Zeya

Has anyone read the book On Stranger Tides? It was written in the 80s and was one of the inspirations for POTC altogether. Main character is named Jack even. They decided with this fourth movie to give the novel the movie treatment. It's supposed to be pretty good and I'm going to get a copy to read in my free time (what free time?). They're supposed to have a new printing run to coincide with the movie release. The older copies are slightly more expensive. Wish I had an ebook reader.

When I first took to the interwebs to find discussion of Lego, I turned to the Lego.com messageboards. I signed up and my first post was asking if TLG would be re-releasing the previous year's winter set (10199 Toy Shop, which they ended up re-releasing soon after I asked). That post never made it to the message boards. It got denied. I didn't even say anything the least bit negative, if anything the opposite. I guess they don't like you asking about discontinued sets on there. I bet if you went on and asked "why can't I buy brickbeard's bounty any more?" it would get shot down and never posted. So, I wouldn't waste time posting anything on Lego.com really. It's going to get heavily filtered. Even the most mediocre sets on that site have 4-star reviews. I bet that Toy Story Build-A-Zurg set has glowing reviews, and they practically couldn't give that set away, lol.

Sneaky yet legitimate use of the missing parts support from TLG. I like your style.

I don't know if we should do another side of the street. It would be awkward trying to post a screenshot of our final build when we are done. If the buildings continue to be open-backed it might look weird, and buildings would end up blocking the view of other buildings from almost any angle. Maybe as a final step, someone could rearrange the buildings in a cul-de-sac / semi-circle?

Is Belville done for good? I mean, are there even any new sets announced/leaked for '11?

I'm confused here. (Tried looking for a Belville discussion but coming up short. Sorry.) My girlfriend (we're in our upper 20s, lol) expressed interest in Belville. When we went to our local shop (TRU), there was only one beat up Belville set that didn't interest her. Now, when I go to S@H, they seem to be selling Belville sets on there. They even list them in their "themes" page of the shop, suggesting that it's still alive and kicking. I was interested in this one set with the dogs (7583 Playful Puppy) as a surprise gift for her (I would also use the dogs for a MOC too). But then this set is selling on Amazon and other sites for like 20 or 30 USD, where it's listed MSRP is 10. So this confuses me... Is Belville in its twilight or what? What's up with these funky prices?

What are we looking at there? Are those from the POTC video game?

In general, about one major wave per year, for a particular theme. For Kingdoms (this thread's topic), we will have to wait for 2012 for a new wave of sets. That being said, they seem to maybe have smaller sets released at other times, but only really tiny ones with less than 80 pieces, maybe some polybags. It seems that this year they've cut way back on impulse sets, though, and I'm not sure what to expect this year in the way of small impulse sets. Other themes can be a little different. It seems Star Wars tends to get a couple waves a year, if I'm not mistaken. Ninjago seems to be accumulating new sets every couple months, but I may be mistaken. And collectible minifigures are on a blistering pace of 4 times a year! But for general generic themes, I think it's more like one wave per year, yeah. Basically, yeah not this year. There's the dragon knights' prison tower, and there's a new set coming this year that looks like it's intended to be the backside of that tower, as a sort of addition. So those two together kind of make a dragon knight base. I'm personally not too fond of the dragon prison tower; I consider it to be one of the weaker Kingdoms sets.

