jxu

It is kinda a blatant cash grab, like loot boxes in games. Loot boxes have come under legal assaults because they supposedly encourage children to gamble. Personally, I think gambling is over-regulated, but my stance applies for adults.

Still, I don't see the difference between older teens and adults in terms of build preference. Older teens aren't playing with toys usually.

More expensive, but not prohibitively so. IIRC the original Shapeways cost was about $6, I could likely do it cheaper, and it could be much cheaper in bulk. That's comparable to the price of some rare old Technic components in new condition. Anyhow, this is more of a product by a Technic fan for other fans rather than a serious money making venture.

Yeah, I checked the items listing policy and custom pieces aren't allowed. I guess if I do end up printing pieces, they will be sold through eBay. (The BSTF subforum seems pretty inactive.) @2GodBDGlory do you think there is sufficient interest in 32 tooth gear to sell them? I know I would not want to use custom parts unless I had a very good reason to.

The distinction is silly. Any set an 18 year old could build, a 16 year old could build (especially the small one, Bespin Duel). Plus the naming of 18+ makes it sound like some kind of sexually explicit or violent set only for "adults". Anyhow more big complex builds is always welcomed by me. (The mosaics don't count.)

I'm surprised people here are so reasonable in their collecting. I expected to get a post by at least one die-hard CMF collector. Maybe they're rarer than I thought.

That's odd :P I do like the shiny gold one though because I could pretend it's actually very valuable and rare. The plain plastic ones I can't convince myself are valuable.

Relevant?

It will be here Soon™. At least when I go back to university next semester and have access to a 3D printer. The original Shapeways product by Taran isn't sold anymore, but he has released the models into the public domain at http://taranvh.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/lego/3d_printing_files/.

I have uploaded them to Bricksafe https://bricksafe.com/pages/jxu/mindstorms-nxt since both links are now dead.

I thought that was only for guns and brickarms. There's evidently custom parts listed here https://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?itemType=P&catID=136&itemStatus=U but one is a misclassified panel with sticker and the other looks like part of 60c01. So we'll see.

Surely there's online version for these tools? I feel bad for all the iPhone users out there Thank you for this helpful information. I and many others dream of the fabled 32 tooth gear. Maybe I will 3D print some and sell them on BrickLink - do they allow custom stuff like this?

Ok so there are three categories: double bevel, single bevel, and spur? That would seemingly take care of all modern gears, except for maybe the 24 tooth crown gear which should go in the spur category. There's also the inside radius of gears which probably fits into one of the above categories.

So you're telling me the thin 12 bevel gears can be used with regular 24 tooth gears? It doesn't look like it would work, but I have never tried it.

Anyone have a list of all possible gear ratios? https://lego.jtooker.com/gear_ratios/ and http://gears.sariel.pl/ are good starting points but don't list out all ratios. The first site doesn't have 28 tooth gear (new gear or old differential) for factors of 7 nor worm gears. It's also clear that not all gears mesh together nicely, ex. the bevel and normal gears. I don't know what the old 14 tooth bevel gear or old differential casing meshes with because I've never used it. My assumption is that there are two classes of gears: bevel gears and non-bevel gears, and they should only mesh with each other. If that's correct, I can write a simple program that just prints out all ratios (it won't give the spacing in terms of liftarms which has some margin of error) AFAIK the only ratios possible without using the differential have prime factors 2, 3, 5, or 7 (the first 4 primes). With the differential, effectively any gearing ratio is possible (though it may require several differentials in a row)

@koalayummies I love the Stormtrooper with abs in a speedo. I understand wanting to get your favorite character, such as one that has a lot of meaning to you. But the monofigs are blank and those are the ones I really don't get. They're like official Lego but even less worthwhile since they don't have the high quality prints people like. I can maybe understand the Chrome Gold one because it looks shiny and valuable (but the hands aren't shiny which kinda ruins it). But light flesh colored one is just bizarre. Like a weird naked featureless minifig.

