ShaydDeGrai

I think it's important to put such things in perspective. For what I spent on LEGO last year, I could have spent a week or two at a luxury resort in Jamaica. Then again, if I'd spent the money on such a trip, when I got back I'd have nothing to show for it except some fond memories, a hangover and a terrible sunburn that would take a month to recover from (ancestrally, my family hails from the northern end of the Isle of Lewis in the Hebrides - so even with SPF 3000 sunblock, if my skin sees direct sunlight I burst into flames faster than a coven of vampires). LEGO is my vice of choice. Yes, I probably spend more on it than I should, but compared to ski trips, green fees at a golf course, scuba diving, sailing, rock concerts, whiskey, gambling and other potentially expensive pastimes/entertainments, at least with LEGO you have something to show for it at the end of the day other than fleeting memories. I'm not saying that these other distractions are bad, just making the point that everything costs money and any hobby can to taken to extremes. If you amortize the cost over the number of hours of enjoyment you get out of it (and the fact that it holds its value very well), it's really money well spent. So, unless you've taken to, say, buying Lego for yourself at the expense of not putting food in your child's mouth, don't feel bad about investing a lot in your collection. It might feel a bit embarrassing on occasion trying to explain your level of investiture to a non-AFOL, but it's not really _your_ problem if they don't realize that they're missing.

I wouldn't even know where to begin. I know my collection outweighs me; actually at about 3kg per case, just my collection of K2-Boxes of spare parts outweighs me. If I had to guess, I'd say I've been expanding my collection by about 30,000-50,000 parts per year for about ten years now (and maybe 10,000-20,000 ppy for the decade before that on top of my old "childhood" collection). Assuming I don't get run over by a bus in the near future, I might actually own a million parts someday (not that they'd be even remotely organized enough for me to realize when I'd hit that milestone). I suppose if I'd put that money into my mortgage instead, I'd actually own more of my house than the bank does by now…

The ancient runes inscribed in the white marble of the Temple of Air resonated with deep magic. Rising like a vortex from the summoning circle, the Air Elemental answered the call... Ever since reading The DaVinci Code, I've been looking for an excuse to try building an ambigram (text that reads the same right-side up or up-side down) in LEGO. This seemed like as good as an excuse as any, and you'll notice the symmetric "runes" on the back wall form the word "AIR" in calligraphy script (even if you're reading this on a tablet and have the display upside down). The Air Elemental itself is made of clear 1x2 plates, 1x1 round plates, cheese wedges and a few white 1x1 round plate (just to accent the spiral). It's terribly fragile but catches the light nicely. The other "runes" built into the base are the alchemical symbol for the element of Air. It seemed appropriate and had the added bonus of being pretty easy to build after scrapping a dozen different versions of the ambigram from the back wall... I'm the first to admit I'm not a great photographer (Lego or otherwise) but I hope these shots were good enough to get the gist across. Thanks for stopping by.

So I was preparing for an upcoming (art, not specifically Lego) event the other day when one of the organizers decided it would be cool if each of the participants also did something to honor Batman's 75 anniversary as a sort of mixed media tribute in addition to their personal portfolios. Part of me thought this was a cool idea, part of me wanted to shout "why didn't you ask for this six months ago rather than three weeks before the show?" Anyway, as I sat with a pile of bricks staring at a batman mini-figure wondering what to build I'm afraid my creativity failed me. On the flip side, I ended up with a 16 inch tall version of Batman himself. Batman_cropped The head is fixed, but the legs, arms and hands are posable (if a bit delicate). I just thought I'd share.

I tend to like making fairly large builds out of pretty small parts, so although I use a lot of bricks, I'm pretty sure my brick consumption pales by comparison to other families of parts. I tend to use a lot of cheese wedges and tiles to skin things, but at the end of the day the parts I find myself both buying in bulk and running out of on a regular basis is the humble 1x2 plate. As for colors, my user name is ShaydDeGrai for a reason: my collection of Black, White, Light Gray, Light Bley, Dark Gray, Dark Bley probably makes up about 80% of my collection by weight.

