62Bricks

For larger, valuable sets, you should check with the company or service you will be using for shipping to get an idea of their packing recommendations. For example, one company in the US recommends at least 2" of packing on all sides of the item. If the item is damaged in transit and it did not have at least 2" of packing around it, the company might not pay an insurance claim for the damage. So knowing what your shipper recommends is important. If you are shipping sets that have been opened, then in addition to packing around the outside of the set box, put some packing inside the box, too. This will keep it from getting crushed.

I just turned my LEGO room over to my girlfriend for her jewelry studio and moved my workspace down to the basement. It's pretty dark, but I recommend getting a full-spectrum light for your work table - really helps distinguish colors when I'm sorting - especially the old gray of Classic Space.

You have to export it within three months, and it has to be presented at customs unused and unopened: http://www.berlin.de/en/tourism/travel-information/1741381-2862820-value-added-tax-vat-refund.en.html

Your radio example is a good illustration of how collectible markets are cyclical, especially in the "nostalgic" collectible market. People who collect old radios are more like people who collect Classic Space sets than people who speculate on new and recently-released sets. The larger Classic Space sets routinely sell for over $100 on eBay, even more if they include a box and instructions. Who is buying them? My guess is it is people who played with them as kids and who are now in their 40s with some disposable income. As the base of LEGO fans ages, nostalgia for other themes will probably intensify as a new generation of fans enters their middle age and starts looking for the sets they remember from their own childhood. Perhaps in 30 years, Chima sets will be selling for thousands of dollars as today's 8-year-olds try to recapture some of their youth, and Classic Space sets will be as "worthless" as a Samsonite 2x4 brick. This type of market seems somewhat predictable. For example, I am starting to see Blacktron sets creep up in value on eBay. If I gad to guess, I'd say Harry Potter is due for a resurgence in 5-10 years as that generation enters its "collecting" years. There are also external factors like the LEGO Movie, which has driven up the price of Classic Space minifigs (especially those in Benny-blue) and has probably supported the prices on Classic Space sets by reminding a lot of people of the sets they had as kids. If the next LEGO movie features a character from another theme, we might see demand for that theme increase, too.

The criticism about instructions is especially silly. Non-AFOL adults remember their childhood box of LEGO pieces where everything was jumbled together and they built anything they could imagine. They will swear that in the good old days LEGO sets didn't come with instructions at all. This is nonsense, of course, since LEGO sets have included instructions of one sort or another for 50 years. What probably happened is the same thing that happened at my house in the 1970s - all the instructions and boxes were lost or thrown out and all the sets were put into one box. The criticism of instructions is also silly for another reason. While creative, free play is good for developing minds, so is the ability to interpret things like directions and follow the thought process to complete a task. It requires logical thinking, spacial reasoning, attention to detail and fine motor skills. There is educational benefit in building a model from the instructions.

Yes - Nobody is successful immediately. He succeeded by adapting the product and changing the way he marketed and sold it until he succeeded. LEGO still does that, but some people, like the author of that Guardian piece, imagine it should always be exactly as they remember it as a child or else it has been ruined.

"Lego was formed in the 1930s by philanthropist Ole Kirk Kristiansen." Philanthropist? You mean he was just giving toys away? He was a businessman, and a very successful one at that.

I know you're just using this graph as an illustration and not intending to prove anything, but increased Google searches over time do not really indicate an increased interest in LEGO. There are other explanations for this graph: 1. It is only one source. Thre are other search engines, each competing for a share of the market. If Google's share of the market increased over this time period, then one would see the number of Google searches for LEGO increase (and the number would decrease on, say, Yahoo and Bing). It might not indicate an increased interest in LEGO, just a shift in search traffic between search engines. 2. Internet commerce has increased over time. As usage of online commerce increases, you might expect online searches for products to increase, also. It might not indicate an increased interest in LEGO, just a shift to online purchases from in-store purchases. Those are two other possibilities for the upward trend in the graph. The data within the graph suggests some other interpretations, as well. You can see that the number of searches spikes toward the end of each year. This is possibly because the sales of LEGO products spikes at Christmas time. That might indicate that those searching for the products are parents buying sets for their children and not necesarily adults buying sets for themselves - and it is adults who are driving the secondary market for bricks and minifigs. Most 8-year-olds are not saving up $1000 to buy a Mr. Gold. At any rate, it is an interesting graph. With some supporting information and with other possible causes factored out, you could probably chart the increased interest over time based on this data.

