LEGO Historian

Ambo100 nice inheritance!! Those 1976 Weetabix (UK chocolate-like cereal) sets never did have a number... neither did the 1970 castle set. And ironically the 3 Weetabix village sets were only sold as a group... Also... each of these 3 buildings came in a simple box with an image of the building on the front. And these 3 boxes were found inside a larger plain brown shipping box, but they were held in place within, via inserts.

Thanks for sharing that very funny anecdote AncientDayz... your very thoughtful wife!! ... the eternal optimist!

A year after Samsonite of Canada released the 0011 thru 0016 minifig packs, they released another set of packs that were "Canada only". These two new minifig packs were listed in the 1983 Canadian LEGO catalog as 6001 Castle Minifig Pack and 6002 Town Minifig Pack. But apparently there may have been some problems at the Stratford Ontario Samsonite plant, the same plant that had been producing LEGO sets since 1961, when USA and Canada Samsonite LEGO sets were first produced there. The problem was that both packs were labeled 6002!!

OH NO!!! They sold "used" minifigs!! Hehehe... I find that using provenance as a criteria for conditon an absurdity... in any other collectible its' only based on one thing... "condition... condition... condition". Whether you assemble it, or whether it's assembled by the company... the end result is that there is no difference in the actual condition... Sorry 62Bricks... I digress.... I was just commenting on how some people use a determination other than actual condition as a criteria for condition... ... and yes... there are other blisterpacks with assembled minifigs out there...

Hehehe... I'm reminded of this set from 1965... the 321 Clown Set... (although this is an extreme exception)... Just the parts alone... even in mint condition... are worth about $5. But if you have the parts and the box (with the instructions as well).... it's worth about $1000 Why so much? This set was sold in very low quantities only in Denmark in 1965. Then the leftover sets were shipped off to Japan in 1967 and sold there... again in very small quantities.

Since I'm on a Samsonite of Canada tangent... they did some other quirky things that was very interesting in Canada. One of them was producing some value packs without numbers on them. In 1985 Samsonite of Canada released this unnumbered value pack (listed as set 00 in Bricklink).... Also produced in 1985 was another (unknown?) unnumbered value pack...

Well that unreleased 6690 set I just showed... apparently it was released... in 1984.... but under the 6628 number...

Several of you have suggested that I talk on the history of more recent LEGO... sooooo here ya go! When I was first putting together my LEGO Collectors Guide 6 years ago, I came across some very unusual Minifig sets that were unique to Canada. Actually, the truth be told... there seem to have been a lot of sets that were unique to Canada. When USA Samsonite lost the LEGO license in 1972 (due to poor sales), TLG took back the license, and moved the USA LEGO HQ from Loveland Colorado to first Brookfield Connecticut, and within a year or two, moved it to Enfield. But Samsonite of Canada somehow avoided this fate, and managed to hold onto their license to produce LEGO until 1985. During this time, Samsonite of Canada produced a few unique sets, especially LEGO minifig sets in the early 1980s. Why these were produced only in Canada (at the Stratford Ontario Samsonite plant) is a mystery with few answers... but it made for interesting and desireable early minifig sets. The first of these was a group of 6 sets... the 0011 thru 0016 packs. When you look at the online databases, they are all over the map on these. Lugnet mentions they are 1978 sets, Brickset mentions that they are 1979 sets, and Bricklink mentions that they are 1982 sets. The 0011 Town Set... The 0012 Space Set... The 0013 Space Set... The 0014 Space Set... The 0015 Space Set... The 0016 Castle Set... Interestingly enough, these packs mention a 1978 copyright date. However, that may have been the copyright date for minifigs in general. Several things point against a 1978 release date... one is that except for a few space sets released at Christmas 1978, the Space System was mainly released in 1979. Also the red and white space minifigs were introduced in 1979, but the yellow minifigs were not released until 1982. So this would lend credence to a 1982 release date. These interesting Canadian minfig sets were not the first minifig sets. Other sets were sold at that time, such as the 677 (1979) Knights Procession set (sold in 1981 as 6077 in USA)... and the 6302 (1982) and 6308 (1982) Town sets (with others to follow later). Only the Space System minifig sets (6701 and 6711, 1983) came out later. Since the Canadian market for LEGO was not all that large during the Samsonite years, these very interesting Samsonite sets make for a very desireable collection of early minifigs, that are highly sought by early minifig collectors. But why did Canada have such a nice assortment of minifigs, while other markets did not? Especially the many different Space minifigs? We may never know! One other footnote about Samsonite of Canada... in 1973 the Beatrice Corp., a multinational conglomerate of companies, purchased Samsonite Corporation, and Samsonite of Canada was under the Beatrice label... although the LEGO sets in Canada were still produced in the Stratford Samsonite plant in Ontario. However, in 1985 the USA Wall Street brokerage firm of Kohlberg, Kravitz & Roberts (KK&R) did a hostile takeover of Beatrice Corp. (apparently the separate parts were worth more than the sum of the corporation)... and it became the largest hostile takeover until that time in business history. When KK&R sold off the the remains of Beatrice into separate companies, Samsonite once again became an independent company. But before that happened, TLG saw an opportunity, and purchased the LEGO license back from KK&R. So Samsonite became independent... minus the LEGO production... which move to Enfield, along with the managing of LEGO in Canada. Thus ended the Samsonite logo from LEGO sales forever.... It's these little quirks and anomalies, that made writing a collectors guide such a passion for me to undertake!! (More on Samsonite LEGO in Canada coming...)

