LEGO Historian

I've wanted to put an extensive thread out here on Eurobricks on what is arguably the most expensive and least understood of all LEGO items... the 1955-70 LEGO 1:87 HO scale model cars and trucks. These cars come as cheap as $10 for cars in bad condition with missing parts... all the way up to $5,000 for cars/trucks that have fewer than 10 examples known... The display here is just a sample of what I have in my Unofficial Sets/Parts Collectors Guide, where there are approximately 100 pages (out of 2,800) devoted to these very expensive and collectible LEGO items... spread over several chapters... LEGO 1:87 Vehicles... LEGO Promotional Sets/Parts... LEGO Prototype Sets/Parts, and LEGO Counterfeit Sets/Parts. I hope you will enjoy this little look into a true collectible.... The images shown here will be from my own image collection, my DVD/download collection, and those of my Dutch collector friend Jeroen, and German collector friend Lothar. Enjoy! The first LEGO 1:87 trucks came out in 1955 with the first LEGO Town Plan accessories. The first cars were not introduced until 1956 (VW Bus), 1957 (VW Beetle), and 1961... miscellaneous LEGO cars. Here are some of the 1961-66 LEGO 1:87 cars in plastic garages sealed with a banderole... and some 1965-67 LEGO 1:87 cars in cardboard boxes... Here are some of the 1961-66 1:87 cars in garages... and their model types. These are numbered in the 261-268 range.... Here are the 1965-67 601-605 and 658-668 1:87 boxes... from the back... listing the different box types... Here are some of the 1957-62 VW Beetle with Showroom Window Box - 260... which was a supplement Here's a 307 VW Showroom Set that uses the showroom window (and VW) from the 260 parts pack... Here's an entire Diorama of LEGO 1:87 Cars/Trucks and other Town Plan accessories showing the beautiful versatility of the Town Plan System... including the Town Plan board. This is from my Dutch friend Jeroen... This is "just"... the first installment of the old 1:87 cars/trucks on this thread... much much more to follow... probably about $50,000 worth of LEGO in all... Gary Istok

Flying Ace... more than likely all the faded LEGO logos you saw were mold wear and/or shoddy retooling of the studs. Samsonite LEGO was pretty much the only LEGO in the olden days that was of poor quality... even for new bricks. It's no wonder that TLG revoked the USA Samsonite LEGO license in the early 1970s and started production themselves in Connecticut in 1973. I had a 725 Town Plan set with most of the parts in near new condition.. but if you looked at the parts... they appeared shiny, but with what looks like heavy playwear... which was actually heavy mold wear. Here are 2 images (the bottom 2)... of LEGO bricks with retooled molds. This shows the "open o" Samsonite LEGO mold.. which many but not all Samsonite LEGO bricks had back then. Some Samsonite LEGO bricks had 2 different logos on them... the open "o" Samsonite mold, and the modern LEGO mold (an early variation of it).... http://www.vogt-com.de/knopf-lo.htm

Flying Ace... verify that it is indeed true damage.... Samsonite was the worst LEGO producer of any licensee in the world. They often used LEGO molds way beyond their normal life expectancy... and may even have gotten a lot of TLG worn molds, and retooled them... since many Samsonite LEGO bricks can have 2 different LEGO logos on the studs.... not always pointing in the same direction!! Sometimes what may appear as damage... is often just mold fatigue!

Alternator... you must be psychic!! A Portuguese collector friend of mine Joao Mimoso underwent exactly what you described... he was in the dark ages for 45 years!! Here is his story of how his late mother saved all the sets he had as a child, but never told him that he saved them, until he went thru her estate after she passed away... a very touching and informative story!! http://www.legos.tabacaria.com.pt/Textos/collPort.htm I owe a lot of knowledge about the still relatively obscure story behind Portuguese LEGO based on Joao's anecdotal evidence!! I knew that TLG never made Portugues printed bricks... but always wondered what they did sell there?? As it turns out... they sold the Swiss printed bricks parts pack... including Swiss box... and using mainly the international language bricks. Gary Istok