I think this is really the point of it. Good-Cop/Bad-Cop isn't going to kick in your door and tell you your doing it wrong if you open all the bags at once and make a big pile. That said, I do think numbered bags in small sets can be a little silly, but, in general, I see two very useful outcomes to having the _option_ of numbered bags: 1) Partitioning large builds for time and space - I, for one, rarely have time to sit down and build a modular building or SW UCS model in one session and with two cats (who think I'm buying the Lego for them, because they clearly don't have enough toys to chase about the apartment) I really can't leave a WIP and a pile of bricks out on the dining room table awaiting my next window of free time. Numbered bags allow me to "look ahead" and gauge how big a can of worms I'm about to open, realizing that 45 minutes from now I'm going to need to pack things up. Packing up an unfinished kit with dozens of open bags at once is just asking to lose pieces - better to partition things into manageable chunks and leave as many bags factory sealed as possible until you really need them. 2) Allowing for family "parallel" build - let's face it, a) Lego can be a very solitary hobby, b) it can be hard to make time to spend with family, and c) anyone who has ever tried doing a jigsaw puzzle with a couple of competitive little kids can attest that accusations of "hoarding all the good pieces" and other such squabbles erupt at the drop of a hat. Numbered bags and separate instruction books can help address all three of these issues by breaking the build into separate tasks which family members can work on in parallel while co-located in one place. Everybody gets to be "in charge" of something, everybody gets their own collection of parts, and everybody contributes to the finished product. Of course not all sets with numbered bags allow this to happen. Modular Buildings, for example, are far easier to partition into parallel tasks than, say, a large Technic kit where step three needs the output of the prior steps or it will have nothing to hold it together. Still, when building in parallel _is_ and option, it's a great way to keep kids busy and engaged while reducing the normal triggers for sibling squabbles.

My current Lego set-up does inspire me to build, but not in Lego. I really need to refinish the attic and give this stuff more dedicated space. So much Lego, so little space. Maybe I should just take over the neighbors house and call it a Lego Museum.

Well, I can't really speak to his allegations about Hello Kitty being an extension of the porn industry (actually I can think of a couple HK related items that kinda support that position ) but finding Satan in a box of Lego makes about as much sense to me as seeing the Virgin Mary in a slice of burnt toast and calling a press conference. Some people will see exactly what they're looking for regardless of whatever they happen to be looking at. As for the increase of "angry" minifigure exp<b></b>ressions, sure, not every head has a bland smile. Then again half the newer exp<b></b>ressions strike me as conveying "constipated" than "angry" but I suppose an article titled "Lego is Costive" wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

For purely personal reasons, I have to go with by beloved 8480 Technic Space Shuttle It may not be the coolest, prettiest, most complex or most fun kit I've ever done, but it WAS the kit that really pulled me out of my dark age once and for all and set me on the path to become the AFOL that I am today. I put this thing together back in 1996 and nearly two decades later it's still intact (though I had to change the batteries a could times). TLG has offered a lot of really great sets over the years, but for me this one is "the best ever" because I reminded me of what I was missing by not making time for Lego and made me want all the other wonderful kits even more.

For the higher end sets I keep one of each box (flattened out), but only one if I happen to own multiples. I don't really know why, to be honest, it just seems so sad to throw them in the recycle bin. I don't do it to resell kits or anything, as I'm strictly a collector/consumer. Other than the architecture stuff, I don't bother saving the boxes from small (say < 100 USD) kits but something in my twisted psyche just really hates to toss out the big boxes (perhaps it's a sign of latent childhood Lego envy from back in the days when someday owning a $200 Lego set seemed about as plausible as vacationing on the moon). I suppose the boxes have really become something of a fire hazard in that I've got a pile of them (weighted down by a couple of toolboxes) a little over a meter tall, but I'm still not quite ready to part with them yet.

I think the take away message is to know when to "agree to disagree" and move on with informed, respectful discourse rather than making things personal. There are historical facts, and then there are stated opinions. Sharing both can be productive, so long as all parties recognize which is which, and the end goal is to help people refine their opinions, not to "prove" the other guy "wrong." Some people may be enlightened by such discussions; others may feel their opinions more justified or find themselves more connected to like minded individuals - even if, as a collective, they are in the minority. In a mature discourse, however, no one should walk away feeling like they've been disrespected or otherwise attacked. (edited to compensate for the fact that I may speak like an adult, but I type like a 3-year-old…)

