CP5670

The funny thing is that one of the UK catalogs says that SP1 has the "fastest ships in the galaxy." Maybe they do use some unconventional form of propulsion.

Wow, you have quite an impressive 12V setup. What you have done is probably the same thing that everyone else does though. You essentially just link up a lot of switches together.

The second guy's setup is really impressive. I have a fairly large space collection overall, but not that many classic space sets (8 of them) and only a handful of space baseplates. I currently don't have space to display all of it either, so many of the sets are still unopened and in storage.

TLG gave some interesting facts on this at Brickfair last year. They said that around 62% of the pieces are ABS, but they use 22 different materials in total. The most common materials after standard ABS are PC (polycarbonate, used for transparent pieces) and a high strength form of PC (used for many small Technic parts).

I had a great time with this last year and will almost certainly come again, but I probably won't have time to make any new, substantial MOC in the meantime. I might have to just bring the same MOCs again.

I like the Futuron color scheme, but in a way I agree with you. The problem is that white has been one of the crappy colors in recent years. I think these SP sets are great, but whether I actually buy them or not will depend entirely on what Lego's white quality looks like in the summer. If the sets were black and blue like SP1, this wouldn't have been an issue at all.

I was thinking the same. The way the antenna points down looks quite odd, and I'm not sure how it would flip over automatically. On a side note, the shape and engine placement of that model remind me of the Orca from the C&C games.

I love this ship, despite a few flaws it has. It's one of the top two or three space sets of all time for me. This was one of the few electric sets from that era that actually used the lights well and did something really unique with them. There were also a number of unique pieces in it. The trans-red canopy extender, trans-red 1x6 bricks, computer light, black/red arrow tiles and black 1x2 conducting plates only ever appeared in this set. For some reason, this set only appeared in the 1989 catalog in the US. It wasn't in any subsequent catalogs, and in fact I didn't even know of its existence until I heard about it on the internet over 10 years later. I picked up two copies off ebay soon after that. This is surprisingly difficult to fix due to the way the conducting plates are arranged, but it's doable. I've modified mine to allow room for a second minifig there. This was a problem with all the SP1 sets in general. I added small engines around the wings on mine, although there isn't any room on the model for a large thruster. It's funny how SP1 ships had tons of weaponry but no engines, while SP2 ships had plenty of engines but hardly any weapons.

Well, I don't agree with him but he is certainly entitled to his opinion. He isn't just trolling like that other guy was. I think what some people are referring to in this context are the numerous Technic/Bionicle-like pieces on the bad guy sets. They aren't really <insert that tiresome argument>, but they do give those sets too much of a non-Lego look. The Space Police sets are great though.

The color looks inconsistent to me too, but that is probably intentional and makes sense. I don't think those crates actually belong to them. (or they are intended to look inconspicuous, like normal shipping crates)

I think the website does not allow hotlinking. The image links work if you copy and paste them into the browser.

You mean the GE. The GM is the old one. On that topic, it's interesting how this new GE has a much higher piece count than the old GM, even though it looks only slightly bigger. (825 as opposed to 395, although the latter was a bit low even for its time)

I like the pods, but the disks coming out of them do look strange, now that you mention it.

More pictures of this are available here, which was posted in the Space Police thread. The set seems to include new pieces over the earlier NXT. It looks quite neat, but I personally kind of lost interest in Mindstorms after the gray change and when they went 100% studless with the NXT system. Mindstorms is all about MOCing, so I would need the pieces to integrate well with my existing Technic/Mindstorms collection. As it stands, it doesn't really look or feel like Lego at all anymore. I may just get the NXT itself and some motors/sensors separately though, as it seems to be quite powerful and versatile.

Awesome, that is just what we needed at this point. Thanks. I love what I'm seeing with the Galactic Enforcer. Unlike the MM sets, it appears to have roomy cockpits and a lot of interior space. Those blue pods around the sides look great, and it generally looks like a cross between the old Explorien Starship and Deep Freeze Defender. If TLG gets their white brick quality in order this year, it would be a must buy for me. The smaller SP ship that we saw earlier also looks quite sleek and well designed, now that we have better pictures of it. I'm not that sold on the bad guy sets though. They seem to use too many specialized pieces and lack any interesting colors for their windscreens, like the one we have already seen.

