ShaydDeGrai

Well the best laid schemes o' man an' brick, gang aft agley but in theory... 1) Build down my backlog of kits I haven't gotten around to building yet (way too many sealed boxes around for my taste) 2) Pick up the whole hobbit line, the Horizon Express, the Palace Cinema, and any new architecture and LOTR set that become available. 3) Get off my butt and finish a few MOCs I've been tinkering with for 6 months now, including Minas Morgul, Barad Dur, a gaff-rigged harbor pilot, a winter village expansion building and the Seattle Space Needle 4) Dust some of the stuff I've got on display. All unrealistic goals when you stop to think about it, but a guy can dream can't he?

Welcome and happy holidays! Glad to hear you've emerged from your dark ages, it's a good time to be an AFOL. From whereabouts in Scotland do you hail? I live in the 'States myself, but my Dad's from Dundee and I've got extended family spread about from the Isle of Lewis in the north down to the "balmy south" across the border in Sussex.

I like it. It reminds me of a place where an ex-girlfriend's family used to vacation in Pennsylvania (they didn't actually stay IN the mine, but there were a couple spooky old coal mine adits on their land in the woods not far from their cottage).

Thanks. As you correctly guessed, the station does have an alternate "after the spring thaw" persona. Although I haven't taken any non-snow photos yet, the snow plates on the main structure are sitting atop a (mostly) black 45 slope roof, except over the eyebrow window where lower slopes are in play. The front awing on main building clips off and can be replaced by a black tiled plate. The hip roof over the platform is a little trickier. There wasn't enough clearance to put the "snow" on over the dark bley roof I prototyped, so, like the front awing, I had to pop-off the non-snow roof to make room for the winter version. Perhaps when I dismantle this year's winter village, I'll remember to take some photos of the summer variation (I'll have to pick up some translucent blue tiles to add a puddle where the snowman currently stands...)

Winterville Station For years, Lego trains have circled the base of my Christmas Tree. More recently, official Winter Village sets have sprung up to join them, but the train never had anywhere to stop. So, this year, the mini-folk of Winterville finally have a train station to call their own. The station is a little bigger than the existing kits in the line, but then it's a train station, I'd expect it to be a little bigger than a toy store or a bakery. It looks pretty good next to the official kits and has the same sort of "feel," that's really what I was after. I don't usually do much at Mini-figure scale and Christmas Kitsch is definitely outside my normal comfort zone, but hey, it's the holidays, why not mix things up a bit. Here we have all hands on deck, clearing the recent snow from the platform to make way for the presents waiting to be loaded into the mail car. The far end of the platform features more lights, seating areas and a station clock. In keeping with the Winter Village style, we have a separate little mini-build to pad out the area. I figured all that snow they cleared from the platform had to go somewhere, why not build a snowman? In keeping with the Winter Village HGD (Hospital Gown Design - i.e. open in back) style, it's interior is readily accessible. I was shooting for something spacious without being boring, functional yet homey. The inside features a ticketing desk an open waiting area with clock and fireplace. And yes, Computer Geek Guy has just finished reading a copy of the Daily Prophet. Of course, what would a Winter Village set be without a light brick? In this build, I decided to hide the brick in the hearth to light the fiery bits in the fireplace from below. I'm not a great photographer, but trust me, it looks neat in person. The dark gray plate visible in the base of the open sidewall is the switch for the light. It sits flush when the fireplace is on and protrudes half a stud or so when it's off. I hope you've enjoyed your tour of the the new Winterville Station. Happy Holidays. EDIT: In re-reading the contest thread, I realized I'd posted too many photos. This has now been corrected. For the curious, the additional shots can be found here. EDIT: Or here (when MOCPages is acting up)

Allow me to share a quiet conversation I had with my wife the other day: Wife: "I feel like I didn't get you enough stuff for Christmas..." Me: "Did you get me the new Lego UCS B-Wing Fighter?" Wife: "No." Me: "Did you get me the Technic 4x4 Truck?" Wife: "No." Me: "How about the King's Joust and the new Winter Village set?" Wife: "Sorry. Would you like me to get you one of those?" Me: "Actually, they're in my closet, you just have to wrap them up and put them where I won't find them for a week - don't worry, I'll act surprised."