If you'd asked me this a decade ago ( when TLG was putting themselves out of business by not tracking the cost of motors or fiber optic cable, ruining the building experience which excessive "macro" parts to get the build over with as quickly as possible and move on the "play" experience, and running down blind alleys with lines like Znap, Scala and Galidor ), I would have said sure, put on the brakes and think about what you've got before pouring millions of dollars into new molds. Today, as a general rule of thumb, I think TLG learned its lesson from those years and puts a lot more thought into new parts and I'm generally happy when I come across such items in new kits. Now I, for one, strongly favor small generic parts, so when I see something so wildly useful like the 1x2 bow (I first noticed it on the Friends yacht ) or a 2x2 inverted tile or (years earlier) the 1x1 cheese slope, my first reaction is usually along the lines of "Finally! Where were you when I needed a couple hundred of you two years ago?" I'm not much of a minifigure-centric collector so when I look at something like the new Simpson's line of CMFs and think about all the new molds that went into that (or Chima heads or the hairpieces for the dwarves in the Hobbit line and before that Star Wars helmets for that matter) I do wonder what "practical" part didn't get made because the TLG's (considerable but still) limited resources went into producing "accessories" rather than new "building" parts. Still, just because _I_ am not into that aspect of the business doesn't mean it can't be immensely profitable for them and profitability for TLG is good for me because it means that maybe next year they'll be in a position to come out with new parts that are more to my tastes. Sometimes you get Bart Simpson's head, sometimes you get those cool new ball joints they introduced in the Mixels line - at least they're not making Galidor action figures anymore.

I've built the entire Architecture line, though a few of the early models (Sear Tower, Rockefeller Center) I just downloaded instructions for and built using parts on hand because they just seemed overly simplistic for the price. On the question of the top 5 "little" kits, the Space Needle and the Empire State Building were really the models that put the (then new) Architecture line on my radar. Unlike the Sears Tower and the Hancock Center, those two kits really spoke to me with respect capturing iconic forms in a compact scale. Chronologically, my next two top small kits would have to be the Guggenheim Museum and the White House. They were a bit larger, had interesting builds and did a nice job of capturing abstract forms within the confines of standard Lego parts in a tiny form. To round out the top five, I'd have to go with the Eiffel Tower, sure it pales by comparison to the three foot tall version of a few years ago, but for 35USD and only a foot tall, I think it has a lot of character. There are a lot of interesting models in the Architecture line. I'm fond of the color palette and use on SNOT in the UN Headquarters. At the higher end, the Robie House (despite the occasional hell of stacked plates during the build) and Imperial Hotel are two of my favorite kits (Architecture or otherwise) of recent years, but for "top five under fifty" I the Space Needle, Empire State, White House, GuggenHeim and Eiffel Tower are the standouts for the kits that I both enjoyed building and continue to display prominently to this day. At the other extreme, there are a few sets that just didn't resonate with me. The Sears Tower, Hancock Center and Rockefeller Center are the only kits in the line that I chose not to buy because, having downloaded the instruction books, they were just too simple. The only parts I didn't already own were the printed name plates and the subject matter itself just wasn't, personally, compelling. Farnsworth house and Villa Savoye were reasonably accurate models of examples of an architecture style that I find to be a bit over-hyped and not particularly interesting, I've been building boxy houses out of Lego since I was four, why do I need a famous Architect to "inspire" yet another box? Those models, in my mind were too "safe", too close to the natural form of the bricks themselves to really feel compelling. If you look as something like the Eiffel Tower from a few feet away, a casual (non-AFOL) observer might say "That's Lego?" because the forms and connections are unexpected compared to the traditional studs on top, right angle builds of their childhoods. The original Farnsworth and Savoye buildings themselves look like they might have started AS traditional Lego houses scaled up to human size so when you scale them back down, they just don't seem that distinctive. This is also why, every time TLG releases a new Architecture kit that ISN'T the long rumored Habitat 67 or some other glorified stack of boxes I rejoice a little. As an historic bit of architecture, fine, but as a compelling Lego kit, I want them to be pushing the envelope on both form and building technique. The Big Ben Clock tower is the only Architecture set I've ever MOD'ed. The proportions just didn't look right to me. Maybe that was deliberate on the part of TLG, it got me to buy the set twice just to get the spare parts I needed for the MOD. I'm looking forward to the Trevi Fountain. I've never seen the original in person, but from the box art it looks like the kit should be interesting.

