a few Futuron sets, plus quite a few of the Aquanauts and Aquasharks (think I might have a few of the Aquazone Aquaraiders somewhere, too). Then I've got everything but the Time Train from the Time Cruisers series. I'd like to look into picking up some of the 90s space stuff (or the Futuron sets) I missed, and/or some of the missing Aquazone sets. I'm also interesting in building up a small collection of some of the more modern sets (some Creator houses, some of the Lone Ranger sets--used to love the Western theme but those sets belong to my brother, some various City stuff) for my son. Looking at the Time Cruiser stuff, I'm not entirely sold on its value within this plan as scoped; the sets don't seem particularly useful for parts along this vein given the cobbled-together theme. I'm not averse to the BURPs, and a few scattered parts look fun / useful, but seems they'd be pretty cheap on a per-part basis. I see they're not very valuable on the secondary market, though, but it still might be nice to generate some cash to turn into something I'd rather have / wish I had got as a kid. Would I be missing out on anything especially interesting (rare / useful bricks, etc?) that I'm overlooking (I am familiar with the bulk of what's "rare" / "useful" in LEGO, so this is just a "what's happened in the last decade?" question) by sending the Time Cruiser stuff on to someone who'd enjoy it? I tried looking through the brick inventories on Brickset to see if any of the Time Cruiser pieces besides the minifigs were restricted to just a few sets, but seems their inventories for these sets don't have the same functionality as for most other sets. Is the trade forum here a decent possibility for turning the whole theme lot into something else? Seems I'd do better that way than to sell piecemeal on eBay and eat fees everywhere (I wouldn't expect the whole lot to sell as well as the sets individually on eBay, yes?). Would it even be worth my while, value-wise, to try to get rid of these, or should I just do whatever I can with the bricks and chalk them up to weird taste as a teenager? The other question is what is my best bet for relatively cheaply (also getting the most useful "stuff" for custom builds) fleshing out this collection if I don't want to pursue everything at once: The Futuron stuff (missing the larger vehicles / bases); the big Space Police ship (also missing 1-2 smaller SP1 sets); the Aquazone stuff (the large Neptune base, the later stuff in the series); the Unitron sets (sans the Monorail for now, presumably... whomp whomp); the Insectoids (the last "golden age" space theme I don't have, which would be cool to have); something else? Thanks.