Good to hear from you my Norwegian LEGO friend (aus Österreich)!! Glad you like the LEGO DVD/download!! The good news about that is that in a few months there will be a new upgrade out...(free to all current owners!)... with some new chapters and over 100 new (old) images including very rare classic LEGO windows/doors in orange from Sweden (!!) Also, the #4 and #5 Velveeta sets shown above will be in the new upgraded version... I just discovered those 2 sets last week. Also included in the new version is a new chapter on "OLO"... rare Japanese LEGO (1970-78) from Japan. Here is a sneak preview of this (still not 100% complete) new chapter... http://www.youblishe...Chapter-34-OLO/ Also.. I finally found an image of the factory building of Svein Strømberg & Co., the Oslo Norway plastics maker of LEGO in the 1950s.... and that will be in Chapter 73... LEGO Sales by Country chapter. So the nice thing about having a digital copy of my collectors guide, instead of a hardcopy book... is that it will continually be updated with new discoveries!! And all future versions will be free to current owners! Also... Plauge, I love your Avatar image of you and your child... VERY NICE!!

The first LEGO roadway plates that most people are familiar with are the ones that were introduced between 1978-80... which include the (9 stud) "T", "I" and curved plates of 1978, and the "+" plate introduced in 1980. However there was a very unique large 50x50 stud roadway plate introduced by Samsonite (USA only) in 1970. This looks like a large question mark. The 078 road plate was sold by USA Samsonite LEGO from 1970-71. It was however never found in a USA customer LEGO catalog... only in the 1970 Samsonite LEGO Retailer Catalog... as seen here... Interestingly enough... this retailer catalog image was incorrectly shown in the catalog as a mirror image. The actual plate was a reverse image. These plates are very scarce, and often can command $50 or more on BL (when available). This baseplate was sold separately as a 078 baseplate, and is also listed in online LEGO databases as having been in only one LEGO set... the 367 (USA only) Samsonite Airport Set... This interesting set was never actually sold all together in one box. It came in 2 parts... a box for all the bricks, and a 078 baseplate that was included as a separate item. This was the recollection of a Connecticut USA gentleman who purchased one of these back in 1970 when he was young. Also, although all online databases only list this large baseplate as only coming separately, or with the 367 set... there are 2 other unknown sets that also had this same baseplate. These 2 other sets were both USA Kraft Foods Velveeta Cheese mail order sets. Kraft Foods sponsored many Samsonite LEGO promotional mail order sets in the 1967-71 era. And these 2 sets date to 1970-71. One of these sets is a #4 House with Mini-Wheel Cars & Baseplate Set.... And the other set (found on the same Velveeta Cheese brochure... showed the #5 Airport Set. This Velveeta promotional set was identical to the 367 Airport Set.... These 2 mail order sets would have been shipped in brown shipping boxes. These 2 particular Velveeta sets have not been identified before. These sets are found in my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide DVD/download... the chapter on LEGO promotional Sets. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=73780

Thanks! Here's a 1959-60 700/0 large basic set box.... And here's a large 700/0 set of 1961-65. From 1955-65 most of these sets had just red and white bricks.... with a few trans-clear ones. Also, 2x8 and 2x10 bricks were included... which added unfortunate disunity to the checkerboard look.... Here is a 1960 LEGO Retailer Binder image of some LEGO basic sets.... And here is one of my 1953-54 Retailer Catalog "cheat sheets"... I have many of these old retailer catalog images in my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide on DVD/download...

