gylman

I emailed him asking about shipping issues, and got a quick and straightforward answer. While I am a bit uneasy for the reasons you mentioned JP, I am inclined to think he is for real. Among the reasons I note the selection of sets, which includes some esoteric stuff, and not necessarily the stuff that someone going for a scam would use. Look at all the resellers lining up for these. They know their true value. Lockhand, Airlego.... Gods, I keep looking at those castle sets.... Note the high bidder on the first castle set.. a***h. 17 bid retractions in the last 6 months. A person like that should be banned from eBay. They drive up the prices, and then don't follow through. I am confused about one thing. Why does this auction not show the bidder information, http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...em=260178518764 and the other ones do show it.

Yup. This will hurt someone's bank account. Maybe even mine (although I usually can't outbid the crazy Korean buyers).

I understand they had issues with spammers. Some malicious ones too. Hence the policy. I had the same registration problem with CC last year. I frankly don't care to give out my private account, which is also attached to paypal and ebay, to anyone except family and close friends. I guess they have their policy, and I have mine. If you sent them a personal request, maybe a reference from someone you know in the Lego community, I suspect they would be OK with it. At CC anyway. I can't say much about FBTB. To this day I have not registered at CC, even though I took part in their castle contest last year. EB has all I need though. It's not like I have time to participate in more than one good Lego forum.

Three years I have been begging for a UCS castle. <crosses toes, fingers, and eyes> <waits...>

People. Please. No debates or discussion. No editorials. Just the facts. This thread will get out of control and become useless.. Now S@H sale: All those giant wooden storage bins that were ridiculously expensive are now on sale for 1/2 or less! http://shop.lego.com/ByCategory/Leaf.aspx?cn=13&d=443 The 1200 piece 1:8 Ferrari: about 33% off http://shop.lego.com/Product/Default.aspx?p=8674

Actually, I was just rantin' for the fun of it. I like this topic... if people can worked up about Bionicle like this, it shows there's life in the old lady yet.

Oh, and by the way. The reason people remember the 2001 year as having better "character development", is pretty much exclusively because of the Templar animations, which gave the personalities, especially to the Matoran.

So, you want a war, huh! I still say 2001 or 2002 were the best. It's not even close. The story was fresh. Lots of mystery. The Templar animations were hilarious (never topped to this day). Although I agree that the big Rahi sets did suffer from unnecessary duplication, anyone who says that they were still not the best build of any of the Bionicle series clearly has not built them. But if you played in pairs, like my kids, have a pair of sets, with separate instructions, was absolutely perfect. They still play with the Bohrok Queens now. The best build of any medium Bionicle set = Boxor Best build of any large Bionicle set = Exo Toa or the Bahrag And I, personally, thought that the Bohrok were the best cannister sets ever made, hero or villain. Sorry, 2001 was the best year, 2002 second or the other way around. More recent years don't rate. How's THAT for a rant!

Sure, if you define winning that way, then there was no winner in the cold war. And capitalism, and democracy too, are far from flawless. But I would submit there are no other viable and sustainable means to run a society that actually can be reconciled with the inherently selfish and clannish nature of humans, and which does not limit personal liberty to a degree than anyone in the West today would regard as intolerable.

Agreed. It's one of the classic movies of all time. So much of what we now take for granted in "modern" movies is based on this classic.

Actually, the way it works with my wife is that if she buys a purse or shoes or whatever, I get to buy the equivalent monetary amount of Lego or knives. This year it has been more knives, but either way... As for the Lego diet, I have definitely done that. Some days I want to skip a meal or two, so if I manage to do it, I reward myself by putting roughly the dollar amount saved into the "future purchase" fund. So, Lego has in fact been good for my health that way. Well, they will for 6-12 months, but then the natural order of things will reassert itself (LEGO uber alles)

My perspective is that the BBC is an echo chamber for left-wing ideology. It no longer represents the average englishman's perspective on modern British life. It trades on past glory, but you can only do that for so long. It had a great history, but it was totally taken over by the left wing in the 1970's and beyond. It's hysterically anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-Western. When I see a BBC editorial pushing for a referendum on Britain joining the EU, I'll believe that the BBC has an ounce of integrity left. Or..... maybe I'm wrong. 8-| Me, I get my news from both sides. Obviosly I'm more on the right wing side of things, though not quite ready for Ron Paul :-P, but I hang out regularly at a couple of lefty forums too. Once in a while they surprise me favourably.