This would be my guess as well. I lost 1 support from each of three related projects which makes me think that it was one person/account that had gone away (I'd previously noted that when someone supported one of these items, they also (frequently) supported the other two). In this I entirely agree. There may be kits here and there with much greater adult appeal (particularly in Architecture and Trains) but bottom line is that if you expect TLG to put their reputation on the line marketing something it has to be (at least moderately) kid safe. Buried on the CUUSOO website, they reiterate their stance on no religion, no drug, no modern depictions of war, etc. so I don't expect things like Seal Team Six getting Bin Laden, a Nazi concentration camp, or a protester vs. a Tank at Tianenmen Square (all Lego models I've seen but don't have URLs for at the moment) to show up on CUUSOO any time soon. And even though I really liked the design of the Winchester and Serenity, I can't take issue with TLG not wanting to put parents of six-year-olds in the position of explaining why Johnny can't watch Shawn of the Dead or explain what, exactly, a "companion" does for her "clients" or why Reavers decorate the outside of their ships with the remains of their victims. No one is saying that AFOLs can't make their own adult themed MOCs, they just shouldn't expect TLG to market them under the LEGO brand. What I do take issue with is CUUSOO as a separate product line. By releasing things under a CUUSOO banner, I think they back themselves into a corner in terms of the scale, IP and new mould requirements that might actually pass review. As a marketing device, this is understandable, TLG benefits by getting brand recognition and Internet chatter from the _process_ of designers reaching/tweeting/blogging/begging for 10,000 votes more so than they do from actually releasing a kit. As an actual crowd-sourcing mechanism, though, it falls flat. Rule #1 of effective crowd sourcing is that it is a public brainstorming session where at least some of the people in the crowd can be considered to be outside experts with superior knowledge/creativity to in-house talent. In practice this means that, (if you're serious about crowd-sourcing as a real product development tool) something like the Modular Western Town can never be in conflict with an existing license such as LR; it means that the designer of the modular western town, and the feedback that design generated, should be consulted on the design of LR sets _within_ the license so that the LR kits have greater appeal to the crowd beyond just the Lone Ranger tie-in. Likewise successful Star Wars or LOTR designs shouldn't be CUUSOO additions to those lines, but rather new ideas/directions for those lines vetted/referred by the CUUSOO process. There will always be situations where a new design proposal will exceed existing themes and licenses, but again, the question shouldn't be can CUUSOO get a license for X, it should be "is this big enough to justify a LEGO exclusive? Is this big enough to be a new LEGO Theme?" CUUSOO should be a suggestion box, moderator and gatekeeper for other working groups within TLG, not a wide distribution "Designed ByME" channel. I think there's a lot of wasted energy and unrealistic expectations on one-off licensed models that, if approved at all, will get a tiny production run and end up as a footnote in Gary Istok's next DVD. Other than brand exposure, I just don't know what TLG actually expects to get from CUUSOO as it is currently structured, we've yet to see something pass muster that really _should be_ just another kit under an existing theme, and, true or not, it _feels_ like they are perfectly happy to keep it that way. I guess the next actual test where we'll learn more about their internal process will be the UCS Sandcrawler. It's clearly Star Wars, not CUUSOO. Will it actually go through as the biggest CUUSOO set ever offered? Will it get scaled down slightly to put it on par with the UCS Millenium Falcon and released as a _regular_ Star Wars Theme set? Will the Star Wars team release their own UCS Sandcrawler and claim it was planned all along and they never knew about the one on CUUSOO? Will it get scaled down to the point where it can be marketed as a CUUSOO stocking stuffer (missing the entire point of it being an UCS model)? Will it get rejected because the CUUSOO and LSW are two different working groups and LSW holds the keys to the kingdom? I guess only time will tell. It's just hard to take CUUSOO seriously when so much recent evidence suggests that they aren't taking US seriously.

Western themed toy were definitely more popular 40 years ago when I was growing up than they are today in America. While there are certainly _parts_ of America where "the old west" has a certain romantic charm to it, most Americans _I_ know (East Coast Urban Bias) groan every time they dress up Team USA in cowboy hats and boots for the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It's a stereotype right up there with saying that all Frenchmen wear Berets and all Germans wear Lederhosen; certainly some do, but _most_ don't. I would not be at all surprised if western themed LEGO kits sold better outside the states than here (LR tie-ins not withstanding). My relatives in Scotland are fascinated with that stuff and were disappointed to learn that New England had more in common with Britain than it did with the America they were expecting based on books and movies about cowboys, indians, and the great frontier. We now return you to your regularly scheduled CuuSoo rant...