One of the strangest LEGO sets were the 6002 Town Minifig Set and 6002 Castle Minifig Set, both exclusives of Canada in 1983. The 1983 Canadian catalog shows the town set as 6002... but the Castle Minifig set is shown in the catalog as 6001. So this tells me that the folks at the Samsonite LEGO plant in Stratford Ontario made a mistake in producing the castle minifig set under the wrong number. Discussed in my LEGO DVD chapter on early LEGO Castle System.... 6002 Town Minifig Set... Incorrectly printed 6002 Castle Minifig Set.... I love LEGO errors... it makes learning the history of sets more interesting!

Here's something that you won't find anywhere... so rare that it was never released... Good thing too, since the parts don't match the packaging! Something new in my collectors guide!

My collectors guide has been getting a lot of rare upgrades. This includes some minifig sets that were never put into production.... such as this beauty, which if it had been put into production... would have been a major error... the contents don't match the label !!

Welcome to Eurobricks Desmondjg!! Your USA/Canada only Samsonite LEGO 205 Basic Set was produced from fall 1965 until 1971 in the USA, and until 1974 in Canada. This was just one of the basic sets that Samsonite produced that had the set number equal the parts count. These sets included 125, 205, 285, 375, 450 and 615. There were other sets in this group that had a part count and a "name" that went along with them.... such as the 223 Adventurer Set, the 326 Suburban Set and 536 Designer Set. These "named and numbered" sets were exclusive mail order sets of FAO Schwarz and Sears of that era. You will also notice a few odd things about your 205 set... such as some parts (in red and yellow) may look odd, since there will likely be some (older) Cellulose Acetate plastic parts mixed in with the newer ABS plastic parts. Also you will notice that the LEGO logo on the brick studs may vary... you could have 3 different font types on the bricks... and in some instances 2 different ones on the same parts! I know, because I wrote a collectors guide about 20th century LEGO!

Yes this was a nice surprise, wasn't it?? From what Adam Reed Tucker, the designer of the Robie House Architectural Set mentioned, the mold for this part was already in existence when he mentioned he needed this part. Now only available in 3 colors (dark red, sand green and white), hopefully it will come out in other colors pretty quickly. My big beef with LEGO in the last 30 years (yes, I've been collecting long before then)... is that there is no "LEGO System" to parts like there were in the earlier decades. By "System" I mean that you have all the necessary parts available (and all in specific colors) to build an entire structure with related elements. This could be sloped bricks (33, 45 or 78 degrees)... log bricks, masonry bricks, and above all a window system that doesn't include the back of headlight bricks!! I agree with the need also for 33 degree slopes for the gable connector and hip roof peak. But for right now, a series of 1x2 and 2x2 tiles in the color needed will work fine until they finally produce those parts. Another part that would be nice is this double concave in a 78 degree 2x2x2 size... for making mansard roofs. But of greater help is producing the new parts in more colors... and ones that have related parts in other sizes in that color. Few things are more frustrating to a LEGO builder that finding that the color you choose for a roof (or other parts of a structure)... and they may have the double concave and double convex... but not the regular slopes in those colors!! It's nice that in Sand Green the 33 degree slopes are available at sort of decent prices in the double convex and double concave sizes... only to find out they cost $1-$1.50 each in 2x3 and 3x4 regular slope sizes!!

