ShaydDeGrai

My eye went straight to the venetian blinds, a wonderful use of parts. Overall, it reminds me of my own (dated) kitchen, but I won't hold that against you Great work.

If it follows the pattern of previous years, the 29th is the big, general public Black Friday sales event. The 22nd is the invite-only preview sale (outside of normal shop hours). Why they'd advertise the invite-only event on the main calendar is beyond me because (at least at my store) the invite list is, at best, a couple dozen people. Perhaps there's something else going on during normal business hours for "people with VIP cards" in addition to the morning's event for "VIPs with a history of having more dollars than sense", uh, I mean, "extra special devoted AFOLs". I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks.

This sounds similar to my experience. Two years ago, however, my store _really_ took the "VIP" theme to heart and literally rolled out a red carpet (well, actually it was more of a long door mat). There was more staff on hand than are usually there when the store is actually open and a refreshment table had been set up just outside the store to keep us entertained while we waited for the event to officially begin. when they opened the doors, I was invited in and assigned a "concierge". He asked if I had anything in particular in mind. The night before, I'd made up a list for myself of things I knew I wanted to pick up, so I just handed him the list and he went into the back room and loaded everything on my list onto a flatbed cart. Then we just wandered through the store with him pointing out things that weren't on my list but, based on what was, he thought I'd be interested in. He hung out and chatted while I filled a (free) PaB box and when I was done, he met me at the loading dock with all my stuff and helped me load my car. I don't know if everyone at the event got the personal shopper treatment or something they improvised when it became clear I was outspending half the people there, but it certainly made _me_ feel special. THAT'S how you do a VIP event right. It was easily the best shopping experience I'd ever had a mall. Free stuff, discounts, refreshments, personal shoppers and sherpa service; what's not to love about that? It was such a pleasant experience I (almost) failed to notice how much money I was spending (fortunately I have a VUSAFOL (Very Understanding Spouse of an Adult Fan Of Lego)). Last year, in sharp contrast, was a bit disappointing. As someone pointed out, it was really little more than a Black Friday sale without the mob scene. The discounts weren't as deep; the freebies were smaller; there were no refreshments (and no personal assistants to bring them to you while you shopped) and some of the junior staff seemed more than a little disgruntled that they had to come in an hour earlier for a bunch of old geezers who still played with toys. AFOLs just piled their intended purchases in less trafficked areas while a few stray kids ran wild through the store and parental units questioned how much more Lego a ten year old really needs... I'm hoping this year's event will be more like the former than the latter, though the latter seems far more likely. I'm not expecting a personal shopper and doughnuts (but I wouldn't object to being pleasantly surprised).

Burlington, Massachusetts? Same here. And yet again the event falls on the same day as the Greenburg Train and Toy show at the Shriners auditorium where NELUG does a big Lego Train set-up each year. Looks like I'll be going _to_ the show with a car-load of toys rather than the other way 'round.

I've been spreading my Lego budget over several stores this year so I didn't expect to get an invite this year but I came home from work today and there was my golden ticket waiting in my mailbox. Looks like I'm going to have to make more space for Lego...

I asked the manager of my preferred store that very question after the first time I got invited. At that time, I was told that the store got two lists, one for top spenders at that location and one for frequency of purchases in each case they had a profile for how many sets a person on the list had purchased in the past year and how many copies of a given set they had purchased. She said that the exact number of invitees varied by store (fire code regulation) but that it was her job to make up the final list (which could include names not on either list if she felt there was a good reason to invite someone (like the head of the local LUG or something). The goal of the human in the loop was to reward the true AFOL big spenders while weeding out the set speculators who are going to buy five copies of a pricey set at a discount, stick them in a closet for a few years and sell them on ebay for some jacked up price a year or two after they set is discontinued. She and the staff already had a good sense as to who the people on the lists were and what they tended to buy so (she claimed) it usually wasn't hard to fill all the slots and they usually had a back-up list if people RSVP'ed in the negative. That said, two years ago I had a great time and spent way too much money at the event. Last year, the event was kinda "meh". I don't know if I'll get invited this year or not because a Discovery Center opened two miles from my house and I live within reasonable driving distance to four Lego Stores. I've been spreading my purchases around so I don't know if I'll make any given store's top spender list.