I don't dispute that news media are totally biased in North America. But does anyone pretend it's any different in Europe or UK? If anyone thinks so, they are totally naive. All news are gathered, written, edited, and delivered by humans. Humans are petty beings with brief passions and superfical thought. The noble "fifth estate" is a creation of .... the fifth estate. In fact, journalists (self described) go to school and are indocrinated by their teachers, who have their own petty biases. The "journalists" follow the herd instinct of their peers, and they cannot help but be swayed by the lure of money or the fear of being fired if they say something that pleases someone or offends someone. What I do not believe is that there is some vast conspiracy to control the media. There are no vast conspiracies. But there are a lot of very little people, easily bought and herded in this direction or that. Of course FOX is a joke, but so is CNN. Remember that they had a special deal with Saddam to let them stay in Baghdad and report as long as they did not report too negatively on Iraq. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...757C0A9659C8B63 Of course, the good thing about FOX is that it's a private broadcaster. You don't pay, you don't have to play. Imagine how people must feel to be forced to pay for public broadcasters like BBC and CBC and still have to eat their slanted reporting.

Fun question. If it's pretend. Problem is what you can carry out. You can have the most valuable Lego set in the universe, but it will get damaged in transit, and so is it worth the trouble of carrying out? If I could only carry with what I took, the I would take (in a knap sack and gym bag): 1) my knife and multitool collection (fits into a bag easily, has some essential survival stuff too) 2) My Lego keychain collection (easy enough to carry) 3) my MISB 6066 foresmen set (it's small and in absolutely perfect better-than-a-store-condition). 4) my PDAs 5) key financial records (tax, investments, bank accounts). However, if I could load stuff into a car in 10 minutes and drive away with it, then I'd get all of the above + -my PC CPU box (not worth taking screen or anything else, I only want the data) and my laptop -as many of my MISB valuable Lego sets as I could get into the car in that time. Mostly castle and a few Technic , Adventurers, and Paradisa. I doubt I would have enough time or room to save any more Lego than that. Oh, yes, of course, I'd get my wife and kids out too, but they may have to hang on to the roof rack. :-D

Indeed. http://www.bricklink.com/search.asp?viewFr...rchSort=B&sz=10

I totally share this feeling.... I have found myself deciding to walk to work, or skipping a meal, with the promise that I would use the money I save on parking or food to buy Lego.

Large favourite sets should be kept as sets, especially if you have instructions and box. They can be displayed, as they are a fun decoration. Everything else in the bin, but should be sorted. You can't find what you need for a MOC if it's hidden under 10,000 other parts. I had dealt with this for my kids. You need at least: 1 bin for bricks 1 bin for plates 1 bin for all car related parts 1 bin for slopes, all types 1 bin for teeny bits (2 x 2 corner plate or smaller) 1 bin for very large structural parts like pillars, big wall pieces. 1 bin for minifigs. Don't mix them in with the other pieces, they will get scratched up as you root around the box looking for parts. baseplates separated.

Meh. This is not an American thing. It's a political thing that can occur anywhere. This kind of stupid politically correct nonesense occurs anywhere. All it takes is some lunatic teacher with communist ideas who is pissed off that the cold war is over and communism lost. In my city (Toronto, Canada) the left wing leanings of the teacher unions, and many teachers, are beyond belief. In the past, many openly campaigned for the Communist party, when one existed. These people are self-brainwashed to the point of delusionality, and they bring their ridiculous ideas that fail in real life into the classroom to try to brainwash children. Great to be a communist believer if you have never lived under communism. This kind of idiocy occurs all over the Western world, it's not an American thing. After all, America is probably the last place in the world that will ban private ownership, no? But, it's not like I feel strongly about this or anything. .... :-X

No worries - we all make mistakes. The only time that's a "tragedy" is if we don't learn from them. We need young enthusiastic EB members, so keep your enthusiasm... just be a bit more focused.

Very different entries. Making the decision basically comes down to what you value more - the overall look and cohesiveness of the final product vs the success in achieving the goal of the contest, which is to mix & match different themes and turn it into an original creation. Very impressive. Great work yous guys.

Remember peeps, keep the political stuff in the community or other non-Lego threads. Just a heads up, as I see this topic starting to get active again, for the wrong reason.

This is awesome. I dream I could build something balanced like this. The more I look, the more detail I see. Exo Force green hair cabbages (I think)! Brilliant.

If that question is directed at me, I simply no longer need any more loose Lego. The only way I can store it or display or organize it in any nice way is with the boxes.

My experiences with Brasso has been disappointing. It kinda works, but the parts lose their shine, and it does not work well on tran-parts. For the time and effort and lousy outcome, I'd buy the part instead.