ReplicaOfLife

As I wrote in the original post, it is inspired by cimdwcc's building. There's even a link to his original thread up there . I actually contacted him when I started designing this building. I didn't want any hard feelings, and he gave his blessings. There are few tiles that I know of that would really work in such a context. Haunted House had some Vinyl LP stickers that I considered getting, mainly for the record players on the counter. Another option would've been customized stickers, which would be great to work in some of my favorite albums, but I actually don't like stickers much, and didn't want to waste time and effort on something I didn't know would really look good. Good idea, thanks!

Imho, regular windows look even better. They only used the train windows because the regular 3 high windows didn't exist when Green Grocer originally came out. They are installed inside out to hide the unique train-window shape. Using regular windows also allows you to put glass in, which looks a lot better.

Thanks to all of you for your kind words lightningtiger, somehow I already suspected that the shop interior would be right up your alley Not that I'm aware of I had two weeks off from work starting on Dec. 19th, and apart from the usual Christmas and New Years Eve celebrations didn't have that much to do

Hey there it's finally time for me to present my second modular MOC, the Record Store: If this building seems oddly familiar, it' no surprise - it takes a lot of inspiration from cimddwc's outstanding Chima Trikes Store. Back when I started designing this building in LDD I asked him wether it would be ok to use his creation as inspiration, and he gave his consent. Thanks again, cimddwc! Some facts about this building: ~ 3550 pieces ~ 47cm height Designed in LDD between December 16th and December 31st, 2014 Piece aquisition and building during January 2015, one final BL order for some minor changes arrived last week. This is the second modular building I created. The first was my Hat Shop that I presented here roughly a year ago. During the last year, I built some more of the official modulars, including a bricklinked Blue Grocer and a customised Cafe Corner, both of which I enjoyed very much. Towards the end of the year, I got itchy to build something again. First I thought I'd get two copies of Detective's Office and mod them into something bigger, but in the end, I wanted to be more creative. I still don't have much of a collection of modern parts, so I gave LDD a try. Never having used LDD before, I decided to use an existing MOC as inspiration/starting point. Cimddwc's Chima Trikes Store was an obvious choice there, as for me it is one of the most memorable and iconic designs that were posted here in recent months. I also really liked the color scheme based around cool yellow, so I used that as well. You can find lots of buildings in similar colors in german cities. I quickly got the hang of LDD, the only thing that was frustrating at first was getting the rounded tower to work. I designed the principal building in roughly two weeks. I took care to check parts availability on those parts I wasn't sure existed in my wanted color, but still had to do some minor changes when I ordered the parts from bricklink. I aquired about 2700parts in 8 BL orders, the rest came from my existing collection. Some of the cool yellow parts I had to order from France, the rest I managed to get from sellers in Germany. But enough babble, let's take a closer look at the builing! There are a few additional pictures at flickr, also you can view higher resolution versions there: https://www.flickr.c...57648369659184/ (That won't improve my mediocre photographing skills, though ) A back view. The building uses up almost the entire baseplate. The windows of the upper floors were one of two points where LDD fooled me. The original design that held up the 2x1 cheese slopes to either side of the windows was impossible to do in real life. Originally I had planned a different design for the door, but though it worked in LDD, it didn't work in real life. I changed it around a few times, and I'm quite satisfied with the final result. The ground floor features an old fashioned record store where you can buy vinyl LPs. You also can pre-listen to the albums in the store, something that was very common before the advent of the internet (there's still some shops that allow this, but there are much fewer record stores in general...). The walls are decorated with some musical instruments. I really wanted to get one or two of the black Flying V guitars, but they were imposiible to find at reasonable prices . Looking at the patron's and owner's haircuts makes me wonder if Al from Al's barber shop is a one trick pony... There's a small back office behind the door. As the whole desk area is covered by the stairs, I took a picture of it during building. The two upper floors contain an apartment each. Both feature an open floor design with a separate bathroom. First floor: The bathroom is pretty small, and in true Lego modular fashion, it misses a toilet: Second floor: The guy living on this floor propably is a customer of Al's aswell... Again, only a very small bathroom. But, thank god, he has a toilet! I guess he can visit the couple downstairs if he needs a shower, while in return they don't have to venture to the brown townhouse next to the Pet Shop or the Detective's Office when nature calls... The roof has a skylight above the kitchen/dining area. Finally, some comparison shots with other modulars. The roof of my Record Store is just about the same height as the righthand part of Green Grocer. I hope you enjoyed looking at my MOC! I sure had a lot of fun designing and building it!