A long time ago I tried to combine a turntable and a mindstorms motor to make a rotating stand, like the kind you see used in fancy promotional videos for 360 shots of a product. It didn't turn out very good, but I still have it sitting on a shelf somewhere.

Is this related to the recent LEGO x Adidas shoe design collab?

I have no issue with collectors. I just can't rationalize it. If it takes a lot of money, then it's not better than gambling. Gambling is probably more problematic, but I still see the similarities in addictive gambling and addictive purchasing. The alcohol example is not so straightforward because alcohol has direct physiological effects on the brain and body. And I can't hold it against TLG for doing good business. If they really wanted business, they should just sell their own limited edition monofigs.

When you look at a yellow minifig face, do you see a white person? I don't. Maybe they should've made all minifigs purple or blue so that it wouldn't be remotely any race. (Except for maybe the species from Avatar). Perhaps TLG should ask a bunch of kids of all different skin tones, "when you see a yellow minifig face, what race is that minifig?" or "Does that minifig look like your race?" I think most kids won't even understand the question. Then they can interrogate the kids on their subconscious biases.

Let me get out of the way that this is a spur-of-the-moment post just for fun and to provokegenerate discussion because I am bored. I am not a serious collector so I don't understand the obsessive lengths some people go. Minifigures in particular seem to be highly collectible. Personally I wouldn't pay more than $5-$10 for any minifig, but apparently lots of people care about them and the Lego Group even released a whole series of Collectible Minifigs to cash in on it. Fine. Even worse is the limited edition ones like the Comic-con ones or Mr. Gold. People have turned fun little exclusive items that are meant to be a little reward for con goers into things that go for hundreds of dollars on eBay. I imagine some kid who never got a exclusive minifig to play with because a bunch of adults were in line trying to grab an exclusive minifig to flip for a quick buck. I even read about people who would buy whole boxes of minifig packs, feel up the bags for Mr. Gold, then try to return them to the store. These are supposed to be toys to build and put in little sets for fun. Makes no sense to me. Today I found out about monofigs.com. Apparently you now can buy an "impossible" flesh colored monofig for $75. I like to imagine some Lego factory employee who took a batch of unprinted minfigs and then sold them on some black market to collectors who now will pay incredible amounts of money for minifigs with no printing on them at all. 100% plain ABS plastic that costs fractions of a penny. Even better, some Chinese toy factory that copied the minifig mold and produced a bunch of blank minifigs. Why in the world are these worth any money at all? They're not even a special character from a beloved franchise. To sum it up: Collecting at this level must be some kind of obsession or a pastime for very rich people. Please tell me I'm not the only one who doesn't get it. I'm new to the AFOL community and maybe after x years I'll see the light of why people go so far to collect.

High income jobs are usually white collar jobs that can be done from home, making layoffs much less common. People are also fleeing US cities due to the current political situation and protests.

I was reading the comments on the article, and some people said if TLG is doing so well, they should have no excuse for poor quality control, slow support response time, and out-of-stock items...

From personal experience, my local mall (King of Prussia, a massive mall that has many luxury stores) is just as full as it was before, only with people wearing masks. The LEGO store looks just as busy as usual and even had a line forming at one point due to the social distancing regulations. And the store has Pick a Brick wall open, just you have to ask the employee to do it for you. So in my well off area, business in the mall and grocery stores is as if there were no pandemic at all. Now I'm not really in touch with young kids nowadays but I have never seen kids ever talk about Ninjago. My parents and I always saw Lego City stuff as way overpriced. The most interesting were always the licensed sets and for me, Technic and Mindstorms (niche interest). Maybe my perception is warped but the licensed stuff like Star Wars always seemed more justifiably priced than Lego City (you pay for the recognizable characters).

It's certainly far easier to invest traditionally in the stock market such as index funds than to store thousands of pieces and ship out packages all the time. I'm just a hobbyist and it's not worth my time or energy to really try to squeeze out profit on a small scale. There are so many complications with paypal fees and shipping issues and such. I am just speculating for those thousands feedback Bricklink sellers who do this as a real business.