There's this show called "Pawn Stars" that runs on the History channel (TV) here in the US. It's actually one of my favorite shows, btw. These guys run a pawn shop and they make a living buying things off people and reselling them. They had an episode where a guy had a lifetime collection of Lone Ranger stuff. He had different types of stuff: clothes, photos, lunch pails, toys, and so on. That guy wanted to sell everything he had in one big lot. At the end, the pawn shop guys didn't make him any real offer. Their advice to the guy was to NOT sell in one big lot, but rather to break it up in sections. They pointed out that collectors willing to buy the lunch pails probably aren't so interested in another group of things, like the clothing. Those types of people just want vintage lunch pails, because that's their bag. So my advice would be to break things out by theme, basically. I'm guessing you don't want to have a million tiny ebay sales and a million trips to UPS to ship off box after box. And selling in one big lot is either impossible or you're selling at a big loss. But I've had my fair share of experience with eBay, and I recommend the following. Take a few sets, for example... let me look at your collection link there... okay perfect example. You collected a bit of Indiana Jones. Take all of your Indiana Jones, and make that one eBay lot. If you have the time, assemble them. And in either case take really good photos for the posting. I can't emphasize the photos enough. Imagine five Indiana Jones sets nicely laid out on a table, with their instruction books fanned out in front of them. Someone who has missed the Indiana Jones wave will see this, someone who only collects Indiana Jones, and they will be willing to buy the sets for more than MSRP, even used. I can all but guarantee it. One lot with 5 sets in it is much more attractive than to hunt down set after set over a period of time; buyers will appreciate this. Boom, there's a few thousand bricks out the door right there. Rinse and repeat for other themes. Group by theme and year. If you can post and say "here are all the city sets from 2003" or something like that, you will get collectors willing to buy it. Another tip, for the collectible minifigures, just sell those all at once in complete sets. Sell a complete set of S1,S2, and S3 in one big lot. Guarantee newFOLs who are late to the CMF train will want all of them so far; super easy sale there. Well, good luck. Didn't mean to rant on for so long. I wish I had a collection like yours. At the rate I'm going, it shouldn't be too long, lol.

I managed to find a MISB copy of this in my local Toys R Us store, last month. They must have discovered it hidden in the storeroom or something. I built the third model (I think), this one: It was a pretty swanky and modern design. I liked all the tan and plates in this set, I especially can't get enough blue plates for water. There wasn't much in the way of special pieces, but that's Creator for you. It did have a gold dish piece and a clear "minifig head" brick, used to make a lantern. I really liked the sliding door in this set. Oh one thing that bummed me out was that the backside of the house is just a tall tan brick wall! That's too boring. Display this bad boy with his back facing the wall. It looks like the other models have this problem too. I like the Creator houses a lot. So far, the Beach House is my favorite. I wasn't able to build the Apple Tree House, because my girlfriend highjacked the bricks to try and make our house out of Lego. I still have the Log Cabin set to make, but somehow I'm not too excited about that one; I think the log cabin will end up being disassembled quickly. Looking forward to the lighthouse set later this year though.

UPDATE: Ignore this. No longer looking for this set. (Broke down and bought it off BL at a crazy price.) I would like to buy a 6242 Soldiers' Fort. It's the only Pirates II set that I don't have (other than the small impulses). The cheapest I can find it is for $55 on BL and they go for like $65-$80 on eBay. This is a little out of my price range, and nobody is selling used copies. I would prefer to buy used and save some money, but a good deal on MISB would be okay too. My requirement is that all minifigs and pieces are included, and prefer to get the instructions as well. Let me know if you have a Soldiers' Fort to sell me!

That depends on what channel you're referring to. I can say that at Toys R Us stores here in the US, they keep the older ones until they're sold out. I saw s2 packets there just the other week, and we're well into s3 now. As for S@H, I'm not sure, but with s2 and s3, I don't think they had any overlap. In fact I think they stopped allowing orders for s2 a couple weeks before s3 was launched. And of course there's bricklink and ebay, which have a healthy supply of older cmfs.

Hmm... someone made a website to track the appearances of collectible minifigures. I don't know if that concept took off or what. Let's see if I can dig it up... Edit: Here it is for s3: LINK. Not sure about s4.

Cool, thanks for taking the time to take some photos for us. He looks like a high-quality fig! I like the bone too. And I don't think it will really be next month. I have a feeling s4 will be on shelves in a matter of days, at least here in the US. Maybe I'm spoiled because I live on the west coast and that seems to be where they pop up first, in the world.

Thank you for this review. I really wish we had sets like this today. Most sets only come with a little bit of plant life or none at all, and I need more greenery!

