Locutis

This MOC is absolutely wonderful! I do have one thing that sort of bothers me. The all grey one is nice, but it seems strange mixing straight with curved in some places. It may be just me, I don't know. With the white/colored one, I think the contrasts are too much, in my opinion. Although, I'm not a super-experienced MOC builder, I would have chosen a different color scheme. Maybe flesh and tan, or light grey/dark grey, or dark green/green. I love the interior details. It's spectacular! I'm not trying to pick apart your design or color scheme. I'm only trying to say what I would do differently. You did a better job than I would have at the design. Brick on! Locutis

While I agree with you for a building in general, your point taken in reference to the Fire Brigade. However, using the new 'brick' brick would add a new realism for the grey "structure" bricks in the first couple of layers of a building. Yes, you can achieve a nice brick look using the 1x4 with some tiles placed SNOT, I think for the "basement" or cellar level the dark blue-grey with these brick patterns in them would add some depth that would differentiate itself from the remainder of the building using a different technique. I think if you combined the two techniques, you would have a nicer looking building than just one technique or style over another. Kind of like how the grille bricks are used on buildings like the Market Street to add texture and differential detail to the building. I think in this way, you could add this same type of different details to a building which you could not have achieved before. I can't wait until I can get my hands on a few hundred of these! Locutis

I believe the Death Star is the most favourite scam of all Lego sets being sold. My son and I were scammed almost exactly a year ago by a seller in Canada who was selling a Death Star on Bricklink. Turns out he was just taking money and not shipping anything. After that I started looking closely, and found Death Stars in quantities on sites like eBay, Amazon, Kijiji (a classifieds site in Canada like Craigslist), and others. Through my research I have found that this item brings a lot of money to scammers. It is a high demand item, you can tell the customer it will take a long time to ship because it's so heavy, and you get a lot of money. Easily you could sell a large number and run with the money before anyone started to wonder why theirs isn't showing up. This led to the reason why I started buying rare Lego sets and selling them locally. I don't make very much on it, but I supply people in my city with Lego they can't get from any store in the city, and they don't run the risk of getting scammed. Be very careful when shopping for high-demand or high-priced sets like the Death Star, or any of the discontinued modular buildings. Scammers even go so far as to have their accounts appear to have large feedback, but it was all falsified. The BrickLink seller I dealt with had a positive rating of several when I bought from him, and within a month became negative 30. I never would have thought that scammers would target children or parents of children, but I was proven wrong. I am very suspicious of any seller now who isn't very well established. Just my advice, be careful when buying. Locutis

Wow, bricks that look like... bricks? These would add a whole new level of realism to an old-fashioned brick modular building. Maybe, say, a schoolhouse, or a library, or a, oh, I don't know, old town hall? I wonder if Lego will offer these for sale through pick-a-brick, or in large quantities in a set. I like them, especially for some added details. Locutis

Lego Maersk Ship Set #10155 now appears to be officially sold out at the North American S@H. I saw it read "sold out" yesterday, and called, but was told it definitely was sold out, no quantities available. This morning I happened to check again, and it said "call for availability", and when I called, was told there were less than 5 left. I placed an order for one, and now (a few hours later) it reads "sold out" again online. Your mileage may vary, but if you wanted this set, don't delay! Get it while you can at the Lego branded stores while they still have them! Locutis

Very nicely done. I've wanted to build a modular cinema for over a year, and I envisioned it exactly as you built it. Good work! Locutis

