JesseNight

Because it takes time to invent a good wheel. But once a good wheel exists, why change its basic design or try to reinvent it? What I mean is it takes a lot of experimentation to get a model looking good, especially on that scale. Each tries their own methods, but no doubt people learn how they can do things better and might end up using similar parts than before when realizing it's better than their last attempt. Maybe you were the first, but you can't expect to be the last. Let's say I see your Delorean, and while I'm happy with my own (hypothetically bc I haven't made one), you found a better Lego part to create the vents or the lights or whichever part. And someone else found a better part for a different section. Of course I would be inspired by that because it teaches me how to do things better. Now, in good decency I would probably credit people on my own as a thanks for what I've learned from their designs, but if I learned 10 different things from 10 different creators, I might forget something too. I suppose it's a bit different in my case since I don't sell any designs. I can only imagine that proper credits among sellers are more valued. It's always a competition, no matter how you look at it.

Similar thing happened few years ago in a digital 3D modeling group I was a part of. There used to be so much free content under a fair use policy and people were happy with it, both the sharing and the using side. Then everybody suddenly wanted money and fame, starting to claim assets as their own that were based on IPs that weren't theirs, or disrespecting the sharing people's fair requests for being credited when using their stuff. Good creators who used to offer stuff for free all pulled out and took their content offline, now it's one big commercial marketplace.

I honestly don't fully understand why "ownership" is so important to people nowadays to begin with, but sadly I see this in every hobby and every community. People are so busy about ownership claims and making money, sometimes they forget to have fun! Let's not forget in this case that Back To The Future is still an IP owned by Universal Studios and Amblin Entertainment (iirc), so any copying of this model without their permission kinda is an infringement on its own, even if it is being tolerated. For all we know, this might change in the future if too many people try to make money off IPs that aren't theirs to begin with. So none of us have any rights to claim to this model to begin with.

I totally know what you mean! I had some idea books in the mid to late 80s myself and some sceneries in them blew me away, while realizing I couldn't ever built something like that. Not just that I didn't have enough raw bricks, but I couldn't dedicate myself to a single theme so ended up with some Castle, some Town, some Space, some Technic, a bit of everything. I should still have some of these idea books like 250, 260, and trains idea book 7777 (those sceneries were amazing too and waaaaay beyond me). Though I cannot reach them now, since most of my old Lego instructions and books were safely stored away long ago... and by now behind a lot of other stuff.

I guess a lightsa"bar" isn't a bar after all

In truth, it's always easy... assuming they would do it for more than just $10 of profit to begin with

On RB there are instructions for free and for money, so I'm assuming the person putting it up has a choice between sharing or selling. I'm not against either one but as MAB said, the moment you put a price on it you're basically entering a competition. I understand your part about business taking the fun out of a hobby, for that exact reason I only choose between sharing for free, or not at all. I don't wanna do any business at all in my hobby time because I don't enjoy doing business at all, and to me that can turn a hobby into a job where expectations suddenly have to be met. I'm not saying this is always the case, it's just how it feels for me, and I really need my hobby time to be time where I take it slow without any pressure and relax. That's a sad thing really. Not gonna lie, I tend to keep the peace about such things but I would be mad as hell if someone tried to take down something I put free time and love into, that I'd share with others, just so they can make more money (another reason I wouldn't share stuff publicly, to prevent such things from happening). What I don't understand though, is why he decided to still take it down if the models were that different. Or did they threaten with legal measures? Because if they had an official permission to make a SW based model and Swan Dutchman did not, that could indeed have led to a problem...

Found new 10274 Icons ECTO-1 last year on Black Friday for €130, that's about it for me (but only recently back into this hobby).

Actually this site does host photos, uploaded one just last night. But they gotta be fairly small so it won't work for large pics or entire collections.

Not much RB can do when it's honest competition and just the amount of it giving sellers a hard time. Plenty of people are always looking to make a little extra on the side, hobbies tend to be expensive enough as it is.