Wow, this is great! Any more photos?

Nope, it's not. I'd rather say it's getting more popular again year by year. Regarding the criticism, it's hard to make general statements, but I think especially the repetitiveness is something that can't be remedied and which of course will be noticed by people who've been following a certain theme for a long time. And sets like the everpresent firefighters are mainly aimed at young kids - for them they are new and exciting. For an adult Lego fan doing reviews or just being into City for years or even decades, they are just yet another repetition of the same basic set. Lego nees to redo these basic set ideas again and again to keep things interesting for the younger audience, or those who just recently got (back) into Lego. The first set of its kind always is new and interesting for everyone. Any follow-up will be judged by those who have the original against it's predecessor, which they often have a special connection to. So the longer someone is into Lego, the harder it gets for lego to really impress that fan.

Great building. I agree with what was said about the spikes, from up close, it seems like there's too many, but on the pics from a wider angle, they aren't as noticable.

Yep, I'm quite happy that I started two years ago and was still able to get all but the first three at MSRP (actually, I got most of them cheaper as I bought when they were on offer or during double VIP time). I only had to bricklink Cafe Corner and Green Grocer (just don't care for Market Street), which actually was a fun experience.

Change is good . In most cases, BL is faster and cheaper than ordering from Lego. When I BLed my Cafe Corner and Blue Grocer last year, I only resorted to BnP and online PAB for a view select parts that were impossible to get in the required amount from bricklink at decent prices. And I felt pretty scalped when ordering the dark red slopes from Lego...

Very well done, impressive build. And very nice description of the build and reasoning of design choices aswell, really enjoyed reading that :)

Very nice representation of the building! Would be cool to see it in real bricks :) As for your first try on the neighboring buildings, I have a suggestion: Try making them just 24 wide. I see you went for a 32 wide, which makes them too broad for their height, at least as long as you try to keep them in scale with the corner building. Looking at the real pic, it seems like they are just about as wide as the corner building.

Is there any way to find out when the next double VIP special takes place in each vountry? IIRC, last year it was in March in the US, but in April in Europe. Anyway: I'll get Detective's Office (x2) and Parisian Restaurant (2nd copy). Possibly some other struff aswell, but that will be more spontaneous.

No worries, I'll post it once it's fully done and I managed to take decent pictures of it.

I've postponed getting the DO until the next double VIP points special. Today I finished building my modular MOC. Well, almost, I'm waiting for one final shipment from BL, but the principal building is done. I pretty much blew my Lego budget for the first quarter of the year already. My MOC has ~3500 parts, 2600 of which were sourced from BL, and I also ordered a second PC and two copies of Bike Shop & Cafe for parts a few days ago. The latter was on sale, 60 instead of 70€, and I had a 10% off voucher, so I'll get them for 54€ each, which is an excellent price per piece ratio

Wow. For a first MOC, this is absolutely stunning. Great work! What are the crooks on the roof up to?