When I was kid, my dad and I used to build model air planes, tanks and ships together. While we worked on the models, my dad would tell me what it was like to hunker down during an air raid or how sick he got the first time he weathered rough seas and coastal artillery fire in a landing craft as a scared 19 year old about to see his first real combat. Those "toys" were the proverbial "teachable moment" before there was a term for such. When we finished the models, we displayed them like historical artifacts; neither I nor my sister ever "played" with them - in part because my mom drew a line in the sand and forbade it, but also because, by the time the model was done, it represented something I didn't really want to play with. I could appreciate the design and it's role in history, but seeing it in a true historical context took the play/fun out of it for me. Like any kid, I had my toy soldiers, cowboys and indians, aliens and space rangers, whatever - and that was fine - but there was always a distinct difference between a "space tank" and an actual "toy" Panzer or a medieval catapult vs a Howitzer. I don't know that busy parents today would have the time or volition to sit down with their kids and put a realistic LEGO war machine in its proper context. Such models, sans teachable moments, might very well appeal to kids and that's probably exactly why TLG doesn't make those sorts of "toys". Denmark had a front row seat for the rise of Nazi Germany and probably remembers, better than most, the days of the Hitler Youth when in addition to many other "social engineering experiments" (to put it far more kindly than it deserves) Nazi propagandists created entire toy lines to glorify the German war machine; from toy soldiers with recognizable insignia, to tanks and planes, to board games that teach strategy and allow kids to recreate famous German victories. At a time when kids in America were idolizing sports players and collecting baseball cards, Joseph Goebbels was printing collectable trading cards featuring prominent Nazi Party officials, soldiers who'd received the Iron Cross, and outstanding hardware like V2 rockets, Panzer tanks and various fighter planes. Confirmed kills for snipers in battles like Stalingrad were reported like batting averages to psych-up the kids learning to handle a rifle for the first time. It was an orchestrated campaign to indoctrinate youth to the idea of glorified warfare and loyalty to the state above all - and it created a lot of fanatics. I'm sure Denmark hasn't forgotten, and personally I applaud TLG for not trying to commercialize, capitalize and trivialize a very dark time in our collective history. I have no problem with an AFOL making great MOCs of WWII hardware (and I've seen some fantastic ones) because you can't design a model like that without learning a thing or two in the process. I do have a problem with such a model showing up on the shelf at Toys R Us labelled appropriate for 7-12 yr olds.

As I touched on in your "Hello my name is…" thread, learning by example is a great way to get started and the Creator is an excellent starting point both for techniques and as a source of good, generic bricks at a reasonable (comparatively speaking) price. In addition, there are lots of lego instruction books out there that you don't even need to buy the kit for, websites like brickset and the lego shop at home website have archives of old (and current) instruction books (as PDFs) for hundreds of sets. Many of these sets are retired now, but the techniques used to build them are no less valid. Obviously this is most useful if you have the parts to actually build the things being described, but even just following the illustrations can be a useful way to get the mental gears spinning. As your collection grows, sites like rebrickable can also come in handy. Rebrickable takes the set numbers of kits you already own to get a parts inventory and offers suggestions as to what else you could be building with them. Another source of insight and inspiration is other AFOLs themselves. Go to MOCPages or Flickr or brickshelf (when it's up these days ) and see what others are doing and ask yourself how a particular shape was achieved; try to imagine what parts went into the MOC and how the designer managed to combine them to realize his/her vision. If you can't figure it out, ask, most of the AFOLs I've dealt with don't bite - the worst they'll do is ignore you and even then it's usually not on purpose, they may be off building something new and just don't realize you've left a comment on their page. A lot of them are happy to share their insights and take it as a compliment that you want to know more. I went to my first convention last year (Brickfair New England - but there are all sorts of events happening all over the planet all year long so chances are there'll be some sort of event happening somewhere near you sometime.) I had a wonderful time seeing other people's work and displaying my own. I lost count of the number of people who asked questions about how my stuff was built; questions came from all sorts of people with all levels of experience and I did my best to answer them. I thought it was great that they cared and I'm curious as to what sort of things people created as a result of comparing notes with me. Likewise, I asked questions of others; no one turned me away afraid I was going to steal their trade secret; no one was too busy to talk. As a general rule of thumb AFOLs are proud of our MOCs and when someone wants to know how we've achieved what we've built, the problem isn't getting us to talk, it's getting us to shut up. None of this, however is a substitute for just sitting down and playing - seeing how parts combine to form new shapes, etc. Most official sets stick with very conservative construction techniques (things that are easy for a child to follow, stable enough to withstand a child's play habits, careful not to over torque or otherwise unnaturally deform the parts, etc.) AFOLs on the other hand, like to push the envelope with SNOT (studs not on top), clips, flex hoses, dismembered mini-figures, franken-parts, torqued beams, wedges, cantilevers, string, magnets… (I think I've seen everything but duct tape). You won't learn most of those tricks from an official instruction book, but you can find references online (there's a Flickr group or two devoted to just these sorts of things). You also might stumble upon one or two of them just by fiddling. I like to keep a small collection of odd parts on my desk. Not enough to actually build something mind you, just enough to fiddle with. While my mind is elsewhere trying to debug a programing problem or cook up a new algorithm, I'll just let my fingers explore the Lego, to get a feel for how many ways the parts can combine and what shape the resulting mass can assume. I try to start with odd parts with lots of non-obvious connection opportunities, like antennae, clips, cheese wedges, lamp holders, technic pins, minifigure accessories. The goal is to take the parts out of context so that I can see them for their form and potential rather than their "intended" use. Most of the time I end up with an abstract lump of parts, but every now and then I stumble upon something and have to make a mental note: "this would make a good window molding" or "that looks like half of a killer robot" or whatever. Your own style will evolve with time. If you're like most people it will be driven in part by subject matter, color palette, scale and range of techniques employed. Some people strive for accurate models of things they have photo references for, others build straight from their imagination. Some people look at an official kit and think, "it would be better if…" and modify the design; others buy kits solely for their parts and never build the official model at all; still others, build nothing but the official model and (effectively) never take it apart. Some people use insanely elaborate techniques to build visually simple, everyday forms; other use incredibly simple techniques to realize grand but intricate designs. I think the only thing all AFOLs and their styles truly have in common, is that they are all born of a love for the hobby.

