NiceMarmot

Wow! There's a year's worth of ideas and build techniques in this contest alone. 13) Fisherman entry -- all 3 points!

MMV is probably a great set to get for you. I don't have one, but have been thinking about it for a while, and have drooled over the parts inventory a few times. You've got some good sets, but for serious castle MOCs, you're going to need a lot of basic bricks in tan and/or light bluish grey. I'm talking 2x4s, 1x2s, 1x4s, 2x2 inverted slopes, etc. BrickLink isn't bad for this stuff, but the Pick-a-Brick bins at your local LEGO store (assuming there is one nearby) are a bit cheaper -- if you pack them tightly. You can get 169 2x4s in a PAB cup if you pack 'em right (~$0.08 per brick; they're usually >$0.11 per on BL), and have a some room left over for plates and tiles. For a castle, you're going to need several hundred 2x4s. Pick up at least four green 32x32 baseplates at the store while you're there. I've found tiles to be economical in PAB cups too, as they tend to be expensive on BL. However BrickLink is your best friend for all the specialty parts that you'll also need to make MOCs. The prices are usually very good, unless the part hasn't been in production for a long time, or is new, or is in very few sets. For castles, you'll need specialty parts like doors and windows, arches, ladders, stairs, various odd slopes, torches, spears, chains, gates, etc. Look at other people's MOCs and at LEGO set instructions to get ideas of what you can do and what you'll need. When my son and I started building castles, I spent hours looking at the examples in Eurobricks to get an idea of what parts I'd need to have. You probably don't need a lot of these, but having some of them on hand will really help. Don't forget the landscaping: you're going to want a bunch of tree leaves, which are sometimes available in the PAB bins at the stores, but are also not too expensive on BL. Flowers are very common at the stores. Sometimes you can find the 'bamboo' plants there too, otherwise get them off BL. I haven't done a lot of steampunk yet, but I'm assuming that's primarily reddish-brown and light bluish grey, with some dark bluish grey and tan too. But you probably don't need a lot of basic parts for steampunk; I'm guessing it's more focused on specialty parts. So BL is probably your best bet there. I still buy sets if they're (heavily) discounted, but otherwise they're just not economical for MOCs. They don't have enough of the basic bricks in them unless you buy many of them. And you're paying for too many parts that you don't need. I did load up on some of the Prince of Persia sets at 50+% clearance; they had a lot of tan, reddish brown, and dark bluish grey bricks and good specialty parts, and at those prices, the price per brick came out to < $0.05. Usually nowadays I only buy discounted sets for the minifigures -- sometimes you can get a discounted mini-set with four or so minifigs for $4 or so, which is quite a steal. For instance I found a Kingdoms Prison Carriage Rescue on sale at Target a while ago for like $5; it's got 3 knight minifigs and a horse. I should have bought ten of them! Good luck!

Two 3222 City Helicopter and Limousine sets, on clearance at Walmart for $10 each. Not really into them that much, but they'll be great birthday presents for my son's friends.

Swung by the Santa Clara, CA LEGO store to pick up a few baseplates today. On sale, they only had PoP Ostrich Race ($10), the really small Atlantis Manta Warrior set ($2), some games, and some magnet sets for $7.50: Atlantis Shark Warrior, Manta Warrior, and scuba guy; and Star Wars Palpatine, Nute Gunray, and Onaconda Farr. But they did have some $7.99 grab bags. Picked one up that had a lot of good parts, including some I'd never seen before, and also had five pirate minifigs, including two women. Thought that was a pretty decent score.

That is a great feature. I just wish it would go the next step and display the total cost of the entire wanted list for each store. That would be awesome; not sure why they haven't implemented that yet. Maybe that's what the software referenced above does, but alas, it's for Windows, and I'm on a Mac. (Maybe I'll see if runs under Parallels..)

I'm a total newbie at this, and I've found BrickLink to be very helpful. Sure the interface is very circa 1999, and there are a few missing features that would improve things, but overall it's great. It can be a bit overwhelming at first. I've placed five orders (from five different stores), and they've all been fulfilled very smoothly and professionally. As for picking up random bits and pieces, I think BL is the way to go. Somebody on there is bound to have what you're looking for. There seem to be several different types of sellers. There's the large, volume stores that have very good prices but high minimum order and/or high required piece-to-lot or total dollars to lots ratios. They've got great prices, but they don't want to mess around with people buying one of this, two of that, etc. (unless you're also buying 300 of something else). And then there are plenty of stores with more limited inventory, and good but not great prices, but with low minimums ($1.50, $2.00), and no required lot ratios. These are the stores you should probably deal with. As for shipping, if you're just buying a few things in the US (up to 13 ounces IIRC), they'll send it USPS first-class mail in a padded envelope, and it won't cost much at all.

Now there's a good strategy! We can do them a favor and take care of the 'recycling' for them!