To the first, I think that's a good way to go about it. Build for yourself, for your own fun. Share it if you feel like it, or not, whatever you feel comfortable with. To the second... There's always been rules everywhere... and there's always been rule breakers. That's just life. Remember that selling is always a form of competition in the end (that's why I keep it away from my hobbies aside from necessary purchases).

Thanks! Been searching everything with "bar" in it for an hour now

Can anyone tell me what this part is, or which set contains it so I can find out for myself? It appears like a short bar, about the size of part 2433, but with an end stud on both ends and 2 rings near one of them, and a sort of grabbing claw around the opposite stud (so likely something scientific or a tool).

We live in a time where we share everything with the whole world as I've said before. I'm afraid that also results in it being vastly more difficult to ever stand out with anything when competing against millions of others... and in the end, who doesn't like to have at least some appreciation for what they're doing? At the same time, I do admit I wouldn't appreciate it if a business takes financial advantage of something I offered for free. But I have taken the initiative to just prevent that from happening by not sharing my stuff online and only with close friends that I trust. Therefore I don't show off stuff either because I don't like having a "show off but you can't have it" attitude. Just saying when I share something publicly, I'm well aware of the possible (and likely, if it is something good) consequences.

I'd love a dark mode too, my eyes are rather sensitive to big white surfaces on monitors. The theme is fine, but just having the ability to swap the white for black or dark grey and the text white would do the trick. (I considered Chrome wide automatic dark mode but a lot of websites I frequently visit look very bad with it)

I hope it doesn't demotivate you. I am of an age that I've known the pre internet times, and back then chances were a lot smaller to encounter similar designs because we would only share them irl with friends or people in the street or our neighborhood. Right now, we live in a time where we share everything with the whole world, with millions of others. That makes chances a lot higher that someone else will do or has done something very similar or better. Just don't let it get to you and take pride in your work. And if someone else does it better, we can learn from it for our next project.

Oh wow, that interior detail is soooo nice! To anyone who's been around in the mid 1980, doesn't this remind you a bit of the TV cartoon "Starcom: The U.S. Space Force"? The bad guys, named the Shadow Force, used to fly sleek black spaceships, and coincidence or not, featured the exact same logo as Blacktron (but in red). They had some pretty awesome toys too.

Nicely done, both all these mocs and the opening post. Can't help noticing how we're still not having a studless bald guy head.

Thanks for the tips, the "least favoriting" helps a lot to blacklist stores for myself. Maybe I should look if there's any LEGO sets that I may be cheaper off buying to cover a fair amount of missing pieces. Though I don't fully trust Rebrickable on suggested LEGO sets, bc first it says buying a certain set would cover 70+% of my missing pieces, and when I set that exact set as being owned, I suddenly have only less than 30% of pieces covered. Honestly I'm not sure what to do with all this. I'm not willing to spend 200+ Eur just to "fix" (offcolor replacements) and only slightly update a 150 Eur new set. And right now I've spent so much time on Rebrickable and Bricklink... time I would rather be spending building stuff

Of course it is. I assumed wrong here, I thought you already had yours up with these photos and someone else put up theirs with almost identical photos. I don't know, I think as said before that the fact that you both aimed to make a time machine DeLorean from BTTF limits the possibilities of being unique a lot. And despite the overall design being similar, I already pointed out seeing a large amount of differences in the finer details. From hood, front fenders, sides cabling, to all the details in front and next to Mr Fusion and the cabling below the rear bumper. It might be very likely that they were inspired by your model if it's been up for a while. I wouldn't feel too bad about it since it could have been unintentional. It's happened to me before that I thought I found something unique, only to be reminded later that I had been inspired by something I saw a week before it (but I don't publish my hobby work so less likely to run into trouble with people about such matters).

