CP5670

I bought a 5571 truck from a guy in France some time in 2004 and that huge box cost $60 to ship. The dollar has depreciated since then though, so it's possible that smaller packages will cost as much. I'm not sure what kind of track you're referring to but 600 of the modern track pieces would result in a pretty substantial box. You should dispute that Paypal fee though, especially when it's that high. A seller dumping the Paypal fees onto the buyer is against Paypal's own TOS.

It would be nice if they already came sorted but I probably would not pay extra for it. I have always pre-sorted the pieces in my own way before starting large builds, and am used to it by now. This is what I did with the 8275 bulldozer, for example: I think with Technic, this has a lot to do with the move towards studless models in the last 9 years. The studless sets all use huge numbers of pins and small axle connectors, which quickly bumps the piece count up.

Well, you can do that with the medium motor too if you gear it down enough. The XL motor is much closer to the 9V black/red one that was in the previous motor pack. By the way, what happens if you reverse the polarity on these lights? Are they always steadily on or do they flash in some way, like the older 9V lights?

Good review. The main thing I don't like about this set is that the bucket arm lacks three degrees of freedom like a real excavator, so it's a step down from the old 8851 excavator I have. This is easier to do with pneumatics but can be done with the LAs as well. I do like the overall look and feel of the model though, so I might get it anyway and try to mod it with a third LA.

This set looks like it's worth picking up. I like how they have brought back the motorizing instructions with the current Technic lineup and positioned this set as an addon pack. It would have been nice if the set also included an XL motor for a slightly higher price though. The new u-joints look very useful and I can think of several places where those would work much better than the bulky older ones. The gear color change is a good thing in some ways. I can easily mix those with the older light gray (not blay) gears in my spare parts collection without having any source of confusion.

Brick Artist Depot is one of my favorite sellers. The prices are usually low, there are no lot limits or minimum quantities and he throws in a bag of random free parts with most orders (which often include uncommon and useful pieces; I got a few trash cans with my last order with him). That goes above and beyond what is expected and is the sort of thing that builds buyer loyalty. The vast majority of Bricklink stores are very good. However, I had two mixed experiences recently. One was with Plastic Brick Museum; the seller is quite friendly, but avoid placing big orders there. There are no official lot limits, but it took a month to get my order invoiced and another month passed before I got various issues in it sorted out. He was always ready to help though and smaller orders seem to get shipped fast, going by his feedback. The other case was with A Brickily Deal, where the guy never responded at all and his store eventually got shut down after a spate of negative feedbacks and NRSs, even though his feedback was perfect until then. He seems to have just disappeared from the internet. I also generally avoid the European sellers who use bogus exchange rates, and like to support the stores who don't pull such things even if their base prices are higher.

Very cool. I love all the large scale versions of various models, especially the 8285 truck.

I don't really agree with this. It all depends on what you're looking for in the picture. If you want a completely realistic depiction of the model, with everything looking just like it does in real life, then yes, flash should be avoided. The picture you posted is an example of this. On the other hand, if you want to artificially accentuate the contrast and make certain details "pop out" more than they normally do (especially transparent pieces), similar to the box pictures on many Lego sets, then a good flash will do the job nicely especially if you don't have specialized lighting equipment available. Also, I find that most small point-and-shoot cameras simply cannot take a completely sharp picture indoors without flash. It always seems to come out with some slight degree of blurriness or noise at any ISO setting, even in a brightly lit room with a lot of windows. I usually end up using flash mainly for this reason, as I would rather have slightly inaccurate colors than any kind of blurriness. Better cameras should have no problem with it though. On the color distortion issue, flash messes up some colors much more than others. Blue is the biggest example of this among the basic colors and comes out looking much lighter than it should, so flash should be avoided on any model with blue parts in it. Other colors don't seem to be affected quite as much. For resizing images and other batch processing work, Irfanview is free and works nicely. I use the Lanczos method to resize images to 1024x768 or 1280x960 and follow it up with the sharpen command, which I think greatly enhances the subjective look of Lego pictures. This is again a technique that makes details and geometry pop out more than usual, so it may not be to everyone's liking. I got a Canon SD870 a few months ago (a P&S model that is about $300), but I'm only somewhat satisfied with it. It can take good pictures with the right manual settings but has a weak flash and often requires some experimenting with the settings. I might get a better one a few years down the line.

I wish they would offer that as a set. How do these agreements work? Will TLG design these customized, limited production sets for any company (or individual, for that matter) if they agree to buy a certain quantity of them? They have done this with quite a few companies in the past. Shell and Maersk stand out as having more long term connections with them, but there were many others. Vestas and this Ramboll company are just the latest additions.

This is pretty hardcore, starting off with the good stuff. Are you helping out or does she follow the instructions by herself?

The Nighthawk did have the same rotor system, but the model itself was much smaller and it didn't have the winch or landing gear that 8856 had. I always liked the Technic guys mainly because they were rather rare, especially before 1998 or so. None of the larger sets came with them, even though they had the seats for them. The lack of any modularity with them was an issue though. If they ever bring back these guys, some customizability would improve them a lot. On a side note, has anyone else seen this new set? Lots of interesting things there. They're bringing back the air tank which had previously been discontinued, along with a new pressure gauge piece. I'm going to buy one soon, although it may be harder to get outside the US. Some people had feared that pneumatics were gone altogether and were replaced by the linear actuators, so this is very good to see.