Welcome Joanna, Rest assured that, by the standards shared here, you probably haven't actually bought "an embarrassing amount of lego in a really short time," you've just been making up for long term deficit. Speaking as someone who had to buy a larger car to transport my (large and frequent) Lego purchases from the local mall, I'm glad to hear that a long standing issue is finally being addressed. Learning by example is great way to get started training your eye for the many ways available to combine Lego elements. Personally I think the Creator line also a wonderful (and cost effective) way to build up a collection quickly. At the high end, you might also want to explore modular buildings. The current Parisian Restaurant is a particularly good kit and if you're just starting out, it will probably expose you to some neat building techniques you've not seen before. Also, as a joint activity, it can be built in stages, with multiple instruction books and numbered parts bags so you and your fiancee can be working on different sections of the building simultaneously if you choose to. Great to have you aboard!

I admit I'm a geek at heart and I really want 3D printing to succeed and become more commonplace, but based on my own experience thus far, I'm still waiting on the sidelines; if they want my money, the 3D printing industry in general, has to do better and they have a very long way to go before they're in danger of stealing business away from the injection molded toy industry. I can certainly see 3D printing as a useful prototyping device internally, but not so much as a production or e-distribution tool. I played with a commercial 3D printer earlier this year to experiment with an idea I had for curve builder bricks and met with limited success. Of course the technology is always improving but in the near term my doubts are motivated by: Production efficiency: compared to injection molding, 3D printing moves at a glacial pace. In the time it took me to print a single 1x2 brick, a commercial molding machine would have spat out thousands of bricks (assuming a mold that spits out a dozen or so positives per cycle. Surface resolution: Every 3D printer I've ever worked with deposits media in thin layers to build up the shape. This results in side walls that aren't smooth. Now technically, the sidewalls of injection molding machines aren't perfectly smooth either; if you look at them with a really good microscope you'll see that look like the surface of an ice rink after a hockey game with little pits, scratches, swirls and bulges. By comparison, however, the sidewalls of printed parts look like the strata of the Grand Canyon with distinct layers and rocky outcroppings. Worse yet, it takes far less magnification to see the defects. Good "mainstream" printers today will get you about as far as the "smoothness" of the side of a pad of Post-It Notes. Like toner printers and wax dye sublimation color printers before them, I'm sure that, over time, the resolution will go up and the price will come down, but the downside of a pure layer deposition model is that there will always be some sense of "strata" giving the part a "grain" - stronger in one plane than another, smoother in one plane than another. When I tried printing parts, one of the problems I noted was that if I had two parts printed in the same orientation, say, along the plane of the studs, the unevenness of the sides of the stud caught on the unevenness of the tube and the inside wall of the brick. This resulted in excessive clutch power and, due to my grip strength and "Stubborn Scotsman" streak (as my wife puts it), more than a fair share of broken bricks as I cracked sidewalls and snapped off studs trying to get parts separated. Undersizing the studs helped, but then they didn't play well with real Lego and had a very Megabloks feel to them with too much tolerance in the system. I tried mixing orientations, printing one brick in a vertical plane and another in the horizontal and while that went a long way to solving the clutch problem, who needs the extra complication of needing to remember to alternate "grains" when stacking bricks. For my prototypes I ended up with a combination of printing, sanding down the high spots, dipping in floor wax to fill up the low parts then burnishing with a soft toothbrush. This created useable parts that played well with each other as well as standard Lego, but it was far from the height of automation. As I said before, just printing one part took longer than it would have taken a factory to print thousands. If you add to that the amount of time it took me to manually finish off the parts, I think TLG could have produced the entire production run of Super Star Destroyers (and shipped them to the stores) faster. Maybe someday someone will come up with a 3D printer that does more post processing (like using a tiny particle beam to sandblast the surface smooth so you're effectively printing a bigger part than you want and phase two shaves it down to the size you actually asked for) but unless there's a lot more demand and a lot more competition in the industry, I don't see this sort of technology being sold next to toasters and power drills at Target any time soon. Cost: Speaking of selling this stuff at Target. 