I have a good Dutch LEGO friend named Richard Bintanja. A while ago he got a very old LEGO set from the mid 1950s. He got it for a good price, but wasn't at all sure that all the parts in the set were original. Here's the box top... the LEGO Mursten... Mursten = Bricks in Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. This 700/1 basic set was sold in only these 3 countries from 1953-55 (only starting in 1955 for Sweden). These early LEGO sets had the bricks nicely displayed in a lower box in a checkerboard pattern, with a cellophane shrink wrap cover holding them in place. But once the shrink wrap was gone... mayhem took over... and the original set layout was often lost forever... Here we see in this circa 1954 700/1 basic set... the LEGO mayhem in full bloom!.... The windows/doors on these old LEGO Mursten sets were of 2 types... the oldest flat windows/doors that were produced from 1949-56 of the Automatic Binding Bricks type... and the 1954-56 tall classic windows/doors with "glass". These nice windows did not have studs on top... but had "wings" on the sides that fit into the slotted bricks to stay in place. For a 1 year period (throughout 1954) these 2 window/door types were found in basic sets simultaneously. As I said, Richard wasn't sure if these parts were original to this set, several collectors said no... but I said.... not so fast... let's see how they fit inside the box.... and try "checkerboarding" the bricks... So then this was what he came up with.... I said... well..... it looks like you got the wrong parts in the wrong partitions... try putting the bricks into the smallest partitions........ This seemed to have been the ideal location of the bricks, although a 1x2 blue and 2x2 yellow brick appear to be missing, and were later added. I mentioned that he should change the location of the baseplate and windows/door to the middle, and integrate the yellow/red bricks into the checkerboard layout... Well there's a saying in English that fits here... "it's what I asked for... but not what I want"... So I sent him a diagram of how to incorporate all of the colors into a checkerboard layout... and this is what came about.... Well this was the final redesign... and it got a lot of WOWs... from friends and skeptic's alike... In fact he even got offers to buy this now-determined-to-be-original set, for at least twice what he initially payed for this. This checkerboard layout was how this set likely looked when it was brand new, and restoring it to its' original state shows off some of the "poetry" of how early LEGO looked in its original packed state. Most of the 1949-65 LEGO basic sets were packed in this checkerboard design... but few came out looking so nicely, as seen in these colors!! In chapters 2 and 5 of my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide, I show how these sets were originally packed, often showing old LEGO Retailer catalog images with this multicolor packing technique. Poetry in LEGO.... Gary Istok P.S. These early LEGO sets had "art cards"... cards that would fit into the slots on the sides of these early LEGO slotted bricks. You could easily build a LEGO picture frame with these!

Thanks WhiteFang!! I thought I looked everywhere... except here!

A German LEGO friend sent me this image today of the special set that 2013 LEGO Inside Tour members got as their promotional set. Whoops... looks like it's already being discussed! This bus has an interesting history... This truck was the 3rd truck that TLG bought for sending LEGO sets from their Billund Denmark factory... to their Hohenwestedt Germany distribution warehouse. This truck dates to 1958, and was the first truck/trailer combination. Villy Thomsen was the name of the company in Billund that this truck was owned by... although the truck was driven by KKK's older cousin Victor Christiansen back and forth between Billund and Hohenwestedt. For images of the Hohenwestedt warehouse and sales office, see my "First LEGO Sets of Germany" thread for building images... http://www.eurobrick...showtopic=81594 Once the boxes arrived at the Hohenwestedt warehouse... they were shipped all over Germany. This is one of the boxes that came from Billund, and repackaged with Hohenwestedt tape for mail shipment all over Germany. Here's KKK with cousin Victor and a model of the Villy Thomsen truck/trailer that he drove 40+ years ago...

I think that TLG's decision to introduce Minifigs back in 1978 was a big mistake... and that no good would come of the elimination of the Classic LEGO windows in 1986. But fortunately I and the other 3 AFOLs that thought this way, were in the minority... and LEGO sales into the billions proved us wrong!!

Hi Ralf, welcome to Eurobricks... I love your town! Very nicely put together... and my favorite part is that your lavish use of classic (1956-86) LEGO windows and even the doors. Most modern builders don't use the classic LEGO windows in their building MOCs... and that is a pity, because it gives such a rich assortment of possibilities for building. And all the larger (than the 1 brick wide or tall) classic windows are a real bargain on the secondary market. But we won't tell anyone, or the prices will go up!! Also your 56 gray parts packs tells me that you like in Europe... since that gray pack was never available in the USA. Great job!!