If only S@H would accept them in trade as alternate currency. "One UCS Batman Tumbler, please" "Certainly, that will be 103 brick separators…"

Most of my MOC'ing is done while either procrastinating or actively neglecting all those things that I _should_ be doing but just don't want to. I like working on big projects that usually involve building prototypes, revising, reworking, etc. so I have a separate section in my office that I just leave out as a WIP to make it easier to just fiddle for an hour or two when I feel like it. My current WIP table has the various sub-assemblies for a project that I started back in July and (at my rate of work) will probably not be done until Feb or so. I'll also supplement my "big build" project with the occasional small MOCs. These are usually the result of a flash of inspiration, done over the course of a long weekend or so and are usually under a thousand parts. As for that happens to my MOCs when I'm done. I have an attic full of builds that I've never even photographed. There's so much raw brick locked up in those MOCs (nearly 50 years of collecting), I've considered adding a rider to my house insurance because (artistic merit aside) the raw replacement cost of the brick represents a sizable investment. Someday, maybe I should just open a gallery...

I'm afraid I must disagree. There are plenty of situations where it's handy to have TWO brick separators, so really, you only have _43_ in excess. That said, at last count I had over 100 orange and 9 green ones. I also have several of the old designs which actually fit my hands better but aren't as versatile. I was thinking of building a life-sized giant Condor model and using them as feathers, but who has the time...

The first set I really remember vividly was #603 Vintage Car. I remember being really taken with the yellow macaroni pieces. I might have had a police car or fire engine before this (there's a number of sets on BrickSet that I know I had, I just don't remember what order I got them) but this car was really where my Lego hobby began.

I think it's really a question of scale and ratios. For example, I don't bother sorting any axles #10 or longer because I only have a few dozen of each (and just a few of the ridiculously long but not terribly useful ones), but when I'm looking for a #3 axle in a bin with hundreds of #4 axles, I just want to pick up one part and go, not grab a handful, compare lengths, find the right part and put back all the rest (this latter method is made worse by the fact that I have a lot of old axles that pre-date the color code of even numbered axles being black and odd being gray, so it really would come down to comparing actual lengths in many cases). Similarly, in most of my trays (which are sorted first by color then by part family), I usually reserve one slot for "miscellaneous related" for things that I don't have enough of to justify filing separately. The "efficiency" of the system is pretty organic, if I don't have very many of part X in color Y they I probably don't use it that often and can afford/justify the extra time it takes to rummage around for it when I _do_ need one; Parts I use on a regular basis, I tend to stock in larger quantities, so it makes sense to dedicate storage for them. So, in my case, it's not that I _can't_ find a red plate in a bin of black ones, it's that I don't want to have to repeatedly move hundreds of black plates out of the way to dig out one or two red ones. I think this is very true and finding that balance is a very personal decision. The same can be said for _how_ you choose to organize your collection, it needs to be in sync with your own creative process (or in the case of sorting for sorting's sake - your own level of OCD). For example, the bulk of my collection is sorted _first_ by color and then by family, then by shape. Technic parts, however, are different; function trumps color, especially when prototyping. For me, I don't see much point in obsessing over whether or not the red bushings are mixed in with the gray ones - I just don't want the wheels to fall off in the finished model. You must not have cats, or if you do, they must not be too interested in Lego. I often have to keep the lids on my trays while I'm actively using them because I have a cat who like to paw through the cups and chase loose pieces around the room As I said before, I think it's really a question of what works for you based on one's own methods of work, the types of models one builds and the size of the collection. I remember mentioning to an AFOL I'd just met that my collection was largely sorted by color. He called it a "rookie mistake" and went off on a long lecture about the merits of sorting by shape. When I finally managed to get a word in edgewise, I managed to discover that I probably had more parts in sand yellow alone than he had in his entire collection and he was talking about the best way to sort a collection that fit in a single storage bin in the closet and hadn't even considered the idea of a collection that would overflow a hundred square feet of shelf-space. It's always a trade-off between space, sort-time and seek-time with the goal of optimizing the things you do most often. One size almost never fits all when it comes to the question of how "best" to organize a collection. I've been doing this for nearly half a century now and I still don't have a system that works for me, my system today is better than it was ten or twenty years ago, but it's constantly evolving as my collection grows, my eyesight fails and my time gets over-subscribed. In general, I think it really just comes down to realizing that there are better answers and worse answers, but no absolute "right" answer.

Ah, you've just given me a new vision of Heaven, where every part is available in every color, everything is easy to find, and self-sorting; we have all the time in the world to design and build and no one ever steps on a piece while barefoot...