Some of my various devices that have autocorrect will automatically spell it LEGO as I type now, probably because that's how I usually write it. And I avoid using "legos" not just because LEGO wants me to - I do it as my own kind of protest against the generic use of the word to encompass other similar toys. Much of my time surfing eBay (capital B courtesy of autocorrect) is spent opening what look like great deals on "10 lbs of Legos" which turn out to be piles of Halo figures and large ugly molded pieces.

It may not be a question of general popularity but more of a matter of LEGO using a different market strategy. The CMF series are a different product than the building sets. They are sold in closed bags so you are not supposed to know what you're getting. They're like Pokemon cards or baseball cards.The chase figures are there to encourage more purchases (in the same way a slot machine puts its maximum jackpot payout in big lights on top of the machine). By making the cost to play relatively low, more people participate, which increases demand. The C-3PO figures were inserted in regular sets. There was no marketing from LEGO to encourage you to keep buying whole sets until you found one. That would have been a very expensive endeavor.

You are supposed to get VIP points with your first purchase, but when I joined online while completing a purchase I did not get the credit. I contacted support and they were able to put the correct credit in my VIP account and they even gave me a little extra for the inconvenience.

Green plates made a brief early appearance in the US and Canada during the Samsonite era, but then disappeared. I have some in my collection:

The "stripes" represent the colors in which the basic bricks were produced at the time. Note the absence of green, which I think was used only for baseplates and trees, at least in the US/Canada in the 1970s. In the television ads I grew up watching in the 1970s, the logo was animated to show five 1x6 bricks clicking together, as at the end of this vintage ad:

You may be confusing copyright with other types of legal protection. LEGO has patents on various features of its interlocking system. Some of those patents have expired, some have not. LEGO also has protected its logo and name and related elements as a trademark. It tried to claim ownership of the image of a basic brick with knobs on top, but failed in court. And because LEGO is an international company, different elements may be protected in one country but not in another. It really is a very complicated situation that you should consult a lawyer about if you intend to make and sell a product similar to another one. The simple answer is that there is no formula for making something just different enough from something else to avoid infringing on intellectual property. Even if you have a specialist lawyer research everything and give you advice, if LEGO feels your product is too similar to their own, or that consumers might be confused into thinking your product is made or endorsed by LEGO, they can take you to court and make the argument before a judge.

Cool - I forgot to mention there was a rack of Brickarms products at the one in Beaverton, too.

I recently visited a Bricks and Minifigs store in Beaverton, Oregon. It's a shop that sells new and used LEGO sets, loose pieces and minifigs. There are only a few of them in the US right now, but they are a franchise trying to expand. Has anyone else visited one of these shops? What did you think? Is anyone here a regular customer? On the day I went they had several discontinued sets on display, still in sealed boxes. The prices seemed to be about in line with collectible prices for some of the more desirable, larger sets. They also had several smaller, more recent sets from themes that are not as in demand. These seemed to be priced about the same as original retail. At the counter, under glass, were several minifigs. This seems to be the main attraction for customers, as this was where most of them went to upon first walking in. They had most of the CMF figures, with the prices generally higher than you'd pay on Bricklink even figuring in shipping costs. They also sell complete used sets, which are assembled and displayed on shelves. I didn't look at the prices for those. In the center of the shop are two large tables, one filled with loose building pieces and the other filled with minifig parts. You can build your own minifig of 5 pieces (legs, torso, head, hair or headpiece, and one accessory) for $3, or get four for $10. That price is slightly lower than at the LEGO stores, but the pieces are used of course. Also, since complete minifigs seem to be their best seller, I suspect all the most desirable parts are not dumped on the table but are kept to complete figs. On the day I was there the selection was kind of weak, with lots of very common accessories and parts. I found some broken pieces, too, and several torsos with missing hands or arms. Still, my young nephew built some figs he really liked. The loose building parts are sold either in bulk or as single pieces. They are not sorted, but jumbled together on a table. The pricing for individual pieces was kind of vague - there's a sliding scale from five cents upward based on the size of the piece. I suppose you have to ask the clerk the price for a certain piece, as the chart only has a few examples. You can also buy pieces in bulk, but the price seemed very high to me. A plastic bag of about 1 quart in size is $20. The number of pieces out for sale was not large enough that you'd expect to find a large quantity of a certain piece or color. Most of the pieces were in very good condition, but there were a few that looked well-used, with scuffs and scratches. It's a great idea, but the overhead of keeping a brick-and-mortar shop open means the prices are higher than market value for good, used LEGO pieces. They are even higher than new pieces from the PAB wall at the mall down the road. As someone who is more interested in pieces than sets and minifigs, it's not a shop I'd be likely to frequent. The minifig prices are higher than Bricklink, but comparable to what they bring on eBay.