Thanks. The sails are custom. I tried using the headsail from the Black Pearl but it was too small for anything but the smaller sail on the mizzenmast (the one by the stern). In the end, I settled on using two plies of heavy weight construction paper, laminated together with rubber cement. Fabric sails would be nicer, but shy of cutting up a T-Shirt, I decided to go with the materials I had on hand.

I'd be happier about this if the BTTF offering weren't the _only_ project to pass review. All other issues aside, I just don't think it looks good for CuuSoo to have a a kit designed by one of your own contractors be the token "yes" vote after so many other external designs have either languished in support Hell for so long or been rejected outright. I'm NOT saying that there was any impropriety in the decision or that Masashi Togami's design should be discounted based on the fact that he worked for CuuSoo, but given the general level of disappointment and discontent people have had with the whole CuuSoo process up to this point, keeping everyone in limbo for six months then praising one or your own and rejecting everyone else was not exactly a great PR move at this point even if he IS donating his residuals to charity.

I find this yet another disappointing outcome from the CuuSoo venture. The ideas I really like don't pass review and the kits that pass review, I don't really like. BTTF is fine, but I don't see myself getting it. Everything else they've released so far I could build with spare parts from my existing collection so why bother with a kit? Perhaps I was unrealistically optimistic when I first heard of CuuSoo. I thought it was going to be an honest crowd-sourcing forum where serious ideas would be given serious consideration for the benefit of both TLG and the LEGO community; to expand product lines, part selection, and give Lego fans whose tastes have been neglected by recent official offerings a chance to be heard. I didn't expect TLG to bend over backwards to act on every suggestion, but frankly I did expect more than this. What's the point of crowd sourcing if you don't actually listen to the crowd? I realize contractual obligations can convolute things, but if TLG were serious about CuuSoo projects, they'd find a way to make things work and not demoralize nearly ever project creator and tens of thousands of project supporters every time a project comes up for review. As far as I can tell, the only thing to REALLY come out of CuuSoo is greater brand recognition for LEGO when things like "Purdue Pete" get hyped to students and alumni of a college that graduates 12,000 people a year. Increasingly, TLG doesn't seem serious about producing CuuSoo offerings so much as it using the LEGO Community to "volunteer content" to one of their websites to keep the word "LEGO" common and active term in the Blog-o-sphere with people hyping their projects, news feeds reporting on projects, etc. I really wanted CuuSoo to be more than just cheap advertising for LEGO, especially since we're the ones providing 100% of the content. If "CuuSoo" means "wish" then I wish for a better CuuSoo system: 1) I'd eliminate CuuSoo as it own theme and use it as an organizer and sounding board for existing LEGO working groups. When someone proposes a "kit based" idea, the first question to ask is which theme does it belong under (Star Wars, Exclusives, City, Technic, etc) or would it be a new license? Part proposals would be automatically attached to part development. Non-kit ideas would go to marketing. No idea coming out of CuuSoo would ever be marketed under the CuuSoo label, it would just be a regular kit as part of a standard product line. The advantage of this is that when issues like Western Town vs. Lone Ranger and Space Marines vs. Galaxy Squad arise it's not a question of CuuSoo vs. TLG, the successful CuuSoo ideas BECOME PART OF the product designs for those other lines so that the kits ultimately produced reflect the design aspects that got the CuuSoo ideas to 10K support in the first place. 2) I would ditch the entire 1% of retail sales gimmick. Based on offerings to date, the production runs are small, the retail price is modest and that 1% that people are lusting over/vowing to donate to charity probably wouldn't even cover the amount of money half the people on CuuSoo spent on parts to build, and the value of their time to design, their models (at least not the really good ones). Does anyone seriously think they're going to retire and live off of the residuals generated by 10,000 copies of a kit that retails for $35 for the rest of their lives? They'd be better off with "rewarding" successful CuuSoo proposers as contractors; treat them as consultants on the development of a product inspired by their design (within whatever line it fits best, both contractually and marketing-wise), given them a plaque and a check for some (reasonable but token) amount and from that point on, the resulting kit (or part ) is no different from any other LEGO offering. The IP is either Lego in-house or licensed and the CuuSoo proposer has bragging rights and some spending money but that's it. 3) Since I'd get rid of CuuSoo as a product line and attach all products to existing themes or development efforts, I'd also pre-filter new proposals to weed out the obvious or unrealistic before it even goes public. IF TLG knows it can't market a bucket of storm troopers for legal reasons, don't publish such a project and get people's hopes up. If the people doing Modular Buildings know that their next building is going to be a Cinema and that that kit will be out before any similar proposal could reach 10,000 votes, don't allow anyone to post a competing product that you know you're only going to reject later. Of course the problem with these ideas is that goes against the essential rules of bureaucracy. CuuSoo would cease to be it's own little fiefdom; every working group in TLG would need a CuuSoo rep to help screen incoming proposals and address the "fit" of new ideas with ongoing efforts; and, most damning of all, TLG would have to acknowledge the possibility that builder's outside of LEGO _might_ have better ideas for their products than in-house talent. Of course this idea would never work, even if it got 10,000 supporters, it would languish in the review stage for months on end before getting summarily rejected for being in conflict with current business practices.

