leafan

Hi everybody, I often purchase Lego assorted lots from eBay and other online sellers so thought I'd share my latest success story (at least subjectively for me). Hopefully this is ok. I did see the 'Finds' forum but I'm not sure that's A) active or B) relevant. Firstly, I'm a huge Castle and Classic Space fan, so I'm always on the lookout for those pieces. I was browsing eBay and noticed this picture. Buying this way is always risky but I certainly spotted a few things of interest. Winning it cost me about £26 including postage costs. Notice anything worthy of more than a glance? The first thing that I noticed was those Knight minifigures in the style of the classic 375 Castle and that there was lots of yellow pieces (ok they got my attention!) and possible classic Space pieces. I'm not in the luxury position of being able to purchase a complete 375 so this is a good route into it for me. I also noticed that there was clearly a mixture of classic and modern Lego in there. Here is the lot poured out onto my table. And the most interesting pieces are here. First off, I can see pieces that I do infact have pieces of the classic Castle set 375! Not only that, but parts that appear to be from a decent classic Space set like 487 or similar. The antenna is hard to find unbroken from that era but I'm unsure what set it came from. Here are the minifigures and accessories. Now it's clear that the castle isn't complete, but I do seem to have most of the unique pieces. There's a picture here together (with generic yellow pieces removed). So what do you think? Good haul? Do you have any stories and/or pictures of hauls in the Historic line to share? Or other themes (please post in relevant forum and link to me :)). Thanks for reading!

Reading this today has inspired me to post in a more detailed fashion. As a newish member, I do hope to see this place flourish. Post incoming to the Castle forum soon(tm). It'll be a haul post, but is in the subject of Castle and some Classic Space so hope that's ok. Edit: Ok done here.

Well if my specific case, I would be buying new mixed lots and sorting those, so rarely have the same bricks to sort. I know the basics like 2x2 Plate or 1x2 Tile, but when it comes to the truck tipping part I posted a few days back, it's totally new to me and I didn't have a good phrase to start a search, but even if I had a good phrase in my head it would have taken a long time. The ideal aim would be to teach an A.I. to recognise parts (I'd have to do the dirty work of teaching it), then see if it's possible to share that logic with people, or at the very least make it faster in future for myself. Once something like this is done, it's not out of bounds to imagine using a system to calculate the percentage chance of possible sets, based upon elements present, which would be useful.

Well I've been doing it conventionally for some time and it's very time consuming and repetitive. For example, I could find a rare part in around 15mins in most cases, but I'd have to do that again for the same part if it ever came up again, since I am not going to remember it. But if the logic to find this part were build into the A.I., I could just run the part past a webcam (in theory) and have it identified. Mechanically I wouldn't know where to start, which is one of the benefits of this A.I. in that you already own the machinery and the logic is mostly done for you, providing a head start. Upon further reading, Tensorflow is even available for Android/iOS devices! This is just something I'm curious about, and although I don't know if I can do it, I know it can be done and that gives me hope to learn; and finally, more importantly, if I succeed then I can share it. I can't do that with a self-built machine. Thanks for the advice though!

Yeah I'm sure it'll pose a challenge, but I will look more into it. The 2 major hurdles for me are A) the fee Google now charges for the use of the API and B) matching the majority of the Lego elements to the images. The latter part will take months, even for my own collection, but that doesn't put me off. Also the technical jargon used in the set-up process is something I'll have to try to learn. It can be scaled back from the IEEE source though, since my needs are smaller in scale (i.e. fewer pieces, I can manually scan images, no converyer belt or blower needed).

Interesting, thank you. I will have to give those a read when I get home. I had suspected that somebody else would have thought of this but my initial searches came up blank. I guess original thought is dead afterall! lol. Exciting possibilities I think.

Hi everybody, I am the sort of person that enjoys buying bulk lots of used Lego and trying to piece together the sets from the pile. This is very difficult task but doable with enough time and research, yet there's always some things that you cannot hope to find. I was thinking on how to solve this and I started thinking about the Artificial Intelligence that companies like Google use to recognise details in images (called Machine Learning) and the more advanced A.I. that S.E.T.I. has recently used to find previously overlooked Fast Radio Bursts from distant stars. I was wondering if somehow this type of A.I. could be used to first inventory every single Lego element, and then apply the knowledge of these parts to identifying sets, or likely sets (based on percentage of parts present) in a given lot. It turns out that Google's A.I. is actually open to the public for use, which opens up some posibilities. Now I'm interested in this stuff but I'm not a tech expert by any means - so I'm floating this idea here in order to get people's opinions on this. Thoughts?

Welcome. It's very subjective but if I were to mix the playability of newer sets with stark colour themes, I'd go with the following: Blue Guys: https://brickset.com/sets/70404-1/King-s-Castle Red Guys: https://brickset.com/sets/70404-1/King-s-Castle (Or alternative, but smaller and matching the reds you get in the first set: https://brickset.com/sets/70403-1/Dragon-Mountain). I prefer the older sets myself, but these will be more complex and have more play actions. They will also not be cheap, but that is true of any legit Lego Castle these days.