Sarah... it looks like you're new here.... so this is just a suggestion... Rather than go thru all that work... wouldn't it just be easier to look at the inventory of each set on Bricklink... rather than re-invent the proverbial wheel?? http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=S&catString=171

My friend Richard Bintanja from the Netherlands recently got some very rare MINT tall classic windows in blue. These 1954-56 windows are very rare to find in this condition, and really have a nice color to them....

When TLG produced their 1958 LEGO Brick Patent... it was accompanied by one of these "brick trees". And in this tree we can see the patented mold style used for OLO and Minitalia LEGO Bricks (3rd from bottom on the left side). Very interesting that these brick molds date as far back as 1958... but were not used until 1970.

I assume you mean the 113? That train had HAMBURG, BASEL, GENOVA... and POST bricks for continental Europe and USA/Canada. For Britain, Ireland and Australia it had LONDON, MANCHESTER, GLASGOW... and ROYAL MAIL bricks. Gary

My Dutch LEGO collector friend Jeroen finally found a brick whose existence I predicted, but had never seen. The 308 Fire Station Set (1958-62) had a printed brick for the local language... for Germany it was FEUERWEER, for Netherlands it was BRANDWEER, for Denmark it was FALK, for France it was POMPIERS, for Italy it was POMPIERI. Well 2 years ago my Dutch friend Diana found a Belgian 2 sided printed brick for the 308 Fire Station Set that had BRANDWEER/POMPIERS (since Belgium is bilingual... French/Flemish). So I predicted that the 308 set of Switzerland also likely had a 2 sided printed brick with FEUERWEHR/POMPIERS for German/French, the 2 main languages of Switzerland. And today my friend Jeroen proved me right! ... to be found in my next update of my DVD/download in a few months!

TLG has always had problems with Timelines... even the company history Timeline. I've talked with an old time employee at Billund who said that new employees don't have the sense of history of the company, and when they look up items in the LEGO Archives, that many things can be misinterpreted... which is often the case. For anyone who has ever looked at the timeline in the 1999 ULTIMATE LEGO BOOK, there are many discrepancies that become apparent.

What a great idea!! In 1999 TLG closed down much of the Hohenwestedt offices/factory/development center... some of these functions were returned to Billund, others... such as sales were moved far to the south of Germany to Munich... where LEGO GmbH is now located. Here is an image of the Munich sales office, with some nice LEGO buildings incorporated into the offices...

Davee123, you were spot on 100%... Only minor change is the basic figure (your "maybe") were the 1974-82 Maxifigs... which were in the 20-50 (111-114 USA) basic sets of 1976-80... and those were the same as the Maxifigs used in Homemaker sets, "Building Sets with People" and other basic sets...

The modern windows and roof bricks packs are absolutely HUGE... when compared to those of the 1955-65 era. Here are some of the continental European small parts packs. The 214 windows pack contained one each of the 9 classic windows and 1 classic door. The really small 214/10 pack that shows just a classic door is a UK pack where just one style of window or door is sold in boxes of just a few. There were 4 sloped bricks parts packs during this era... 2x4 slopes/peaks (280), 1x2 & 2x3 slopes/peaks (281), 2x2 slopes/peaks (282), and the miscellaneous valley and other bricks (283). The windows/doors came in either all red or all white. The slopes came in all red or all blue. Also... these spare parts packs with the black inner box were priced differently. The box that surrounds the pack number is color coordinated based on the price of the pack. A black box is a normal price. A yellow box is a double price box. A green box is more than the double price. And between the black box (single) price, and the yellow box (double price)... there are blue and red boxes. Red is about 1 1/2 black box price. Blue is about 1 3/4 black box price. What really gets confusing is that in some European countries... different boxes are more or less expensive... so in one country a blue box price... may be a red box price in another country. Here's an example of this (and it also shows the older 1950s boxes with white inner box)... My LEGO DVD/download chapter on LEGO spare parts pack sets of the 1950-65 is the largest of the 73 chapters in my DVD/download... at 61 pages. These parts pack boxes come in a mind boggling number of different variations!