3D printers are cool and useful for serious hobbyists but compared with 2D printers, blenders, smartphones, etc. they've got a long way to go before they become mainstream consumer appliances. That means even low quality ones are pricey, and so are the supplies. Not counting the discards, I think my viable brick prototypes probably averaged about 40 cents a brick (significantly more if you also consider the amount of material I wasted in earlier prototypes and/or amortized the cost of the machine over the expected useful lifetime of the device against hours of operation producing the parts). Even at 40 cents as a low estimate, that's still more than ten times what a similarly sized standard part from TLG would have cost me to buy on Bricklink. Color Matching: TLG has its own issues on that front, but unless they decide to get in the business of actually selling spools of "2014 Earth Green" ABS printing thread media, the rest of us don't stand much of a chance of making home-printed bricks blend in. I tried printing in white (too translucent) and black (better, but not as deep a black as TLG uses) and even my old eyes could spot the difference from across the room. I don't even know where I'd start if I had to come up with "sand green" or "dark reddish brown". All that said, I do think there's a place for 3D printing in the future somewhere down the road. The technology is always improving and while the best tech will always be unrealistically priced, its mere existence will drive down the price of second-tier tech and widen adoption. By comparison, look at CNC (computer numerical controlled) Machines. When I was at university in the 1980's we had a CAD/CAM system that allowed us to design parts on a dedicated (ridiculously expensive) computer and send those designs to what was essentially a router on the end of a robot arm over an adjustable table. The CNC Machine would drill, route, and grind our designs out of a solid block of plastic or aluminum and we could walk out of the lab a few hours later with a new part that exactly matched our specification. I remember asking the guy who ran the shop about it at the time and he told me the university bought the system (the CAD mainframe, six workstations, two CNC machines and the software) used for half a million dollars (US) - that was real money 30 years ago. Jump to today (or technically, yesterday) and I have an ad in my email about a sale at my neighborhood woodworking shop, they're selling a decent CNC machine (with CAD software) for 1599 USD. Sure it only works on wood instead of aluminum and I have to make do with running the software on my existing laptop rather than having a dedicated workstation like I did back in the '80's, but $1600 down from 0.5M is a pretty good price drop and the modern device is easier to use and, despite being a third the size, can work on larger blanks. Still, it's a specialty tool. I know multiple woodworkers who live perfectly happy productive lives without one and I've never met a non-woodworker who felt compelled to buy one just because it was 'cool'. 3D printers will likely follow the same course. Resolution will improve, costs will come down, ease of use will go up, but I think the technology still has a long road ahead of it before a consumer goods company will blindly assume that enough people own enough machines of high enough quality to make catering to that audience a priority. Right now, the onus isn't on TLG or Hasbro or even Games Designers Workshop to support the 3D printing community, its on the printer manufacturers themselves. They are the ones who will have to take the lead to encourage people to discover what 3D printers can do and encourage people to share their designs (so that the printers they've already sold continue to eat printing supplies and keep enthusiasm for the technology alive). Without something like that, 3D printers will continue to dwell in geeks' basements, artist studios, labs and model railroad club-houses - a great thing to "have access to" on occasion, but not nearly ubiquitous like a microwave oven or TV. Even today, 3D printing has its place. I had no problem making parts that played well with standard Lego for a single point of connection, it was only when I needed to actually build with them that the technology really fell flat. I could certainly see things like mini-figure accessories (tools, weapons, hair pieces, helmets, etc.), tile variations and other finials (inverted cheese slope anyone??) being viable on a good printer today for very low volume consumption. The official Lego parts will be smooth, and mating smooth to rough is far less problematic than mating rough to rough. I've found printed plastics to be a bit brittle, but I suppose that's something one could mitigate by just being more careful. Cost is still an issue, but in many cases the cost of postage to ship an actual part (especially in small quantities to remote locations) can go a long way to equalizing that playing field.