I suppose I'd better sign up for the Perpetually Sorting Club as I just spent the better part of this weekend sorting, separating, grouping and packing parts from three recent BrickLink orders. I'd nominally placed to orders to experiment with some designs I'm working on for a new set of MOCs; but, by the clock, I spent about four times as long getting organized as I did actually building something. The ratios aren't always that bad, but I do have to admit I've got lots of little official sets sitting around that I fully intent to bulk for parts that I've just left assembled because the process of filing all those parts back into the appropriate bin/box/tray/baggie/cup/etc. is too daunting for a casual "something to do while watching TV after work" activity. I'm not sure if sorting Lego counts as a hobby in its own right, but my dad was a coin collector and he used to spend hours sorting, grading and filing everything from bulk purchases to pocket change and people see that as a hobby. Maybe I actually have multiple Lego hobbies, one focusing on design and construction and one dedicated to battling the entropy inherent in a bucket of random parts.

In theory, the tax structure is very simple: 1) If you make money, the government gets a cut. 2) If you spend money, the government gets a cut. 3) If you own anything of value, the government assesses you on a regular basis until you're eventually forced to sell, at which point the government takes a cut So long as you make nothing, consume nothing and have nothing of any worth, you're fine. In practice, as the prior post have pointed out, it gets complicated real fast and varies from region to region. Where I live, there's earned income tax, unearned income tax, sales tax, meal tax, gas tax, environmental impact tax, alcohol tax, tobacco tax, property tax, excise tax, appreciation tax on collectables, service tax, etc. After a while you just get used to it and cross state lines to buy Scotch for sixty cents on the dollar compared to the corner store.

As with most things, I think various parts of the AFOL community interpret this differently. For LEGO Space fans, it specifically refers to vehicles that exceed one hundred studs along its major axis ( length, width, height - do any of those conventions really matter if there's no gravity or other "natural" orientation to tell you which way is up?) In most generic terms, however, I think you're right, a "seriously huge investment in parts" could be anything ( swooshable or not ) and conversely, I've built vehicles over a 100 studs long that really weren't that demanding by part count (my attempt at the Discovery from 2001: A Space Odyssey comes to mind, a meter long ball on a stick with engines - it was probably less than a thousand pieces - not counting technic pins) Any question of what constitutes a "seriously huge investment" must also take into account the economic situation of the builder as well. What I consider "huge" might be someone else's idea of "recommended daily allowance." Money was tight when I was growing up, so my threshold for a huge investment was measured in lawns mowed, driveways shoveled and newspaper routes delivered. Back then, I might spend more than half a year trying to get the money to buy the LEGO to realize an idea I wanted to build. These days, my situation is better so my idea for what is "huge" has really changed. At least with respect to my own MOCs, my definition of "huge" has grown steadily over time. When I was building my Argonath, I thought I'd never finish it and that somewhere along the line I'd lost my frugal scotsman gene because I just kept buying more and more parts to "get it right". With some of the stuff I've done since then, I look back and think, maybe that MOC was more of a gateway drug than an achievement. The biggest thing I've built to date is my Barad Dur MOC and while I don't even know how much money I've sunk into it at this point, I can say it's swallowed 2 Tower of Orthanc kits, 6 Black Gates, 7 K-Boxes of parts, the better part of a year's worth of Bricklink orders and roughly 50 trips to local PaB walls to amass the parts (and I'm not done yet). When you get to the point where you can't even remember how much you've spent and are rounding off the piece count to the nearest 10,000 quantum - THAT'S a seriously huge investment in parts. I didn't set out to spend more on a MOC than I do on my monthly mortgage - it just worked out that way (and I'm fortunate to have an understanding spouse and a good paying job). I think we all (rightly) take pride in our MOCs (otherwise, why would we post them?) but when you reach the point where you feel genuinely uncomfortable admitting exactly how much you actually spent on your "masterpiece" to other AFOLs (even though you're very pleased with the outcome) and you can think of dozens of other, more practical, things you _could have_ spent that money on, you probably have a SHIP on your hands. So how much does a SHIP really cost? I'd say the short answer is: more than you ever thought you'd spend on a MOC when the idea first came to you.

Oh the building instructions are easy: 1) Fill a 150 square foot room about two feet deep with a ridiculous amount of black and dark gray parts 2) Randomly connect some parts 3) With each part added, if it makes the resulting mass look more like Barad Dur, keep it; if not, try something else. 4) Periodically, set the entire thing aside and try to rebuild it from scratch, emending the design to redo sections that weren't working; if you like the rebuild better, keep going, otherwise scrap it and go back to the previous version. 5) Repeat as necessary It's not unlike trying to get an infinite number of monkeys at keyboards to randomly reproduce Hamlet; probably not the best process, but hey, it's a hobby But more seriously, thank you to all for your feedback and suggestions (particularly the photography pointers). As the days get shorter and the weather gets colder, I hope to be able to get back to this and see if another round of improvements/enhancements will finally finish this guy to my satisfaction.