Hi Everyone, I'm usually in the town forum, but decided to add a post to this discussion. My first Lego train was the 7722. At the time when I got it (for Christmas, 1986 !!! ), I thought it was the best Lego set I had ever got. I rebuilt that train countless times, and I no longer have the instructions. I did have numerous problems with this train. The first was that the batteries didn't last long, and that they were 'C' cell, so they were expensive, too. I had to build it a few times modifying it to not include the electric motor because I wanted to at least push it along. I had a lot of fun with this set, but that's not all... Fast forward 20 years and my son gets me back into Lego by constantly showing me the stuff on Lego.com. I had never seen a train so beautiful as the Emerald Night. I bought one, and about $600 worth of track, and we built and set it up under the Christmas tree that year (2009). That was a most enjoyable and fun build. I still love the look, the size, and the color of the Emerald Night train. Fall of 2010, I decided to stock up on some of the Lego that I really like, and bought myself 7 of these to put away. You never know when you'll want to build more of them! Then, in January a photo of a Maersk train was leaked on the internet. I waited patiently and when it was released, ordered several. I thought this was the best Lego train to ever have come along. However, while building it, I was very displeased with it. Numerous parts are very fragile, and it didn't seem to "flow" together, merely it was "thrown" together, or so it seemed. My wife knocked my finished train off the shelf one day while I was at work, and it's been in the thousand pieces ever since, I'm not interested really in rebuilding it. Over the years I've gawked at some of the trains I will probably never own, the Santa Fe, and the BNSF. I'd have to say out of all of the Lego trains I have built, the Emerald Night is my most favourite Lego train. I would like to see a BNSF up close as I'd definitely consider that to be a contender as well. The Maersk train is nice, with lots of details. I just didn't like the assembly of it, and was put of by that. So, here's a summary of my favourites: 1st Pick: Emerald Night 2nd/3rd Pick: BNSF or Maersk Train (tied, since I have never built a BNSF) Locutis

Good for you for building it! Enjoy it! Locutis

Wow! That's a very nice, detailed model. I like how busy the street is. Very well done, thanks for sharing! Locutis

I think you did a fantastic job on this very large building. I know from my experience that building something large in LDD is almost more difficult than actually building it with real bricks. Except for the fact that you actually have to OWN the bricks to build. At over 7,000 bricks, and many being large panels, this is definitely a big project. Especially if instead of 1x6x5 panels you used actual bricks, I would imagine the count would approach 10,000 + that way. The color choice is very nice. I hope Lego can make available some of these pieces so that one day we could see this with real bricks. Thanks for sharing! Locutis

Okay, I misread the numbers you wrote. My bad, sorry. I'm trying the service out now, and I have a request into them. We'll see how it works. Maybe I'll start using that instead of Bricklink. Locutis

When I go onto that service, and search the Cafe Corner, it doesn't show me those slope pieces. Could it be that they took it off, or do they show only certain parts to certain countries? Locutis

Agreed. See my post here in regards to my quest to build a Market Street: http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=51307 If you want a building that resembles the original, you can save A LOT of money buy substituting similar colors or similar parts that together function the same. Good luck! Locutis

Just an update to this post. I've acquired almost all of the pieces necessary to build a 99% true Market Street. I cheated a bit, instead of a bunch of 1x4 in dark blue, I opted for 1x10 and 1x8 as they are relatively inexpensive. Also, I have found that the 5-high doors (left and right) are very expensive in the proper (Light Bluish-Gray) color, but I found some in Light Gray that are very cheap. In addition, I've got the hoses for the balconies in Light Gray as opposed to White. I think I'll build it with these substituted colors, until I can bring myself to paying $25 just for the right color door, along with other pieces in a similar situation. Fortunately for me, I purchased 5 of the dark blue 1x8x2 arches back when I originally started this post, for only $0.54 each, and now they sell for $10-$20 *EACH* !!! I'm going to be compiling my inventory shortly on this set, then setting out to build it. I don't think it cost me very much to build in comparison to buying an official set ($500+) or building in the completely official colors/pieces. In some cases I think substituting one shade of gray for another to save some money is a worthwhile compromise. If you are looking at building a Market Street, keep these tips in mind, as it will still look very much the same, and it will cost a whole lot less. Here is another tip: the 1x10 dark blue bricks (I bought 200 of them, all brand new) cost me only $0.20 each. The same color as the official 1x4 is $0.71 US each from the least expensive seller on BrickLink with the highest quantity necessary. You need 79 of these, which is $56.09. However, at a current price of $0.31 each for 1x10, you would only need 32 of them for the stud count to be the same. That equals $9.92. The savings can easily be put into other parts that are the official piece, or proper color, and the way I look at it, no one will notice that something is made up of a bunch of 1x4 or a single 1x10. I'll post some photos to this once I've built it, so everyone can see. Locutis