It's a risky move by Greenpeace. They know they risk alienating people by attacking a very popular international company. If you read the brochure that Greenpeace produced, they praise LEGO for its progressive attitude and high-quality toys. It essentially says,"LEGO is too good to be associating with Shell. They have already achieved some success by getting LEGO to respond to the campaign. That provides another round of media coverage. But it could still backfire. I imagine the pool of LEGO-buying parents and adults overlaps considerably with the pool of Greenpeace supporters. If Greenpeace wants to pick a fight with LEGO and make people choose a side, they risk losing wider support.

Was at the LEGO store in Beaverton, Oregon, and got a bunch of 2x2 round column pieces in white, two stacks of white 1x3s, some 1x8 black tiles and for filler a couple handfuls of olive green cheese slopes.

Look what I found tucked away in a $17 bag of red and white Samsonite bricks: It's a red Ford Taunus, with the garage.

While the sellers on Bricklink are certainly more knowledgable about LEGO parts as a group, the major drawback is that you do not see a picture of what you are actually buying. I rarely even read descriptions on eBay auctions. I just look at the pictures. It's not hard to spot the clues that the lot might contain non-LEGO parts. And if it does, that's not always a bad thing for the buyer. Those lots are often skipped over buy serious LEGO buyers and go at a price lower than what you'd normally pay for the LEGO pieces alone.

It's kind of a fine line to walk - eBay encourages you to try to work out a solution with the seller before leaving negative feedback, but sometimes the seller reacts badly when you ask them to fix something. One bad experience I had buying LEGO pieces in bulk on eBay was when several pieces that were clearly in the photos were not included in what I got (there were two lunar baseplates in the photos, for example, but they were not shipped). Turns out the guy had a couple large LEGO lots up at the same time and just sort of mixed all the pieces in each shipping box because he figured "legos are legos." He acted like I was being too picky when I asked about it and when I told him I would not be able to leave positive feedback if he didn't fix the problem he accused me of "feedback extortion." So I politely explained that the people willing to pay the kind of money I had just paid him for bricks really do care about getting exactly what is pictured. He never answered me and so he has a negative feedback.

In a group of old Mursten slotted bricks and early CA hollow bricks, I found this odd 1x2 (pictured at the bottom) It kind of looks like a PUWI brick, but the stud holes on those bricks appear to be more cleanly molded, where these look more like the indentations you sometimes see on the old hollow LEGO bricks before they started putting the logo on the studs. Still, there are no markings on the inside of the brick at all, and the underside of the top is solid - there are no recesses under the studs. The plastic appears to be CA and the color matches the CA LEGO brick in the picture very closely. The dimensions are exactly the same. Anyone ever see this variation of a known LEGO 1x2? Or is this more likely an early clone?

I buy bulk bricks on eBay frequently and only once have I been "fooled" by a lot that was significantly non-LEGO brand. And the seller wasn't trying to fool me, he was just one of the many people who think every plastic building block is "a lego." I sent him a polite message explaining I was only interested in LEGO-brand pieces and that about a third of the bricks were not LEGO. He offered to give me a partial refund. If you end up with a difficult seller, remember that eBay protects you if what you receive is not what was described. If the auction said you were buying LEGO parts and you receive a significant amount of non-LEGO parts, you can file a claim with eBay.

Yes, in the American South, "Coke" is a generic word for any kind of soft drink. It's the same kind of generalization that is happening to LEGO.

I believe Bricklink inherited the 75-degree name from LDraw. (It's even more confusing when you discover that the LDraw files for these slopes draw the slope at about 74 degrees.) The difference in the designation probably comes from an oversight when the first LEGO fans described the part for LDraw. The 73-degree slope brick is three bricks high, and the sloped part is one brick wide. A LEGO brick is 0.8 times wide as it is high. So if you imagine a right triangle that is 3 units high by 0.8 units wide, you can determine the angles using trigonometry. Such a triangle would have angles of 90, 15 and 75 degrees. (90, 14.94 and 75.06, actually). But most LEGO slopes, including the 73-degree slopes, do not slope continuously to the bottom edge of the piece. There is a lip around the bottom edge to allow space for studs to connect underneath. This lip is slightly higher than half a plate. So the imaginary triangle is not really 3 units high, it's actually about 2.67 units high. The angles of this triangle are 90, 16.68 and 73.32 degrees. So while neither "73" nor "75" is strictly accurate, the slope is certainly closer to 73 degrees than 75.