Welcome! Bricklink is a great starting place to bulk-up a collection, it's cheaper that the Pick-a-Brick from the Lego Shop@Home website and more predictable than buying odd lots on eBay (where, too often, the seller thinks "lego" is a generic term for plastic block and the quality may be all over the map). If you live near a Lego Store (or are traveling near to one) the Pick-a-Brick walls are another great resource. It's somewhat pot-luck in terms of what parts they're stocking at any given time (websites like BrickBuildr can help but data can be very stale) but if you invest the time to pack your PAB cup well you can get a lot of parts for relatively little money (for myself it's usually less than a penny per part on average) Also, if you have access to a Lego Store and chat up the manager during a lull, they can sell you parts by the K-Box (the case they use to fill the bins on the pick-a-brick wall). It might not be as glamorous as a wide variety of parts you get from filling a cup, but if you just want to bulk up on a particular part in a particular color (especially if it's a part that takes up too much space in a cup, like 2x8 bricks or 4x12 plates ) it's a really economical way to get a year's supply of parts relatively cheaply. Of course, this really only makes sense for really generic parts/colors that you know you'll use on many different projects. Another source for new, but diverse brick are, of course the Lego Sets themselves. As a general rule of thumb, the Creator line has some of the best price-per-brick ratios of any sets Lego makes, and the parts you're getting are good, generic shapes ready for reuse. I'm fond of the modular buildings in part because they're fun to build by and of themselves and they also make solid parts packs for extending a brick collection. The downside is that they can be pricey and TLG doesn't want to see them discounted. And speaking of discounted Lego, I like to keep an eye on Amazon sales (again websites like pricenbricks can help). When I see kits going for more than 25% off (even if its a kit I'm not particularly interested in as a subject matter) I'll go over to a site like Brickset.com to check out the parts inventory to see if the kit is worth buy just for the bricks alone. Good luck growing your collection and happy building!

Welcome! I live in New England, where people anticipate getting snowed in and keep emergency Lego on hand just in case ;-> (then again, we also go out in the middle of blizzard to buy ice cream, so what do we know…)

I never used to keep the boxes, but in the past decade or so I started hanging on to them. If I have multiple copies of the same kit, I only keep one box - You have to draw the line somewhere...

After years of throwing them into boxes (impossible to find anything and heavy to move) I finally started organizing them. I've got several crates left to sort out, but so far I've filled two four-drawer filing cabinets. Most are in hanging folders sorted by kit number where each hanging folder covers some small range kit numbers. Within the main hanging folder, one-sheets and short instruction books go in directly (again ordered by kit number), multiple book kits I group together in a manilla folder within the ranger folders. Most of the time this works well. Ranges of kit numbers are already loosely associated with themes so similar kits are often grouped together by default. Of course, sometimes you don't get just an instruction book or two, you get an instruction tome that won't even fit in a folder (USC Millenium Falcon anyone?). For these, I put a placeholder in the folder and put the book itself in a separate drawer. I also have a file cabinet full of old catalogues, Lego Club magazines and freebie posters. I'm not quite sure what I was thinking when I first started saving all this crap but somewhere along the line it made its way from junk mail and clutter to "vintage collection" so it seems a shame to toss it now.

Welcome aboard! You have nice variety of topics on your blog - I'm shocked that Obi not only sat still for the vacuum cleaner but actually seemed to enjoy it.

Years ago I successfully bought the last copies of the Santa Fe train (engine and multiple cars) after they were "sold out" at the US website. I actually called S@H on the phone in the vague hope that maybe they could tell me if any of the brand stores might still have one on the shelves and the (very pleasant) operator ran a query on the computer and told me they still had several in inventory and sold me the lot over the phone. According to her (and keep in mind this was quite a awhile ago so take it with a grain of salt), the system automatically tags a product as "sold out" when the remaining inventory drops below a certain threshold (based on popularity and average sales volumes from the recent past). They did this to avoid the unpleasant scenario of having someone stick something in their cart but (for whatever reason) have it not be available by the time they actually go to check out. I'm sure their software has gotten better over the years (like introducing new status flags as "call for availability") but part of me still wonders if "sold out" is really "gone" or a code word for "if you call and beg, there might still be one or two out on the shipping dock".