I have had roughly equal luck with ebay and BL over the 9 years or so that I've used them, both in terms of part quality as well as service/communication. The vast majority of experiences have been good on both places. I think ebay is usually a better option for sets due to the lower prices, although this is not always the case. Determining the condition of a used ebay set is almost an art in itself. You have to scrutinize the (often low quality) pictures closely and take numerous factors into account. Apart from the obvious things in the item description and seller feedback, it's important to know what types of pieces (and from which angles) are the most likely to show signs of use in the photos, the amount and distribution of dust, what time period the set is from, the condition of other sets the seller is carrying and so on. I've seen cases where a set is new or essentially new, but it is not described as such and you can only deduce that from the pictures. If a seller is continuously selling a lot of items, you can also buy a small set as a test and then buy a lot more stuff if the condition turns out to be very good. This is one thing I like better about ebay than BL actually. The auctions usually have photos of the actual item, whereas most BL items do not. Even small pictures can tell you a lot if you know what to look for. I used to gamble on used sets on both ebay and BL in the past and have gotten some great deals (and a few not-so-good deals). I rarely do it these days though and just go with MISB or display models specifically described as such to save any hassle.

I'm interested in this too, although it depends on what the overseas shipping costs are like. I think he's talking about old catalogs, in which case the rest of us can still enjoy the pictures. I have quite a few foreign catalogs that have different content than the US ones and are interesting to look at, but most of them are from 1988 onward.

One setup that I've seen often is to put 4 polarity switches side-by-side on the speed regulator's studs and a 2x8 white conducting plate over them. You can attach the regulator's main output to the plate. This gives you four independent outputs, although you have to set the speed for all of them at once. I don't have a big train layout but use this kind of setup for Technic models. Unfortunately, the switches and conducting plates were always quite expensive, and are even more so now that they have been out of production for many years. As for the 12V system, I don't know a lot about it, but it included some large switch-like pieces and you could attach several of them to the 12V transformer block. I've seen this arrangement in some really old Dacta sets from the 80s.

I use credit cards as a matter of convenience. I don't actually take out loans off them.

Interesting idea, but as someone said earlier a 3D modeling program like LDD would be very clumsy to do anything in without a mouse.

I've never had tires go bad over time, although there have been 4 or 5 different materials used for tires over the years. In fact, the annoying gummy tires they were using until recently actually get better over time, in the sense that they harden and become less slimy.

I'm in the same situation as you. I have around 30 sets mostly from the late 80s/early 90s period (a few are in your list, in fact), which have been well used and are in decent but not great condition now. I never mixed them with my more recent collection. I actually ended up getting new copies of many of them from ebay over the last few years, but there are some remaining sets that would be impractical to replace like this due to the high costs. I was planning to sell mine on ebay last year, but never had time to set up the auctions and everything. The fact that the ebay rules have become heavily loaded against sellers in the last few years hasn't helped either (increase in fees, sellers can only post positive feedback, etc.). Bricklink or EB may be better options.

I keep a spreadsheet of all my Lego purchases (especially off ebay/BL) and use a bunch of abbreviations in it to describe various situations. Here are some examples: NWB: new without box (i.e. no box but unopened bags) NI: new incomplete (unopened bags but not all of them are present) UBx: used with box in condition x (x is a number between 1 and 10; 1 is the worst and 10 is display model quality)

As someone said earlier, we need more pictures at this point. We're starting to run out of things to discuss. Exactly. I actually agree with some of the things you said, but you need to lay off the insults and confrontational attitude if you want anyone to take you seriously.

Yeah, this question is a bit meaningless unless you restrict it to specific themes. As I said earlier, I think the recent City and Creator (which is essentially what the more advanced Basic sets used to be) sets are better overall, but Space and Technic were better 15 years ago.