While my initial question was solved, I am still struggling a lot with Bricklink preventing me to place any orders. At this point, my inexperience and not having a good idea about LEGO parts values play a role, so I would like some input from people who have some more experience buying bricks lots via Bricklink. I've made my wanted lists. For the sake of this example, I will NOT include rare or very valuable parts and stick to lots of common parts (bricks, plates, tiles, some liftarms and axles, lots of pins). So I pick "Buy All", select my wanted lists containing about 300 lots in total (there may be a few overlapping ones), hit "Auto-select" and uncheck stores with price being lower than minimum buy, and let it calculate. At this point, the first issue arises. In the stores list, the unique lots and item numbers seem to no longer be correct. First store it lists shows having 37 unique lots, 94 total items. If I hit the Edit button, this suddenly turns into 36 lots. In this case it's only 1 less, but in some it's as much as 25% less. That being said, each Edited store shows less lots than it shows in the list. I'm not even sure which of the numbers is correct anymore. Above the stores list, it says "<number A> / <number B> assigned (100%)" with number A being higher than number B as well! Is there something wrong with Bricklink's calculations? Should I be worried about my orders being incorrect? My second point is more related to prices (feel free to skip to the next paragraph if you prefer the short version). Don't worry, I'm not gonna ask whether a price is fair or not, since Bricklink already offers good enough average prices information. But the totals just kinda blew me away. So I have been approaching it like this: Considering I pay between 100-150 Euro to buy official LEGO models with 1000+ bricks, and seen better deals on entire models, I would calculate buying new LEGO sets I pay about 6 to 12 cents per brick depending on whether it's an awesome deal or an official high LEGO price. With my Bricklink stores search, I keep ending up with 6-7 different stores and a total price between 150 and 200+, excluding shipping and whatever other fees. Editing the details, I see each store clearly giving good deals on 1 part and ripping us off on another. So far the only way to get out of that was manually pick shops, but then I ended up with 12 stores and would lose the gains on more shipping fees and extra hassle. When I create carts, things add up fast with between 7 and 15 Eur shipping per store, and some seemingly affordable stores adding as much as 60+ Euros "picking fees". So if I look at the grand total, all this would add up to a total of about 0,70 Eur or more per brick. I've repeatedly done the store selection over the past weeks but my deals barely got any better than this. Okay to keep a long story short... I am not questioning prices being fair or not, but I'd like to know if my experiences are just a matter of an unlucky combination of parts I'm after, or if it is completely normal to pay an average of 60-70 cents per brick on Bricklink orders while a new LEGO set costs 6-12 cents per brick? (Note: I checked price info on Bricklink and majority of bricks I picked have average prices between 3 and 25 cents and plenty of offers, with only a few exceptions)

To get back on the original topic, the things that really match both models are the IP it's based on, and the exact same camera angles having been used to show it off. When I look closely at the bigger picture, I see lots of differences in all the details, all around the entire model. The headlights, the hood, the front side fenders, the side cabling and connections, the rear bumpers, and a lot of the time machine specific details on the back on top of the engine cover. If you ask me, the identical photo angles might be one of the main culprits here making it look so much alike until you take a closer look. How would I feel? Maybe a bit meh if someone used the exact same angles on not 1, not 2, but every one of the pictures... But nothing else besides seeing more people enjoying the same model. But I must say that for me this is a hobby, not a business. As for copyright infringement... We're already infringing if we're making money off the BTTF IP. Something LEGO surely had to get permission for and likely pay a fee when it comes to the official models.

Looks great! I meant is the entire model itself (or will it be) on Rebrickable?

Oh wow, under 50 that's cheap indeed. Haven't seen it under 90 here yet and honestly not complaining, but I might have bought 2 had I found them that cheap.

Interesting that you mention mocs... I remember as a kid, I loved having many different colors but never had enough bricks in the same color for my mocs. I remember this one time, I wanted to make a big space ship with about all the parts I had. The model turned out nice, as for colors the outside would have put El Garfio's Burger truck's insides to shame Of course that was pre Bricklink and even pre internet so it wasn't as easily solved as today.