You're definitely not alone here, the exact same thing happened to both mine and a friend's. Mine was in storage, his was out on display but not in the sun. I applied my stickers dry, he used the soapy film application trick. None of that seemed to make any difference, both models peeled about the same way in about the same timeframe. I guess it was just a crappy adhesive formulation. Just one more reason to dislike stickers I suppose...

I'm not sure that I'd say the F430 Challenge was "ruined" by too many stickers. While I agree that set had a lot ( I won't even argue with anyone who claims it was _too_ many), if you leave half (or more) of them off, you still have a pretty recognizable and playable car - the shapes are there even if the surface decoration isn't. I think that's an important distinction, stickers should be an optional part of the build not an essential feature of the model. I think that the LOTR Mines of Moria set was seriously hurt by _relying_ on stickers to make up for an overly simplified model. If you don't apply the stickers and take away the mini-figures then look at what's left, it doesn't sell the scene. Sure, if you already know what it's supposed to be, you can see it, but coming at it cold you don't look at it and say "Oh that's the Tomb Room from the Lord of the Rings Movie" in the same way that an AT-AT or X-Wing model screams Star Wars. I'm a great fan of form and color; in my ideal world a successful model wouldn't need any stickers at all to sell its intent, it would already be obvious based on a smart design and proper choice of parts.

It's always a pleasure to read your reviews WhiteFang. Great job yet again. As for the set itself, I think it strikes the right note of Christmas Kitsch for me. It's a bit of a departure from the quasi-reality of the Winter Village line to date, but I think I can find a way to work this into my "under-the-tree" set-up far more smoothly than last year's set (which really didn't work for me at all). I know a lot of people complain about the brick-built reindeer, but when I consider some of the decorations my actual neighbors put on their lawns around that time of year, I think those brick-built guys will fit right in.

I've been watching Doctor Who since the Jon Pertwee days and, while I'll be among the first to agree that it has amassed quite a fan base over the past half century, I just can't see it being a Lego THEME, a couple kits and a handful of mini-figures, sure, but once you've done the TARDIS, the control room interior, maybe an UCS scale brick-built Darlek or Cyberman where do you go with it? Quality issues aside, even Character Builder struggled with this. Nearly all the sets I've seen from them were really just packs of action figures with a pathetic excuse for a build as an afterthought (if at all). A pedestal for a Weeping Angel? More like a Weeping Angel doll and a handful of spare parts. Other than a Darlek and the TARDIS, the building-side of the kits were either contrived, obscure or both. Now maybe in the US, I'm just not seeing the full breadth and depth of their efforts to capitalize on the license (when they held it) but I also can't think of a build-able, iconic subject that they missed (at least with respect to the Nu-Who offerings) Now, I'd love it if TLC were to make a copy of Bessie, the third Doctor's canary-yellow roadster. It would be a great model, fun to build, fun to play with, classic enough for a non-Who fan to appreciate it - but seriously - what kid today even knows that Doctor Who used to drive a car? I don't think any of the modern Doctors have even gotten behind the wheel. The story format of Doctor Who just doesn't lend itself to a building "theme." Every story arc is a new setting, new characters, etc. In the early days it seemed like half their story lines were dictated by what hand-me-down sets and costumes they could scrounge from other BBC production efforts. There just isn't a lot of "iconic" material to draw upon from a construction toy perspective (mini-figures sure, but not buildings or vehicles) There have been some great potential subjects over the years (how could there not be after half a century) but most were one-shots that only die-hard fans would recognize. At least with something like The Simpsons you have a large, stable cast and many familiar settings to draw upon (not that I'm expecting a Moe's Tavern, Nuclear Plant or SpringField Dump (now featuring the world's longest burning tire fire…) any time soon. I hope one of the many Lego Ideas Doctor Who projects makes it through, as an Official Lego TARDIS would be grand, and they make a _set_ but as a _theme_, I think the iconic waters are just too shallow. I'd love to be wrong on this point, but I just don't see it happening.