I used to absolutely dislike technic pieces. The modulars and recent Lego Creator sets (and Winter Village series) really got me into thinking about using technic in different ways. I always saw it as the skeleton way of building, but really it can also BE your skeleton in your design, supporting or bending or moving. I want to build a new modular, and incorporate an elevator inside. The method I'll use for moving the elevator will be a series of technic gears (at least in my mind, so far, it seems it will work). I never would have thought of this type of building with technic pieces before 2 years ago... I think technic is seen as the cousin you kind of don't want to have much to do with, until you grow up and discover he can help you build stuff. Locutis

I work in an industry that deals with collector's coins. When a really rare item comes out, we sell it at the issue price. Once it sells out at the Mint, we get bombarded with orders. A quick look at a place like eBay shows it selling for 2x what we are selling it for, so we limit 1 per customer at that point, and raise the price slightly (usually in 10% increments). People get angry at us for raising the price, but we have to do it to avoid selling them all to people who will simply sell us out, then turn them on eBay for 5x what they are worth because we are sold out, too. We have our own customers to sell to as well, and by slowly raising the price, and limiting numbers, we can control the number of items per day we sell, thus restricting and controlling the market. On something that we would normally sell 5-10 per day, and we see sales of 20-30 per day even with raised prices, we raise the price another 10%. The next day sales are a bit slower (down to 5-10), but the following day, it's back up to 20-30, and a quick look at eBay shows the prices re-adjusted to our increase. Eventually we overprice the product so that the eBay resellers have no room to make money on it, but collectors are paying more than issue, but less than on eBay. It's very difficult being a reseller of a collector's item that the market seems to dictate the price on. Very often, it's not quite the market that dictates the price, it's the price gougers. If someone had 20 Cafe Corner sets, and decided to sell them on eBay or Bricklink for only 10% over issue, they would *ALL* be snatched up instantly by resellers, who would then resell them for the higher price. This isn't market dictation, it's seller dictation. Simply, all sets that are advertised to be sold at a reasonable price are purchased not by a collector who would be the one to set a trend price, but by someone who intends to sell it for 2x - 3x issue price. We find in our business that after we eliminate the price gougers from reselling, about 1-2 months later the price comes down! Yes, which proves it wasn't the collectors who were setting those high prices, simply the gougers. A recent example is a coin that came out in May, instantly sold out, and our price went up 10% for every 10 units sold, and it nearly doubled in one day. We sold out of our product in only two weeks, but I'm sure most people were buying from us to peddle on eBay. Our price when we sold out was $300 each, and they were over $400 on eBay. Now, only 2 months later, the market has softened because the gougers are out of it, and the price is a more realistic $250. For an item that came out at $140, it's only $110 over, which seems realistic. This price is the collector's trend price, not a price set by gougers buying, then marking up and reselling. In the coin industry, it seems like there are more people buying to resell than there are people buying because they like it. I have a feeling there are also parallels between what I have experienced, and with high-demand Lego. Locutis

Wow, that is quite impressive! You would almost think this is an official Lego set based on the details, and your instructions. I think you gave a wonderful gift as it shows you spent a lot of time and effort to create something truly spectacular.

WOW! That is an awesome modular building street you've designed! I like that a lot. I imagine you lost the ability to separate the buildings, though, which would mean this is one big piece to move! Thanks for sharing!

That is a great MOC! I especially like the "POLICE" snot writing. I also have plans to build a modular police station, using the same dark blue tiles that you chose. However, my plans are for an inside-corner building (which Lego has not done [yet!]). Your MOC fits right in to the street.

That's a great idea! It looks very good. Locutis

Wow! Very nicely done! I especially like the exterior building architecture. Locutis

I have rebuilt the entire building from scratch. This model represents a near perfect 1:48 scale of the real Farnsworth House, although it seems like the windows aren't tall enough, according to my calculations the height is correct. Would you improve on this design at all? Locutis

That's very well done. I could have seen that be an alternate build in the instructions. Locutis

How's this? Edit: deleted photo - see below for updated photos Locutis