Carrera124

I made screenshots and sent them to brickfactory.info, you can download them from there.

I just fell in love with the purple (standard) studded technic bricks

I am looking for instructions 851, 852, 853, but only the "newer" booklet versions. No punchholes intended, but I don't care if the additional "idea pages" are missing. BL mainly offers the earlier "poster" versions :-( Christian

At eBay, I only buy sealed sets. I also bought some used sets, but it was like playing roulette. All used sets were described as "complete" and "good condition". But most of them had missing and/or broken parts, so I had to replace/complete them by buying single parts at BL. Finally, decided to buy used sets only if a MISB one is really expensive (e.g. 8868). At Bricklink, things are better but not perfect. I never got used sets with missing parts, but in some (few) cases some parts were in bad condition. On the other hand, some BL sellers sent used sets/parts that look like new, everything in perfect condition. -> sealed sets: more eBay, less BL -> used/sets/parts: more BL, less eBay

You're right, Bricklink prices are sometimes... special. During the last 2 years, I bought lots of older Technic sets from the 80s and 90s in MISB state, and most of them had affordable prices. Only few sets reached €100 or more. So, a re-release of these sets wouldn't make any sense for TLG, as long as MISB originals are available and/or don't reach high prices. Maybe most of the fans buy used sets, which helps as lot to reduce the costs. But some sets like 8868/8480 reach high prices even in used and/or incomplete state (and MISB ones are very very expensive). These sets would be proper candidates to be re-released without TLG causing to loose money, but on the other hand this old stuff would collide with current TLG product strategy for techic sets.

As I don't like the modern studless technic sets, I'd buy 100% accurate re-releases of sets like 8868 and 8480.

Some weeks ago, I got this set in MISB state. And I couldn't resist to open/build it Alothoug it has been the 1989 flagship set, the structure and build is rather simple. But it looks good, the features work well, and it offers great playability. The B-model is great, too. The only thing I don't like is the fact that 8862 uses only yellow beams and plates. A black (or gray) chassis, similar to 8849, would have been a good idea.

I also own a number of older sets that were never mixed up with other sets. Because I want to keep them in original state. It's quite an interesting challenge to create MOCs when using only a limited amount of parts/bricks, given by the original inventory of the respective set.

+1 I admire the advanced building techniques that MOC builders have developed, but personally I stick to the classic building style of the 80ies / early 90ies.

856 and 8551. They are not beautiful related to "beauty", but they are beautiful related to "realism". And not to forget about 8848, the first Unimog.

Model Team sets use large amounts of plates, some classic bricks and few technic elements where needed (steering, axles). Imho, the Model Team series has been an early approach to appeal to older buyers, today known as "AFOLs" E.g. I saw quite a number of MT sets (especially 5590s) that have been bought and built once for static display purposes, because they simply look good. I also notice that used MT sets often come with their original box. Which indicates that they were bought as "single" sets from people that wouldn't have bought other "standard" Lego sets. Because they didn't want to play with Lego, they just wanted to build a nice static display model. In contrast to that, Technic sets had a "technical play" approach, I guess most of them were bought just like town/space/knight sets. Original boxes were dumped, parts were mixed up with other sets.

Do you have pictures of reatiler's catalogs from the late 70s to the 80s ?

Received this set as a christmas gift in 1989. Still own it today, kept in it's original box, and the parts never been mixed up with other sets. I really like this little forklift, because it works very good, much better than 850 and 8843. The color scheme is appealing, white technic bricks were somewhat special back then. At least for me, because yellow/red/blue were the technic bricks I had tons of.

I remember this set being sold in Germany, too. It has been advertised as kind of "getting started with Lego Technic" for only DM 12,95, while the smallest official set 8020 was priced DM 19,95 back in those days. A friend of mine bought it, because he was mainly interested in the knights theme, but he wanted to try something else. But he didn't like it, so we swapped :-) I got 1972 with box, he got some other Lego parts.

Thx, didn't realize that "search" is a link that leads to a detailed search form.

Does the BL store search need a special syntax? E.g., I know that this shop offers lots of parts in unusual colors: http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=MAGICBRICKS All special parts are marked with "HTF" in the text description. But when I type HTF into the "search store" textbox, no items are found. Technical issue within Bricklink?

While building, did you check if all bricks and plates are aligned perfectly, and if all axles and gears are able to rotate without friction? Due to the numbers of involved axles and gears, even small amounts of friction accumulate, and may result in a drivetrain that stucks.

I don't know, but I guess the reason is that today, much more new sets are released during one year. Even the "big" printed catalog is updated twice per year. If today's sets would be equipped with 80ies- like printede catalogs, these catalogs would be outdated nearly right after they were printed... and if a set is sitting in a store for 1-2 years, it would still contain a catalog that shows many sets which aren't available any more.

The last technic set that I bought as A child, was 8856 Whirlwind Rescue. Waht brought me back around 2006-2007 were the vintage Technic sets that I wanted to have as a child, but couldn't. E.g. sets like 8862, 8855, 8094. Thanks to eBay and BL, I was able to buy some classic technic sets in MISB state at reasonable prices. Usually, I buy MISb sets with crushed boxes, because I like to build them with unused bricks. I also bought some modern sets like 8070, 8109, 9798 but I prefer the classic studded building style instead of the modern studless models.

This summer, I got a MISB 8457 for €130 at Ebay

Very well done. I am also interested in instructions (for the whole car). Of course, not for free, I would pay for them.

Town... I just realized that I had (and still have) 90% of the line-up that has been released between 1980 and 1984: 6361 6362 6363 6364 6366 6367 6368 6371 6372 6373 6382 6384 6391 6480 6501 6502 6503 2x 6521 6523 6530 6601 6605 3x 6606 3x 6607 6608 6609 6610 6611 6612 6613 6621 6622 6623 6624 6627 6628 3x 6629 6630 6634 2x 6641 6647 6650 2x 6651 6652 6653 6654 6655 6657 6659 6676 6677 6678 6680 2x 6681 6682 6684 6685 6686 6687 6692 6693 6694 6697 6698 Technic: 854 872 1972 2x 8020 8024 8030 8040 8044 8064 8074 8620 8660 8700 8810 8825 8830 8832 8835 8838 8840 8841 8842 8843 8845 8850 8851 8854 8856 (last set I bought before other things became more interesting...) 8865 Still own everything today. Some parts show heavy playwear, but I always kept an eye on the instructions, so all survived in good condition. Around 1988, I started to keep the boxes of the Technic sets, and I stopped to mix the new-bought sets with all my older parts. So, these sets still have all their original parts.

Some days ago, my Firefox & Avast also reported malware on the site.

When 8462 was released, I thought that it was ugly and had nothing to do with "classic" Lego Technic that I knew. Last year, I checked the building instructions at Peeron, changed my mind, bought a MISB set and built it Imho, it's a nice mixture of classic studded technic bricks, some additional studless parts and pneumatic elements. It still looks a little bit strange to me, but parts, building experience and features were convincing

I guess I looked at the wrong picture... the set shown on the left side of the Spielzeug-Ring catalog is 730. The set shown on the top left corner of the Idee+Spiel catalog is 710.