What did I buy today? At Target, 3 PoP Quest Against Time at $24.98 each (great castle/temple/etc parts), plus 2 Atlantis Wreck Raiders at $8.46 each, and a Star Wars Echo Base at $17.48. Then at the LEGO store, 3 PoP Fight for the Dagger at $14.98 each and 2 PAB cups. BTW, no minifigures at Target, but plenty at the LEGO store. Yeah, it was a busy day.

I think Gateway of the Squid was $19.99 or $24.99. Didn't pay too much attention since we're not really into Atlantis yet. There were quite a few of them, and also some of one of small sets too -- not Wreck Raider, but maybe Monster Crab Clash or something else. You could call and ask -- they were very helpful in the store. And yes, they had a bunch of the Series 3 minifigures - probably at least 30 or so out in a bin for people to pick through. I heard from a friend yesterday that the Santa Clara store has a lot of Series 3 minifigures also, but apparently not much on sale.

I was at the LEGO store today, and was amazed that I was the only customer (it was early). So I took the opportunity to do a bit of Q&A with one of the salespeople there. How often do the PAB bins change over? - A bit faster than once a month. More quickly over the holidays, and in January as people use their free boxes they get from buying more than $75 worth of LEGO in December. Do you control what goes in the bin? - We request and order stuff from LEGO, and they also just ship us stuff. Then we decide what goes into the bins when. We try to make sure there's a good variety of parts and colors. Do all the stores have the same number of bins? - Depends on the size of the store. Larger stores have more bins. Do kids drop their bins and make a mess a lot? - Yes, every day. Sometimes a full cup. We just get out the pushbroom and sweep it up. It's not that bad. When it's slow, do you all go in the back and play with the bricks? - No, not really. When it's slow, we play with the LEGO games. They're pretty interesting and pretty creative. Even for young kids. When we used to do birthday parties, we used to put out the games and let the kids play with them. Do you still do birthday parties in the store? - No, we stopped doing those. They got in the way of us helping the regular customers. What's the most number of large cups someone's ever bought here? - I've had one guy buy 14 large cups from the pick-a-brick wall. (Wow, that's over $200 worth of PAB!)

Just went to Target here in SF Bay Area (San Mateo to be exact), and they had a lot of Hero Factory stuff on 30-50% clearance. I picked up a 7572 Quest Against Time marked at $34.99, but it rang up at $24.98! So I went back and bought two more. Looks like it has great parts for castle/palace/temple/pyramid MOCs. I calculate value by subtracting $2.50 per minifigure, and subtracting 5 pieces per minifigure, and then doing a price per part calculation. Using that, this set comes out to 3.08 cents per part! Wow, what a deal! I also bought two Atlantis 8057 Wreck Raiders at $8.46 each; not a great deal, but had to have the sharkman. Also picked up a Echo Base for $17.48; had to have the taun-taun. There was a fair amount of Toy Story Duplo on sale too; didn't pay too much attention to it. Then I dropped by the Hillsdale/San Mateo LEGO store. On sale, they had the 8099 Midi-Scale Star Destroyer, Atlantis Gateway of the Squid, loads of Racers, a few Creator sets, and a lot of PoP sets: Quest Against Time at $24.99, Fight for the Dagger at $14.98, Ostrich Race, and Desert Attack. I picked up 3 Fight for the Daggers to complement the one we already have -- now we can create sort of a full enclosed market. Excluding the 4 minifigures as above, these work out to 2.3 cents per part! If you count the camel as a mini-figure and price those at $2.50 each, then all the remaining parts are 1.1 cents each!

Does anyone know approximately how often the stores change the parts available at the PAB wall? I hit the PABs at our two local (NorCal) stores before Xmas. But probably won't go back until they rotate some new parts in. I realize they probably just change the parts bin by bin as they run out. Does anyone know how long it takes before a bin is changed?

Thanks for the great review. Was thinking about getting some, so after reading the review, ran down to TRU and picked some up. Still grumbling about the $3.99 price. Used the dots method; the salesgirls really got into helping interpret the dots and screen the packages. Unfortunately no elf, samurai or chief (one of you must have cleaned them out), but picked up hula girl, pilot, gorilla guy, and fisherman without too much difficulty. Only mistake was getting a mummy instead of Indian chief -- must have missed one of the dots. Will also use touch method next time. The fisherman is very nice: beard and face are very nicely detailed, and accessories are good too: fish, rod, and hat. Always good to see more older aged mfs. Wish he had some printing on the pants too -- maybe some blue wellies? Gorilla guy is great, except he doesn't grip the banana very solidly. The mummy is nicely printed, but otherwise probably my least favorite of the five I have. He will come in handy for some of our PoP sets (don't have any PQ yet). Could also be useful for IJ sets too. WhiteFang doesn't seem into the Pilot much, but I like him. His bomber jacket is well done, and will be useful for pilots and/or adventurers. And it's nice to see another older head (with his white eyebrows and mustache, he looks to be in his late 50s). And the hula girl is just all-around great. Great hair, good printing, nice facial expression. Not sure how to use her in builds, except as a general babe. Maybe TLG needs to do a Tiki theme? You know, tiki huts, outrigger canoes, Easter Island statues, etc.