On another forum I frequent, they have a script that automatically changes all the posts to pirate talk on this day. Might be something to consider here too.

Good to see more Technic fans here. There may be a new super car next year. Some of the leaked pictures a month ago showed what like looked like a big yellow car with a transmission switch but wasn't a Ferrari. A new large-scale helicopter would be great to see. There hasn't been anything like that since the 8856 Whirlwind Rescue in 1991. There is room for improvement over it too. It would be awesome to have a helicopter with a fully working swashplate with three degrees of freedom, just like a real one. This can be done with the existing rotor parts but most of the fanmade implementations I've seen are quite bulky. I actually like the fact that they're including the PF stuff on smaller models now. The electric components used to be limited to only the biggest, flagship sets in the past, so this is a welcome change. That being said, those two sets themselves haven't appealed to me. The 8297 is as big as the 8466 (and costs as much) but doesn't really stack up in terms of mechanical functionality. Motors and lights are always nice but they shouldn't come at the expense of intricate mechanisms. I would like to see a better mix of studded and studless elements in the future, instead of the completely studless style they have adopted on most models these days. The 8275 bulldozer was a notable exception to this, but many other recent models have gone so far in the studless direction that I find that building them no longer feels like Lego anymore. I think they had gotten the balance right with the initial wave of studless sets around 1999 or 2000, with sets like 8446 using a great mix of both types of pieces to give models that were both lightweight and very strong.

I use MLCad, but it does have some issues. The software renderer looks bad and slows down to a crawl when you have thousands of pieces on the screen, even on very fast processors. If they ever make a Windows port of that Bricksmith program, I'll need to check it out. There is another program out there called Leocad which has a better renderer and interface, but it doesn't run off the LDraw parts library and has a more limited selection. LDD has a nice renderer but its parts selection is very limited and only has the parts that are on PAB at the time.

I agree. I grew up with those old cards but never liked them even as a kid, and my set mods often involved making them bigger in some way. The new, longer 4 wide cars are much nicer. That being said, the car in this particular set is better than most of the others from those days, which often didn't have rear windshields at all and just had a big gap there.

Funny article. It does seem like the Lego city theme has always been something of a totalitarian state, with the very high ratio of police sets they have released over the years compared to everything else. These surveillance vehicles have always been my favorite police sets though. I have all but the old van. I love that World City MIB minifig.

I got this set in 2001 when they rereleased it, but it's one of many that I never got around to opening and still have in storage. I'll build it at some point when I have the space for it. I especially like that roof that covers a large part of the station. The car was also better than the typical ones from its era, larger and having a rear windshield.

Cool review. This is the only set among the first wave of Alpha Team that I don't have, and it looks like something I should pick up. The purple grills on the wings look a little out of place though. Maybe they're there just because it's a woman's ship. I always liked the original Alpha Team line with its ResQ-like color scheme. My favorite set is probably the helicopter, and the ship from the Ogel base is also very well designed. However, I think the series went largely downhill after that. The Deep Sea or Arctic sets never really appealed to me, except for a few of the smaller Ogel subs.

The worst part is that since this was the final auction price, there were two people willing to pay that much. It was a nice set for its time but it uses only basic, common pieces that could easily be bought new for $30-40 on Bricklink.

If someone actually buys that, it must be pretty close to the record. The most expensive single Lego set I've seen there was an MISB 954 Sky Copter that sold for $1730 a few years ago.

I think it's certainly doable, but with Technic models you really want to take your time and keep checking that everything is positioned/moving properly (especially things that go on axles). The mechanical functions will work more smoothly and reliably in the end that way. I rebuilt this model some time last summer and I think it took me 6-7 hours, since I made sure everything was positioned perfectly and measured the placements carefully after each step. Another interesting tidbit: Lego S@H briefly sold the Super Car at one point in 2002 at the original $140 price, although in very limited quantities. I remember a Lego employee posting on Lugnet that they found a small stash of them in one of their warehouses that had somehow missed their inventory database. They were offering them with a limit of 2 per customer, but there were only 20-odd sets in total. Needless to say, they sold out in a few hours. I was tempted to get one myself, but I had already gotten two MISB ones off ebay by that point. [edit] In fact, here is the thread on it. I see one of my own old posts in there.

Thanks, that at least clears up where they came from. I have several of those Shell sets. What are they for though? The sets themselves don't use them at all.

I have had the following stickers in my sticker collection for many years now, but I have never been able to figure out what they're for or even how I got them. They are related to Lego in some way, since they all say "copyright 1997 Lego Group" on them, but I've never seen such stickers used in any set. Has anyone else seen these before?

Yeah, the name on this set is strange. I think all the boxes say Garbage Truck. I guess it's up to each builder to decide whether 1x1 round plates are recyclable material or not. It's a great model in any case. I love these highly detailed city trucks we've been getting during the last year or two. I used to have a preference for the late 80s/early 90s city line but some of these new sets have really surpassed them in detail and functionality.

This is true in general, but it depends more on the temperature than the amount of time the bricks stay together. If you make sure the room doesn't get too hot, it's generally not a significant issue. I have some sets that have been built up for at least 10 years but the parts grip just as well as unused ones. I typically stack small parts (1x1 and some 1x2 size pieces) that can be easily taken apart, but not anything bigger, just because it becomes annoying to remove 2x2 or larger ones.