Thank you! massive help.

First of all, sorry if this is in the wrong place but I couldn't see where else to post this. Can anybody please help me to identify this piece: https://ibb.co/m9JU1V https://ibb.co/ftXBFq https://ibb.co/mrZf8A There isn't any part number on the piece but it does say "6 03" on there, which I believe just identifies useless factory info. Thanks a lot for any help you can offer. Any direction to a better place to post questions like this is welcome too. Thanks. Insert image from URL

Ha! Knew I wasn't alone. I think the paper in leg approach may be the way to go.

Well we can only hope that bricks lost in that manner end up in the hands of somebody here, or their children :)

Hi all, I've noticed myself doing something strange and wanted to know if anyone else that has come out of a Dark Age has experienced it or not... I still have my boyhood collection and have since accumulated loads more Lego, but for some reason I feel the compulsion to keep the boyhood collection separate from the rest of the Lego. When all I had was my boyhood collecton (especially my Knights and Spacemen), I used to fantasize about putting those minifigs into the new sets I'd get and roleplay that they'd reached the promised land amongst the wonders I could now purchase; but instead I feel like if I do that, there will be no way of making them distinct from the new knights and spacemen that I get, and they'll effectively be lost to me. I thought about marking them in some way, but that seemed like willful destruction; so the best thing I can think of is to insert something (like folded paper) into the foot/leg holes so that I can find them again. I'm quite aware that I sound like a nutter saying this, and maybe I just need to get over it, but although I have 20 other knights/spacemen that look the same - they aren't *my* boyhood memories. So I have a Really Useful box full of rarely played with Lego now :/ Just me?

I very much enjoyed reading this today, so I thought I'd share my story of how I came out of the Dark Age. The Lego I had as a kid was mostly late 70s/early 80s sets that my 2 brothers had gotten over the years, but was passed to me as they lost interest. I used to build my own Mad Max-esque vehicles and play with them for hours. Eventually my mother purchased some for me from Toys R Us and I had a couple of classic space and castle sets. I remember very clearly storing all the pieces in an artists paint brush wooden box. I probably stopped playing with them at around 15 and so they got left at my parents house when I moved out. Somehow, the Lego knights I had (3 Crusaders, 3 Black Falcons and 3 Forest Men) were taken to my new home and were discovered again after my son was born. He loved them because of the easily relatable theme of knights, with basic weapons, and a clear distinction of factions between them (red, blue, green); so I fished out the rest of my collection from my parents house (virtually tore the joint apart trying to find everything) and took them home. Wanting to please my boy, and enjoying it all again after viewing it through my sons eyes, I had to buy him some of the sets and minifigures that I never had as a kid, so that's how it began. My son is 5 now and I'm 38, and we share this obession with Lego for mainly play purposes at the moment, although I'm sure he'll grow to love the building as much as I do for him at the moment. Then one day he'll reach the inevitable dark ages too, and I'll become custodian of our collection until he sees sense :) We mainly like Castle, Classic Space, Pirates, Western, Star Wars and Ninjago Movie stuff. I want to build a city when I have the space! Keep these coming, I want to read more.

The trailer was really good!

Interesting guess. I also heard that the plot will take place from the point-of-view of both the boy from the first movie and his sister, so you could be on to something. I have to say though, I'd be disappointed now if it was a minidoll under there - I love space so I want to see an invasion movie haha. More Benny!

Well what I'm getting from this is that Aliens have attacked the Lego world and it's up to our heros to stop them. The gang look like they're in a Mad Max-esque post-apocalypse world, so Unikitty is made up in a steam-punk type get-up and look at Batman - looks like the Glam Metal Batman from the CMF Batman Movie series 1!

I love these types of finds; thanks for posting!

Hi all, Lego dropped another poster which kind of gives away the theme of the second movie. What do you think? https://twitter.com/LEGO_Group/status/1003674313814396929 The trailer will release tomorrow. Probably a teaser-style trailer.

It's beautiful! I can just imagine my Crusader knights invading it and sacking the fortress.

Castle, followed by Classic Space, Vikings and Pirates. I also appreciate the CMF series.

Could you provide some more details on that, please? I'd like to read it. Who is Mark Stafford?

Yes you're quite right, I was unfamiliar with it and just went by the teaser because I was at work. They'll definitely touch upon Castle though, as seen in the trailer; and like you said it's looks to be worth a watch.

Lego have tweeted about a tv show that looks to be focussing on Lego Castle. See here: The Toys That Made Us sounds interesting, so I know I'll watch if I can, although it may be difficult from England.

Blizzard support their games for years, regardless of popularity. Just look at Starcraft and Starcraft 2. They've just released an updated version of the original RTS Warcraft 3 game for modern PCs. Overwatch will be around for years yet.