I was late to the MMV party, but I'm really glad I picked it up eventually. As a set, there are a couple nice, medium sized builds that reminded me of another kit I very much enjoyed back in the day, the 3739 Blacksmith Shop. It also has a good assortment of "set dressing" pieces (apples, fish, barrels, weapons, etc.) if you're into the well accessorized mini-figure scene. Parts-wise, it's a bargain. You'd have a hard time buying the parts piece-meal, used on bricklink for less than the asking price of this set (and that's _before_ they retire the set and the price doubles at legitimate retailers (or goes up by an order of magnitude on eBay, as it probably will eventually). I'm not sure I'd classify it as "best LEGO set ever" as some of the above posters have claimed, but I'd certainly put it on my top ten list. After buy and building it, I went out and bought a second one. Nominally, I bought the second one for the cows. It might seem silly to spend $100 when I could get _just_ cows on Bricklink, but it's such a good set I had no qualms picking up another one in its entirety. My advice would be to get one now while you can, it's a great set and a true value at current prices.

Even at "minifigure scale' official LEGO offerings tend to skimp a bit on the whole 'true to life' proportions. For example the real USS Constitution has a beam of 43ft and length of 175ft at the waterline. Assuming that an average minifigure would be about 6 ft tall in real life that means that a 'scale' model for Constitution should be 160 studs long at the waterline and 40 studs wide. Queen Anne's Revenge (historically a renamed Firgate, The Concorde, of a very similar size and layout to Constitution) as rendered in LEGO is nowhere near this. Not only is she scaled down, she's disproportionately skewed at less than 1/3 the length but only about 1/2 the beam, making it a lot more "tubby" than the real ship would have been. If I were to make a scale version that could fit minifigures without looking ridiculous (as they would on this current model), the engineer in me would force me to keep the proportions (which, of course would translate into a LOT of parts - more than I have at the moment)

This is just wrong on so many levels I don't even know where to start. ... Then again, if those eBay prices actually reflected _real_ market value, maybe I should buy more fire insurance 'cause based on the first page alone I've supposedly got ~$23,000 in models just sitting around my office. Of course they're all opened and assembled THE WAY TOYS ARE MEANT TO BE so I guess there goes my retirement fund... Slabbing a LEGO kit? Ridiculous.

Even though I own the original UCS Star Destroyer, I'd welcome a redesign that WASN'T held together with magnets and so fragile that it sags under its own weight after a decade on display. The Executor is much more sturdy and I can't help but think that a re-design of the older model would use more modern (and structurally sounder) building techniques. But like you, even in a case where an improved model of an iconic ship _could_ be offered in the UCS line, I'm not holding my breath.

Thanks The more I look at this one on the shelf the more I convince myself I should build a bigger one. If I double the scale, it would be about right for minifigures (I like the evil knights as crew idea) and give me some room to play around below deck with some interiors. Based on what went into this one and my own tendency to use small parts, I'd say 5,200 bricks should about do it, perhaps I'll be spending more time with Bricklink after the holidays.

Perhaps the delay is a good sign. Historically, "NO" is an absolute answer that trumps all further processing on the subject, so if it's taken them this long to say no, maybe at least one of the projects is still in the running toward 'yes'.

I'd like to do one at mini-fig scale, right now she's about half that. She's 53 studs long overall (39 at the waterline) which makes her about comparable to the Black Pearl (give or take a bowsprit) but not nearly so "tubby" Rebuilding her to minigifure scale would double the length and the beam and use roughly four times as many bricks. I'm not opposed to that idea (I rather enjoy big builds) I'm just running a little low on black and dark bley parts at the moment so I had to scale things to match parts on hand.