Wow.... just got another piece of information of very old LEGO from Norway.... I just got a copy of a 1957 Norwegian Retailer Catalog. And among the items just discussed were the sets in the previous post. And also there were some spare parts sold as individual parts. Among them was the 10x20 thick baseplate. This plate was introduced in 1953, and was produced for decades under the "700E" number in Europe and North America. Well in that 1957 Norwegian catalog it was listed as 700/E, 700/E2 and 700E3. Ordinarily one would think that the plate was sold individually, or in a 2 or 3 pack, right? Well as it turns out, that wasn't exactly how it was sold in groups of 2 or 3! My German LEGO collector friend Lothar often bought Norwegian LEGO, and was wondering why the 10x20 baseplates were sometimes glued together in groups of 2 or 3!!! As it turns out, these 700/E2 and 700/E3 were Norwegan baseplates that were glued together on the sides, and sold to the public in this way!!! Wow!! The A/S Norske LEGIO company in Oslo (yes there's an "I" in the name)... produced these baseplates in a way that they were never sold elsewhere!! Talk about learning something new every day!! Hehehe... something else to add to my collectors guide!

I ship mine to Europe to have holes punched into them..... No not really... but for some odd reasons that I've not been able to understand fully... older European instructions and catalogs have a propensity to have holes punched into them with a hole puncher??

Well I'm working on investigating and hopefully finding the last of the missing LEGO sets... getting very close to finishing the last of the missing pieces of the LEGO puzzle! Found 2 sets in 1956 Scandinavian catalogs that have never been found... an 1237 "Garage Set Side Building"... and a 1309 "Small Esso Garage". The Billund Archives has no record of these sets... but that never stopped me from finding sets they had no records of... Ordinarily I would say that these sets were never produced, but I know better. There are a few LEGO sets that WERE produced and have not yet been found (I have a photograph of a retailer stack of them in one image)... so I don't let the fact that they've not yet been found interfere with good detective work... Here is an image from a small part of a 1956 Norwegian catalog.... the 1235 (Garage Kit), 1236 (Garage Set) and 1237 (Garage Side Building) and 1309 (Small Esso Station) sets are mentioned. Just yesterday I received an image from a 1957 Norwegian catalog that mentions the same 2 sets. So this really reduces the likelihood of an catalog error. Here is (1956 Norwegian catalog) what the unknown 1237 built model supposedly looks like, next to a known set, the 1236 Garage set.... Here is the same 1235 box (same as a 1236)... Now the 2 boxes (1236/1237) look almost identical... and may actually have been the same box used for both, with just a different set number on the side... Here is a 1236 box (identical to a 1235 set)... And here's the end flap to a 1236.... So a 1237 would likely have this same box, but with a different model, and a different set number on the side flap (the only place the set number is located). There is also a Garage Kit of the 5 garage parts in a box numbered 1235, that has this exact same box also. Now as for the 1309 set. That one is a bit more on the obscure side. What is the difference between a "Small Esso Service" (1309) and a 1237?? Well the 1309 entry says it includes a Garage. So maybe that would explain this very old set, whose image I've had for many years and never really understood why it had a different printed brick (ESSO SERVICE) instead of GARAGE, and also why it included a 1:87 Bedford Esso Tanker. Well as it turns out, the price difference between a 1236 regular garage, and a 1309 Esso garage... about equals the price difference including the 1:87 Esso Tanker! So this set, that I always thought had the wrong parts included... may have been original all along... and maybe just wasn't identified correctly!! This set may very well have been the 1309 set... the image on the box... is the same image on the back side of a 1235 and 1236 box... and very possibly also of the 1237 box!! So sets 1235, 1236, 1237 and 1309 may all very well have the same box... and this may be part of the problem. Now just to find an example with the 1237 and 1309 number on the box flap!! Waiting for this "shoe to drop".... ... and then I can tell the folks at the Billund Archives... Well one more thing to add to my DVD/download!