By pure set count, I'm definitely in the collector camp as I have hundreds of sets, built exactly "by the book" and left assembled for years. By part count or time invested, however, I'm not so sure. I don't tend to do very many small MOCs these days except when doing "Architecture"-style models or whilst feeling "brick-blocked" (a frustrating phenomenon that combines the creative setbacks of writers' block with the practical limitation of waiting for a very specific Bricklink order to come in) on a major project. I probably assemble twenty kits for every MOC I create, but I spend far more time, money and energy on my MOCs than I do on my kits. My last major MOC was somewhere on the order of 75k to 100k parts and my current project is already over 5,000 parts and is still only in the planning/prototyping phase. I'll spend months working on a single MOC whereas a moderate set (like a modular building or a high-end Technic kit) is only a single evening's activity. Is it sufficient to say that the collection defines the collector, or do we need to look beyond the artifacts themselves to understand the true focus of the hobby?

For years I never really paid much attention to color per se. I grew up with the classic red, white and black palette with lessor selections of green, blue and yellow and tiny dashes of clear and gray. The colors were bright (if not downright garish) and very toy-like in coloring - they were inherently "fun" shades, like the basic 8 color crayon set I used to decorate the white woodwork and dull wallpaper of my home as a small child (much to my dad's displeasure). I usually looked right past the colors of the bricks themselves to see the model. I think that it was probably the 371 Sea Plane when I first started thinking, "hey look at all that blue…" rather than "hey, look at that plane" Advance the clock a few decades and I found myself opening the biggest single box of LEGO I'd ever had (to date), the 3450 Statue of Liberty, boxes within boxes of Sand Green. It was my first large scale experience with a "mature" color, one that said "I am not a toy, I am an art supply. MOC with me…" I don't know if anyone would list it as their first choice for a favorite color, but for me it was an _important_ one. Sand Green changed the way I thought about the stuff I was building. A year or two later the 7194 UCS Yoda Statue came out. It was a great set, not because of the subject matter, or the build, or the look if the finished product, but because it was a good sized kit made up almost entirely of non-traditional colors: more Sand Green, Tan (Brick Yellow), Earth Orange, Dark Orange. Ultimately, I think the model was a bit of failure because I wound up seeing a dozen of them on clearance at KB Toys for 75% off. That didn't bother me though, I seem to recall buying a dozen extra copies at KB Toys for 75% off... While my username actually reflects the fact that most of my collection these days is some shade of gray (black, white, light stone gray, dark bley, etc…) some of the modern colors really resonate with me. I'm particularly fond of: Dark Red Tan Earth Blue Earth Green Maersk Blue I just never seem to have enough of them to do what I envision, but then, isn't that always the case with Lego and MOCs?