I am a software engineer. I work on software for a consumer (i.e. "normal people every day use") device. I don't want to go into much more detail than that. I used to be in the video game industry (shipped a few titles for PSP and Wii). Hit some rocky times when the economy took a crap and now I'm happily working in greener pastures. The game industry is crazy... I could go on for pages but I won't. When people hear that I'm into Lego, sometimes they ask if I do Mindstorms stuff. While it seems cool to me, and I think it's fantastic especially for teenagers, Mindstorms is just too much like work for me. In my free time I'd rather focus on physical building. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Edit: Just realized this is in the train forum. That made me think of how my 2nd great grandfather was a train engineer in Poland. My grandfather was a draftsman (old term for mechanical engineer) for Ford. But then my father was a physician. And then there's me lol. I would like to get into Lego trains one day, but I won't due to limited funds and no space for a layout. I have that holiday train from 2006 on my BL wish list, but when they pop up they go for hundreds of dollars, and I just can't do that.

I ran across this image and just had to share it here.

I was taking down from the shelf my CMF1 and CMF2 figures yesterday. I mentioned this before at some point, but here is a photo of the defect on my explorer. It's like the hole that his arm goes into is too big or something. It's only on that one side. And his arm rotates just fine, which is strange. I just thought I would share. Has anyone else seen a defect like this before?

I hate to be a downer, but I don't like that cart weapon in the prison set. Not only does it have flick missiles, but it's also using a big red plate that looks ugly and out of place. I probably won't even build that. At least it gives some extra spears I suppose. But I would have rather seen those bricks go into adding to the structure, or maybe another minifigure. I'd say the prison set is the only one that is somewhat disappointing here. If it weren't for the cool dragon knight, I might have passed on it.

I see new face prints, if I'm not mistaken. In the prison extension set, the archer up top has a gap in his teeth, I think; I haven't seen that face before. I think one of the king's carriage guards has a gold tooth, but I believe I've seen that in Pirates. And then one of the archers in the mill set has a moustache/goatee with a break in the top lip in the middle. I'm not an expert on faces though, so I'm not sure if they're actually new or not.

I've fixed the color problems. You have been PM'd. Thank you for taking the time to find all those errors. Do you use one of those programs like LDD Manager to find the color problems? As for how I made my color mistakes, I guess I dipped into Universe mode and got a little too paint-happy. For some things like the modified 1x1 piece with the clip, I just assumed that was so common it must have been in reddish brown somewhere. And I think in some cases I realized later on that I was in fact accidentally looking at the wrong color column on BL. Once again I apologize for the hold-up. Time for builder #10's turn!

You must mean March 6th, right? Some countries do the month first and then the day... Sheesh I havent recovered from s3 yet.

Oh I'm sorry. I tried to be as careful as I could, but I still screwed up. I can fix the problems on Monday (busy this weekend) or our moderators can fix it. I'm fine with most of those color changes proposed. I'll have to look up the nougat brick that was mentioned; that sounds like the only issue that bugs me... Sorry again.

This probably goes best in the Storage and Sorting LEGO thread. My desk looks a lot like yours. I have the Akro-Mils drawer cabinets too; I just got them recently and like them a lot. Although I'm realizing I'm going to need a third one now...

Ah, I am envious of you. Attempts to find my old stash of lego from my childhood have ended in failure. So what you should do, is pick out a unique piece, find what sets that piece came from with bricklink, and then put that set together. Rinse and repeat, and eventually you should have all your sets made. Actually, you should go through all the bricks once and cherry-pick unique pieces to look up. Pull out pieces with prints, all minifigures, anything in a unique color, accessories. So let's say you pull out a piece that looks like this: Then you can go on bricklink and find this page: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItem.asp?P=2490px4 And in the upper right hand corner you see it says "This part appears in: 3 sets (view them)". You click that link and it shows you all the sets that part was in. Okay well in this case it was in 3 sets from 2000, but you see the point. This piece was a good one to look up because it's pretty unique and due to its printing, probably only showed up in a small number of sets in the span of a year or two. I hope that helps you a little. Another idea is to look through a list of castle sets from the year range you mentioned and see if you spot any sets that you are pretty sure are in there, based on your memory. But each set you rebuild means you've chopped down your mystery brick heap by that much. And of course if you are willing, you can sell those bad boys on ebay to fund newer lego purchases. :)