Another similar situation was with the 383/6083 Knight's Tournament sets. The 383 set (Europe/Australia/Canada) came out in 1979, and the rare red flags had the heraldic crest actually printed on the flag. When the USA version 6083 was introduced in 1981, the flags came plain, and the sticker sheet contained just the 2 sides of the flag sticker.

A newly discovered Opel Kapitän 1:87 scale (HO) LEGO car from 1957. That brings the number of known prototype Opel's to 8. These all appear to have been made in Norway by A/S Norske LEGIO as a 1:87 prototype, since this vehicle was never put into actual production. These rare beauties are worth about $5000 each!

The folded cardboard Town Plan board (#200 & #246) was introduced in September 1959. In 1961 a Town Plan set was also introduced, the 810 Set, which could build this scene.... I built my own Town Plan scene, with a more downtown feel to it....

Thanks Freddy Bricker, with the exception of the NIVEA trucks, I know the owners of all the other items. I have a collection of over 10,000 rare LEGO images (mostly color), and being a big time historian about LEGO... it's amazing how many folks want to send me pics of things that they hope I've never seen before!! There are some images that I get from other people... and later find out (when I put together my LEGO DVD/dowload chapters to give credit at the end of each chapter, with the names of the contributors) that the originator of the images don't actually own the image nor the item... But most images I do know the owners to... Here is a brand new (old) item. The 1957 Opel Kapitän 1:87 car. This car was a prototype, and was never actually sold to the public. This example resides in Norway, and is valued at about $5000 as is. Most of these Opel Kapitän cars have some sort of defect, since they were all prototypes.

The last photo in my new LEGO 1:43 Chevrolet Trucks Collectors Guide is this very painful to look at image. It appears as though these 1:43 trucks were all just dug up... but they bring new meaning to the words "heavy playwear"! Had these been in pristine condition... they would be worth thousands of Euros (all together!).... From the collection of my German collector friend Olaf.... And one other item that TLG produced were 1:38 scale VW Beetles (and also in the collection of my German friend Olaf... At first these were promotional items used by VW Showroom Dealers... they had a model of 8 of these vehicles to show potential buyers the 8 colors of VW Beetles available for sale. But very soon thereafter these were seen by the children of VW car buyers, and the VW retailers ended up giving them away to the children. So the demand was great for these, and TLG produced them for regular promotions. TLG also sold these in Denmark by LEGO retailers as a standalone item unrelated to any other scale LEGO system. The 1:38 VW Beetles were painted. And one owner of a used played with model removed all the paint. The result was this very beautiful model in a swirl of psychodelic colors... which would have been very appealing to hippy buyers in the 1960s!! As we all know, TLG never threw anything away... and so floor sweepings of LEGO plastic ended up in a bin and was washed for reuse in LEGO plastic items that were painted (early on TLG created slotted LEGO bricks in swirling colors as factory seconds). But by the later 1950s TLG used the mix of floor sweepings for LEGO trees/bushes and these 1:38 VW Beetles... all items that would be painted over, thus hiding the original swirling colors. However, unfortunately the use of Cellulose Acetate plastic had the bad effect of warping, and eventually cracking of the plastic... here we see some clear breaks in the plastic caused by the stresses on the warping Cellulose Acetate. But one has to say that removing the paint on this particular VW Beetle... it had the unintended consequence of enhancing its' value... which already numbered into the hundreds of Euros in used painted condition....

Thanks Lightningtiger!! Sometimes it's all about color. For example... the 265/665 Karmann Ghia sedan comes in 13 colors... These 10.... ... and in addition metallic blue, metallic green and brown. Some of these colors can command hundreds of dollars. So colors can play just as importand a role as promotional models with decals. One of the rarest of the sedans is the 605 Fiat... in black fewer than 1/2 dozen are known. The last one that came up for auction 3 years ago, sold for 3250 Euros!!