Magnets are already at the heart of power generation (pretty much all power generation except solar panels, piesio-electrics and fuel cells) from wind turbines and hydro-electric dams to fossil fuel based plants and atomic reactors. Sometimes they use static magnets (like rare earth dipoles), sometimes they use electro-magnets (where electricity is used to induce a temporary magnetic field in a coil of conducting medium (the more common case for large scale energy production). The problem is, a magnet by itself does very little _work_ - yes it might attract a nearby ferrous object or repel a like pole from another magnet, but such a system rapidly reaches steady state and once that state is achieved no work is done - which is to say no energy is transduced into another usable form. For a magnet to be a "source" of energy it needs to be in motion. Passing a wire through a _rapidly changing_ magnetic field DOES induce an electrical current (the world would be a much darker place if this were not the case) and the simplest way to make that magnetic field change is to move the magnet. This is the core principle behind all turbine-based electrical generation from windmills and waterwheels to steam engines (and really oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear plants are really just big boilers to generate steam to power the turbines). The problem is, it takes energy to move the magnet in the first place. This is where the three laws of thermo-dynamics rise up to bite you in the butt. Simply put the laws state: 1) You can't win 2) You can't break even 3) You can't stop playing (Okay, so maybe I spent too much time at a card table instead of a classroom at some point, but you get the idea…) While the total mass-energy of any closed system is constant, the amount of _usable_ energy we can extract from that system is bounded by its efficiency; and this is really where we have traditionally dropped the ball and is our best hope for a "greener" future. We _know_ that a variable magnetic field will induce an electric current and the base equation for this would make it seem like magnets should be a source of "free" energy. To tap that potential, however, we need to expend energy to move the magnet, and every system we've come up with to date to do _that_ job has expended more energy than the magnetic field/wire interaction produced. This is because the transduction isn't pure. We're not turing the stored chemical energy of oil directly into electricity; we're turning it into heat, with some of that energy going into producing chemical by-products. Then we're using the heat to boil water and create pressure (another form of potential energy) with some of that heat being used to heat (and deform) the pipes and tanks the water flows through, the air outside those pipes, etc. The pressure is then used as mechanical energy to turn a turbine where more energy is lost to brownian motion of the air particles themselves, friction, overcoming gravity and the magnetic field interactions of the magnets on the turbine, etc. Excess pressure is bled off from the system and exhaust gases carry away even more heat and kinetic energy on the "outflow" side of the turbine. Finally the magnet moves and induces a current in the wire, where Maxwell's Equations kick in and immediately start bleeding off electrical energy from the system in the form of heat, more magnetic fields and (at a nano-scopic level) electron depletion and metal fatigue. I used oil as an example as this thread started with Shell, but _any_ turbine based system is going to face similar issues. Nuclear cores lose energy to atomic decay and radiation (in addition to all of the "classic inefficient tea pot" issues mentioned above. Hydro-electric systems avoid the problems of making stream, but lose energy to excess kinetic energy on the outflow and to friction which causes heat and metal fatigue and the (non-trivial) energy costs of fabricating and replacing high wear and tear elements must be considered as well. With current technologies, over the life of a power plant, roughly two-thirds of the energy expended to extract electricity from moving magnets is wasted before it ever gets to your home. Think about that for a second, for every Watt of power we use, two Watts of power were wasted either wearing out parts, polluting (physically or thermally) the environment or both. If Greenpeace wants to protest something, why don't they start with the rampant waste inherent in the system. Then again I guess you just don't make the same sort of headlines waving signs like "Frictionless Bearings NOW!" as you do with meaningless grandstanding against brand names like Shell and LEGO... Getting back to the off-topic topic, I suppose the good news is that when you start at an efficiency rating in the low 30's it gives you a lot of room for improvement. Traditional systems can reduce friction and air resistance by using electro-magnetic bearings in a vacuum. Better insulating materials and heat exchange technologies can reduce (but never eliminate) thermal loses. Modern materials (ceramics, carbon fiber nano-fabrication, etc.) can extend the life of parts. New technologies (fuel cells, thermocouples, photovoltaics, thin-film transducers, etc) are exploring more direct means of converting various forms of potential energy to electricity more efficiently than we do today. Better conductors for power-lines and more efficient appliances can reduce losses on the transmission and consumption sides. The bottom line hasn't changed though, you always have to put more energy into a system than you can hope to get out of it. So, unfortunately, magnetism isn't going to solve the world's energy problems. It plays, and will likely continue to play, a major role in the basic principles of power generation, but tapping into that potential is where we keep falling short.

First, welcome back from your dark age! I tend to favor a small handful of stores that I know have very large inventories so I'm usually not buying small lots from a dozen different vendors, I'd rather be spending my money on parts, not postage and most of the people I do business with can do flat rate priority shipping ("if it fits, it ships" as the post office puts it ) regardless of weight. So if I'm going to be spending say $20 on postage, I want the darn box to be as full as possible. This means I'll often buy more than (I think) I'll need for the project at hand, stock up on generic parts I know I'll eventually use elsewhere, and/or go with impulse buys if one of my preferred vendors is having a sale on something. To answer your other question, my balance sheets tell me that so far this year my Bricklink orders have averaged $241 over 7 orders but lately I've been working on a small number of really sizable projects so the number of orders is a bit down from average and the size per order is a bit high. I'd guess that $100 to $150 per order is a more typical lifetime average for my buying habits.

At the moment, I think I have about three dozen sets in my "emergency" cache ranging from a few smaller things in the 25-50 USD range to higher end stuff like the Death Star play-set, Ewok Village, Technic flagship models and a few spare modular buildings. I used to just keep a few kits on hand (something to cheer me up or distract me after a bad day) but I kinda went way over the top the first year I got invited to the special, invite only pre-Black Friday VIP sale. Between not having a lot of spare time for the hobby and buying a couple thousand dollars worth of Lego in one day on an annual basis, you start to build up a bit of a backlog. I keep telling myself that I don't need to buy new stuff until I've opened some of the kits I've already got, but them TLG goes and rolls out new item like Benny Spaceship, or the Mini Cooper, or the Exo-suit, etc. and I just keep falling further behind. In the very near future I'll be picking up an UCS Tumbler and I'm already trying to figure out how I'll explain to my wife that despite an attic full of unopened inventory, I needed to rush out and get another kit I might not get around to building until 2017. [i do not have a problem, I can quit any time I want to, I just don't want to… ]