Wow, that drop ship scam sounds pretty unpleasant. I'd hate to get caught up in something like that, where you could end up in problems (even if its just not being able to order from seomwhere again) without actually doing anything wrong. My personal experience with Ebay so far was pretty good, but I either bought MISB sets from actual stores, or bulk used lego. I don't buy from anyonme with a feedback of less than 99,9%, and only from sellers with a consistent feedback profile. Ehen buying bulk, I usually go for auctions that have some pics that still don't clearly show what's in there (so your usual 'pile of Lego on the floor kind of pics). I scrutinize them very closely and then place a bid. For example last year I bought a bulk lot that just had something like 'Monorail, spacetrain, technic, lot" as the auction titel and a few blurry photos that just showed a pile of Lego with some aprtially assembled sets and a few instructions. I bought it for ~115€ incl shipping. When I received it, I was pleased to find it contained a nearly complete 6990 Futuron monorail plus a couple of other sets and basic bricks. I was able to make sure from the pics that all integral parts (train, track, large panel pieces etc) were there, and in the end it was only missing a couple of basic parts. I completed it with pieces from my collection, used one printed round tile to complete my own (otherwise complete) monorail, took good pictures, and with a detailed description of the set sold it for ~150€. So in the end, I gained 35€ and had 3-5kg of Lego for free.The lot also contained a few other large sets, e.g. a big police station from the mid nineties. BL has been mostly good to me aswell, out of 30 or so orders, so far I had 3 with basic mixups/missing pieces that were easily remedied. The sellers all were very cooperative when I contacted them and sent free replacements, and I could keep pieces I had received in error. The biggest issue I had so far was with another order. I had placed a huge order in one store, including some used bricks. The splash page said 'all used bricks in good condition, no scratched, damaged or very old pieces'. When I got the order, most bricks were in great condition indeed, but a number of white pieces were shockingly bad. Deeply yellowed, full of scratches and dents etcpp. Most of those even had Pat. Pend. or Pat. Pend. scratched out. I contacted the seller, and again they were very cooperative, requested some pics of the damaged parts and then sent new ones for free. He said they propably accidentally put the broken parts in their store and threw the good ones away while sorting. Throughout, they were very friendly, and I ordered from them again.

Gruesome concept, but conceptually this is propably closer to reality than anyone cares to think about. Nice work

That's the point I was getting at By changing all the windows to four wide, and leaving two bricks space between the windows on the top floor, instead of just one as in the original set, he gave the building an even, symmetrical look while still staying true to the original design. It looks way better than just having two copies of the 16 wide house next to each other.

Neat. I like how you adapted the front facade design to be wider rather than just putting two Pet Shops next to each other, as many seem to do when expanding the PS.

Thanks for the review . While I don't care for Friends at all, I always enjoy reading detailed and thorough reviews. This seems like a nice set that would also work as a regular City set by just replacing a few parts and the minifig. The sliding waterfall/cave behind a waterfall feature is neat, there's lots of stories and books out there that feature caves hidden behind waterfalls. I'm sure my little niece would fall in love with this set, for the tiger alone .

I often experience bugs with the S@H site. For example, when I search for something on the german site, I end up on the search results page of the US page. When I change the region back to german/Germany, I end up on the mainpage.

Wow, very well done. Some very nice building mocs aswell!

Great work! I'm very fascinated by 1950ies/1960ies visions of the future, and you've captured that feel very well!

The 6195 Neptunbe Discovery Lab was the last set that I really would have loved to have as a kid, back in 1995. I spent hours looking at the pictures. Always fels it looked like a space station put under water, which I loved as the space stations of the years before did nothing for me (some themes didn't even have any). I propably would've liked the big Explorien station, but by then I had fallen into my dark ages, so I never saw that as a kid.

I found both versions of the door to be very expensive when I bricklinked my CC last autumn. Even the old gray ones cost more than I'm willing to pay for an element, Since I made a some customisations anyway (e.g. using modern windows, eliminating the need for a two wide front facade, or adding an interior on the ground floor), I just swapped the doors for two black ones I had in my collection. Got the blue arches at an ok rate from Lego BnP. Priciest lots for me were the dark red slopes and the minifig skis. Still kinda pissed at the fact that the slopes cost twice as much in dark red than in ANY other color at BnP. Seems deliberate to me. Passed on the minifigs.