[pid][/pid]144D Please forgive the cross-forum post, I recently completed my design for the Corsairs of Umbar for the Lord of the Rings, but as the Corsairs were, technically, privateers (and I know how much people here enjoy ship designs) I thought I drop a quick pointer just in case anyone was interested but didn't happen to frequent Historic Themes. The vessel is built to roughly half mini-figure scale (I would have preferred minifig scale but both my parts supplies and shelf space are running a little low at the moment). She's 53 studs long overall and 39 studs long at the waterline. I realize I'm lacking rigging and that the lanteen sails would simply luff in their current configuration, but I was shooting more for an abstraction that would "fit" visually with my other (official) LEGO vessels and didn't want to go "line-happy" with string in the name of realism. For the curious, the full post and addition photos can be found here. For those of you who have already found the other post (or simply don't care) please forgive the interruption and ignore me

For a low end set that they're going to sell tens of thousands of to 8 years, they wouldn't. For a high end set sold mostly to AFOLs and non-Lego Star Wars collectors you want limited edition to really mean something. I think TLG is mart enough to learn from what happened with previously hot collectables like beanie babies and comic books. For example a little over a decade ago people who didn't even read comic books were buying them up as "investments" and when an Issue #1 for some new title came out it flew off the shelves because people _assumed_ it would be worth something some day (just like Detective Comics #1 is today) Marvel and DC were selling books as fast as they could print them and most of the books were going straight into storage, unread. The publishers didn't care why people were buying them, they just saw their inventory moving, so they printed more, and more, and more... Pretty much overnight, it dawned on people that the reason old comics were worth thousands was because they were RARE and the chances of a given book from a 500,000 copy print run becoming the only surviving copy in your lifetime was pretty slim compared with being that one mint comic from '1939 that only started with 2000 copies. So, people stopped seeing comics as an investment vehicle and stopped buying them. The people who cared about the comics still bought them, but they turned out to be in the minority and the publishers were saddled with the expense of printing thousands of books that didn't sell because they couldn't constrict their production runs fast enough to compensate for the bubble bursting. So let's say TLG ignored this lesson and reissued another 20,000 copies of the Death Star II. As TheLegoDr points out, a lot of AFOLs who want that kit already bought it, and at the price of it, they're probably not going back for a second one. The Lego Scalpers (the guys who are the reason why there's usually a limit of 5 copies per customer on these high end kits) are still sitting on MSIB copies from the first run and are asking for 1500-2500 USD per kit in the secondary market (I saw one ad recently asking $300 just for the building instructions, no bricks). Now the scalper can't make a profit and is stuck with several copies of a high end set - you may say "no big deal, that's his problem" but this is also the guy who cleans out LEGO's inventory by buying dozens of copies of a particular kit. So if the fans aren't buying and the scalpers aren't buying, who's left? Sure, they'll sell eventually, but an unsold kit isn't an investment for TLG, it's a liability. Kits on shelves and in warehouses don't make money, the product needs to move out the door to keep the revenue stream flowing. If TLG gets a reputation for reissuing "collector" level items, the value of the item is eroded and the urgency to acquire it during the initial production run wanes, it becomes harder to predict what a production run _should_ be to maximize sales while minimizing shelf time and the risk of having too much capital locked into unsold kits sky-rockets. I realize it's frustrating (I'd still like an 8880 supercar mint in box) but from a business perspective its actually better to run out of a hot selling item and discontinue it before the market reaches saturation than to overproduce the item and get stuck with excess inventory. So long as you can come up with "the next hot item" you're better off leaving your customers a little hungry.