The old LEGO Town scenes were done in classic scale... which is HO or 1:87 scale. The one nice thing about buildingin that scale is that you get way more build for your bricks. With a classic door 3 bricks high, and the modern door 6 bricks high, the Minifig scale is 2 to the 3rd power for building... or 8 times the volume of a building in the Minifig scale versus the classic scale. Here are some more images from my Dutch collector friend Jeroen, who has many of his images in my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide.... Using a Town Plan board.... Lots of HO Scale classic LEGO elements built on a 200 Town Plan board. The 1:87 cars/trucks can be very pricey for the rarer items... the green VW Van is about $2000 because it's a promotional van. The road signs have yellow poles... hence they'r rare and from Sweden (all other have white bases)... the girder type street lights are continental European style, the thin ones with the curved top are the UK/Australia version. Lots of nice classic windows and doors with some old (and modern) printed bricks. And the 1960s type LEGO trees/bushes with the donut base that can attach to baseplates. This building shows that you don't need a lot of SNOT or gimmick techniques to make a beautiful structure... love the 1950s (more fragile) trees/bushes... and all the 1:87 LEGO cars.... Here we have a 2 story VW Dealership... with lots of very pricey 1:87 vehicles... (and again the UK street lights)... Again we have the solid green Kästner & Öhler VW Van.... the emblem is the name of a large department store in Graz Austria, which commissioned a group of these vehicles. In excellent condition these are probably worth about $2000, in mint even more. Here we have a Philips 1:87 VW Van in gray and blue. These Philips vans are probably the most common of the 1:87 VW Vans... and still they're worth about $400-$500. A Kølevogn is a refrigeration truck, which tells us that this particular truck doesn't represent a particular company. But because all white VW Vans with this decal (also known with a sticker) on the roof is also a very rare promotional van, worth about $2000+. Mejeri is the Danish word for Dairy. The 1:87 LEGO cars and trucks (1955-70) are probably the rarest and most valuable (not precious metal) LEGO items, and can easily command $5000+ for the right ones. Here are some unique ones (only examples known) that even the LEGO Archives/Collections in Billund don't have.... $$$$ They belong to other collectors from around the world... (not Jeroen!)... And here are another group of rare 1:87 trucks... the Mercedes Delivery vans... the Philips van is worth only about $200, which is the price of the average one of this in excellent condition. The rarest is the red van with the fowl-fish-beef emblem on it... worth about $2000 in excellent condition (fewer than a dozen known).... All the LEGO Town Plan and 1:87 vehicles on this one post are easily worth in excess of $30,000 !! All can be found in my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide in Chapter 37 - LEGO 1:87 Cars and Trucks (1955-70). I've been collecting images and the history of LEGO sets and parts for the past 7 years... and have also gotten many images from the folks at the Billund Archives as well...

Thanks for the complement Aefferen!! I've been collecting for going on 54 years now... and my Avatar says it all... I predate ABS (1963) by 3 years!! 7 years ago I decided to start putting all my LEGO history down on paper... and the end result was a LEGO collectors CD of 1000 pages back in 2008. Then as the LEGO Archives and Collections have been giving me much access to info, that history expanded to 3000 page, 6000+ images and the history of the LEGO bricks going back to day 1 (1949). What started out as just the history of LEGO sets and parts has now expanded to LEGO display models, LEGO retailer catalogs, LEGO brochures and idea books, the LEGO family (Christiansen's), LEGO plastics and prototypes, LEGO counterfeits and clones, and so much more. My Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide as DVD/download (688MB), has things so obscure that you won't find them in online databases. And speaking of obscure... your question about the 1965-73 Samsonite LEGO gears... which only attached themselves to early LEGO wheels and turntables... came out in 4 sizes/colors. But including prototypes (from my LEGO DVD chapter on Technic/Expert Builder, and early LEGO Gear Systems...

There are some things that are printed with such frequency that they fall under the radar... such as the word "the"... or "Liberty" on USA coinage (just look at how many hundreds of billions of USA coinage in just cents alone were produced). I'm sure that LEGO is way up there though...