The 210 KARSTADT set does appear to be unique as a department store exclusive that actually mentions the department store! But there was another set that was a German exclusive of the VEDES Toy Store Association. VEDES was an organization of over 1000 independent toy sellers in Germany. And the set that was their exclusive was the 1601 Schmidt Promotional Set. Schmidt was not a real German company... just a set of a factory model, that was an exclusive of the VEDES toy association in 1976. This "Germany only" exclusive set is highly sought after today... The other 3 German promotional sets were also of 1976, and were all Lufthansa (German national airlines) promotional sets... The first set was the 1560 Lufthansa Jet Set... The 2nd set was the (Building Set with People) 1561 Lufthansa Airline Staff Set.... And the 3rd set is the antique 1562 Lufthansa Bi-Plane Set also of 1976.... These sets (and 95 others) are found in my LEGO DVD/download chater on LEGO Promotional Sets (1955-1999).

Thanks krisjkr! Here's a historic image of LEGO founder Ole Kirk Christiansen (right), his son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen (left) and a Swiss businessman... showing of the German LEGO basic sets, with German "System in Spiel"... System in Play on the box tops. This was December of 1956 (German sales started in March of 1956)... and Godtfred Kirk went to Frankfurt to pick up Ole Kirk... so they were setting up new Swiss LEGO sales to start in early 1957. Ole Kirk was in increasingly poor health, and spent his winters in the warmer climate of Germany. Within 14 months of this image, Ole Kirk would be dead at 67 of a stroke. This image is from my LEGO DVD/download chapter on LEGO Sales by Country. Here's a new Town Plan scene from a November 1959 German LEGO children's magazine... Here's a Contents List/Ideas Brochure from a 1963 German 712 Wooden Box Set.... (Chapter 19 - Wooden Box Sets)... Here's a LEGO counter page from a 1959 German Retailer LEGO display catalog.... Here's a display of the LEGO Exhibit from the 1960 Nuremburg Toy Fair. Medieval Nuremburg was the toy capital of Germany since the Middle Ages, and in the last 60 years it has hosted the largest toy fair in Europe. Here is an image of the largest 700/0 cardboard LEGO basic set of 1960-65. This set was sold in all of Europe and Australia. The box top was removed to show the bricks arranged in a checkerboard fashion, with shrinkwrap to keep it all held in place. The retailer images are from the 2 DVD/download chapters on LEGO Retailer display items and catalogs. The toy fair scene is from my DVD/download chapter on LEGO Toy Fairs, Exhibits, and Models, the wooden box Content List is from my DVD/download chapter on wooden boxes, and the basic set image is from my DVD/download chapter on LEGO basic sets (1949-65).

Yes... but sadly... using trans-clear, trans-light blue, and trans-black glass... no uniformity...

Electricsteam... I remember back about 1983 when I came across a toy clearance store called J. Kay Sales... there were several outlet stores here in metro-Detroit. And they had the mid 1970s USA version of the London Bus on clearance... the 760 Set (the 384 was sold elsewhere).... I picked up 35 of these sets on clearance at several of these outlet stores @ $7.35 ea... mainly because this was probably the most "window intensive" LEGO model set... with 24 classic LEGO windows in each set (10 1x4x2, 11 1x3x2, 1 1x2x2 all in red... and 2 1x1x1 in white for the headlights). so those 35 sets had 840 classic LEGO windows!!! They also had a good assortment of red 45 degree slopes! But yes... a Cussoo set of something similar to this would be great! P.S. Ironically the London Bus sets had two 1x1x1 white windows... used as headlights... a refreshing reversal of the pathetic use of the back of headlight bricks as windows today!!