Umbar was once the chief southern port of Gondor, but after the fall of Numenor and ages of strife, Umbar became an independent rival state under the control of the Haradrim. The Corsairs of Umbar were nominally privateers, though their fleet included more than 50 capital warships, more interested in destroying Gondorian vessels to exert dominance than raiding them for the sake of simple profit. I've been meaning to do a ship for some time now, and I've also been on a bit of a LOTR kick of late, so the Corsairs of Umbar seemed like a good way to kill two birds with one brick. I debated for some time as to what the ship should look like. The Peter Jackson film envisioned a boat with strong eastern influences, like a junk or a dhow but I know many history buff and fans of the books who firmly avow that the ships are clearly dromonds while still others avidly argue in favor of caravels. After much internal debate, it suddenly dawned on me that, while Tolkien's work was clearly informed by history, it was in no way constrained by it and that, rather than trying to cram an accurate model of an historical ship into Middle Earth, I should just build something with lanteen sails (the only feature all the candidate ships and the text itself had in common)that looked both cool and intimidating. Hopefully it's pretty clear that this is a warship, long keel, narrow beam, battering ram just below the waterline; why even pretend to be a cargo ship? I was really going for something that looked like it could slice through a ships hull as easily as it cut through the waves. The raised afterdeck is so the helmsman can line up a clean shot over the heads of raiders waiting to board the enemy vessel. The top of the ram's base is just visible above the waterline on the bow. A bank of oars (11 per side) helps to put on the extra head of steam for ramming speed (and backing away afterwards) The elevated stern affords a commanding view of the surroundings. The rigging (or entire lack thereof) could use some work, but overall I'm happy with how things came out. Happy sailing....

I would tend to doubt it. It's a big collectable kit and making more of them would probable depreciate the value of the originals and tick off the collectors who are hoarding them. As has been pointed out, they _could_ introduce a new kit of the same subject matter (I've lot count of the number of Millenium Falcon and snow speeder variants there are) and if they did, I'd hope that the revision were more stable than the original (it's very fragile and when knocked over breaks into many small pieces which tend to sit in a bag for over a year waiting for someone to put it back together - but enough about my personal life...) I wouldn't hold my breath though, the UCS stuff seems to be marketed very much along the lines of a "buy it now or regret it forever" mindset.

I pretty much picked up everything that was on my wish list during the Brick Friday event, but there were a few items that weren't available yet that are on next wish list. At the moment, that list includes the entire Hobbit line and two copies of the new TGV train (when it finally comes out). Fortunately I have a birthday in January so I have a good excuse to drop fresh hints to the spouse.

For new stuff, I stick to the main big name channels (S@H, Amazon (itself, not partner vendors), etc). When it comes to "open stock" (new, used, whatever - if it isn't in the factory sealed box, it's open) I only do business via Bricklink and even then I prefer to return to venders I've dealt with before (but obviously had to start somewhere). I actively avoid dealing with internet shops I've never heard of or odd lots from ebay or Craigslist. It's not that I think those venues are intentionally dishonest (though I've heard plenty of horror stories "new" kits missing mini-figures etc.) I'm just not convinced that a lot of those sellers actually know what they've got and may misrepresent their product without even realizing it. Every Bricklink vender I've deal with, however, knows and loves LEGO and makes a serious effort to make sure every order I make is fulfilled to my satisfaction.

I don't make an active effort to keep my older stuff separate (once the model has been taken apart for whatever reason) but with just normal sorting there are certainly old parts that I don't make much use of anymore like the old style wheels with the metal half-axle posts that plugged into the side of a special 2x4 brick, or the old style windows and doors (back when a door was two studs wide and three bricks tall), or my old slabbie pre-mini-figures (my apologies for the less than great photo links, they were the best I could find on short notice - I'm sure Lego Historian could provide much better custom shots). The bulk of my oldest bricks are in red and white and are mixed in with my general collection, but when MOC'ing I'll often notice color drift or excessive scratches and set something aside. Most of the stuff that gets sequestered comes from the old Samsonite era, particularly in (what was once) white, as those bricks tend to yellow and show more wear and tear than the others from the era. I don't get rid of them entirely as there's always a need for an extra piece of structure here and there that doesn't show and they are fine for that, they just don't have the same spiffy look as the modern stuff. That said, I don't think any of my "childhood" sets have survived intact. I'm sure I still have all the part and the instruction so I could reproduce them if I felt like it. But LEGO was a rare and precious commodity when I was growing up so kits were frequently scraped for parts to allow for original creations. I don't tend to buy "used sets." I'll bricklink bulk parts, but between price gouging, sellers who don't know LEGO from Megabloks, and unknowable pedigree and condition of listings by the pound, I just don't bother with ebay, craig's list, or yard sale specials. As for new sets, I tend to build them and keep them together until I either get bored with them or external forces (e.g. cats, curious but careless children, etc) intervene. If a model gets knocked from a shelf or suffers some other traumatic "unbuilding" I'll often bulk it for parts unless it has some specific sentimental value that makes it worth rebuilding.