I usually start with a short cup unless I'm picking up something so large it simply won't fit (like long plates). I favor the short cup because I have large hands and it's easier for me to pack the bottom "donut-space" efficiently. Once that space is packed to the point where it doesn't rattle anymore I move on to the main body of the cup. When filling the main cup, I used to build columns, stacking things the height of the cup. This works well for odd shaped parts like foliage parts, but for regular brick I've found that building horizontal layers (studs facing out toward the side-wall of the cup) let me use up the taper of the cup more effectively. Usually these plugs are only one or two studs thick and I usually go with two per layer (with studs out in opposite directions) - this scheme also allows for a stacked column of parts in the center of the cup if I need it to accommodate a certain geometry of part. By packing in horizontal layers,, I can fill the tiny gaps where my plugs don't quite make it to the sidewall of the cup as I go. Previously, with the column method, I'd just try to drop and shake tiny parts in after the fact and still ended up with voids. The horizontal layer system lets me make each layer slightly larger than the one beneath it, reducing the gap in the first place and letting me "spackle" the gaps as I see them arise with the best fitting part in exactly the optimum orientation. I keep this up until the cup is filled, and then I do the exact same thing in the lid to fill the stud. Depending on available parts, I may also make a plate & tile lid to sandwich in between the plugs of the cup and the top of the actual cup lid. At my store (where they know me quite well from the conversations I've held while standing around for an hour at a time packing a small cup) the rule is the lid has to touch the cup _somewhere_ but doesn't have to snap down, so If I can demonstrate contact than then just tape the lid on, it's legal. My rule of thumb is, if it can still rattle, you're wasting money. This process is time consuming, but works well for me as I'm usually packing a cup while my wife wanders the rest of the mall shopping for shoes and handbags. An hour passes a lot faster at a PAB wall then it does in a woman's shoe store. Typically, when I get home the first thing I do is to separate everything and toss the newly liberated parts into tall cups from prior PAB visits. In my experience, one well packed short cup expands out into two to two and half "carelessly" packed tall cups unless I'm really stocking up on stuff that naturally packs well all on it's own (1x1 tiles, cheese wedges, etc.) Happy PAB'ing.

I, for one, enjoy a good building experience and a nice looking model for display when I done. I think a successful model is one that calls itself to your attention from across the room and asks you to take a closer look, and then rewards those who do look closer with more and more details and more and more layers yet to discover. This argues that attention be paid to both the exterior and interior in close to equal measure, but as with all things, there are always trade-offs to be made. I put the PR together this past weekend and I must say I'm very happy with the choices that drove its design. No kit is perfect - someone else might even consider _my_ favorite kit to the be the weakest in the line, but overall the PR hits most of the right notes for me. It has a really great interior, but I don't feel like either the asking price or the exterior design was somehow compromised to make that interior possible. My one gripe about the PR design (the fire escape and rear door(s) layout) touches upon the greater issue of scale. The early modulars seemed to take the idea of modular to heart. They weren't just buildings that you could pin together to form a city block, they were designed to mirror and stack so you buy multiples of the same kit and build a really huge (but architecturally consistent) Grand Emporium (for example). I suppose one could say that you can still do that with the Chinese Theatre or PR but really the middle floor is the only one that directly replicates and (at least by my recollection) it's also the stage of the build that typically has the least number of parts. Doing the vertical extension thing for these kits is like buy a half dozen copies of the Emerald Night just to get a few extra passenger cars and parting out the engines. Even if you do extend the height by adding extra "middle" floors, the floor plans don't make sense. I really like the PR, but would you want to live in an apartment where the guy above you has to cut through your living room to get to his back door? It seems like this aspect of "modularity" is falling by the wayside, favoring an "interesting" build over a scalable one. If this is the direction they want to take with the line I'd be okay with that so long as the builds and buildings were truly interesting in the end but the current, non-committal execution ("yeah, there a door there if you want to buy another whole kit just to make this a little taller…") as illustrated in the exterior design of the PR seems a bit awkward at the moment.