Roger_Smith

No. But still, I have more sets sitting around waiting to be built than built sets on my shelves (counting modern sets only). Didn't feel like tackling a big build (nearly all those sets are modulars or modularsized) during the summer time, since it easily takes me 3-4 days (I like to savor the building process and take my sweet time) to build a 2000+ piece set. Somehoew, doing that feels more at home in the ugly seasons, when it's cold and uncomfortable outside.

I prefer pictorial reviews. There regularly were some great ones on here when I first joined 18 months ago, and I had a lot of fun reading them, even if they concerned sets/themes that were of little to no interest of them. Over the past months, they becanem rarer and rarer (or maybe they just weren't highlighted on the front page as much?), and I would really love to see more of them again.

Alright, so it looks like I'm gonna tackle something like this as well. A couple of months back, I bought an extra used Pet Shop on Ebay. Over the past few days, I've spent a lot of time brooding over the Green Grocer instructions with the aim of figuring out all the replacements and part quantities I'd need to use the Pet Shop bricks as a starting point for a 'Blue Grocer'. I spent most of the past 3 evenings separating the pieces I could use from the Pet Shop from the ones I don't need, and also taking pieces from the rest of my collection (since the modulars and a few choice sets are the only modern sets I own (with everything else dating back to the 80ies/early 90ies) that wasn't much). Taking everything into account, I currently have 1039 out of the 2378 pieces I will need for the build. 868 of those are from Pet Shop, the rest are from my collection. Here's the main substitutions I'll make: Sand Blue bricks replace the Sand Green ones. Sand blue 1x8s don't exist, so they'll be replaced by different combinations of 1x6s and 1x4s Reddish Brown bricks replace the Earth Green ones (mainly because Pet Shop offers an abundance of them) Regular 1x2 white bricks replace the white 1x2s with groove (the groove is barely visible in the build, and I wonder why they were included in the first place) Minifigures from Pet Shop replace the ones from Green Grocer (I honestly don't care what they look like, maybe I'll switch them round a bit so they won't look exactly the same as the ones from PS, but beyond that, I don't care) I thought about replacing a few layers of light bley bricks with reddish brown ones aswell, but refrained from that idea as it either would have affected the front of the ground floor negatively, or would have required extensive replanning to keep its appearance. And light bley bricks are very comon. Bricklink, here I come. 1339 bricks to go :)

Never noticed it in white, but my Pet Shop has two very distinct shades of sand blue mixed together, and in Palace Cinema I got a couple of light bley clips that were actually somewhere between light bley and dark bley in color. Doesn't really ink me, though, as color variations occur in nature aswell.

Well, you definately have a lot of parts for 6956 Stellar Recon Voyager in there (http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/6956-1). pt 2337 in trans neon green is a dead giveaway (exclusive to that set), and a lot of the other parts that can be seen can also be attributed to this set. As there is a second 2507 windscreen piece, there might be some parts from 6923 Particle Ionizer in there, aswell, it's hard to tell (http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/6923-1) Stellar Recon Voyager alone fetches 30-40 bucks on Ebay, so you made a great deal there already. The rare big trans blue panel pieces most likely come from 6396 International airport (assuming the lego is all from the same period), which was a very large set. Don't see many other pieces that could be attributed to that set, though. They also appeared in one other set, another airport from 2006, but somehow that seems unlikely.

Brilliant MOC

You have to be very careful when buying bulk, but if you take precautions and follow some rules, you can get really good deals. These are some of the things I check for when looking at auctions: - is there only one picture showing the lot in a box/big pile of bricks (shown on a blurry photo) or similar? -> avoid, no way of telling what's in there. Always go for lots that are documented well in several pictures! - does the lot seem to be comprised mainly of basic bricks in the classic colors? -> avoid, those are useless to me and I have enough of them already - are there any identifiable sets to be seen on the pictures that interest me? (either visible fully built, or half built remains, or sometimes even the presence of several giveaway pieces that indicate a high potential that a certain set is in the lot) - how many useful/rare parts can be identified on the pictures? As I'm personally mainly after 80ies/early 90ies space stuff, lots that have a lot of white, blue and grey or have descriptions like "from the attic, 80ies Lego" are of special interest to me. So far, all the lots I won were what I expected or more, some of them easily would be worth several times the amount I paid for them if I was to put the sets contained therein back on Ebay.

In the case of something this dirty, I'd first give it a good showering with hot water, then disassemble it using gloves, put the pieces in laundry bags or old cloth bags (make siure they can't open, i.e. by using zip-ties) and throw the whole lot in the washing machine. I bought several lots of used Lego over the past 18 months, ranging from fairly clean to very dirty, and they all looked like new after that treatment. You just have to make sure that the bags used are intact. You don't want one of them splitting open in mid-wash, trust me... 1x16 bricks or large plates are a risk factor here, so I usually put those in extra.

...and here I was, thinking that my recent Lego purchase including Benny Spaceship!³ would be my last until the release of the next modular building... Oh well, at least a couple of minifigures won't be too expensive. Also, this will be the first time I buy something focused solely on minifigures.

Very nice modular! The interior of the menswear store is nicely detailed, and the darker atmosphere is fitting with an upper class store. The dance studio is, well, a big empty space, just as it should be . Small suggestion here, maybe use 1x2 tiles on the floor in every second row to get an offset, which would add some dynamic. How did you do the mirrors?

Nope, that's not a right price. That's a pretty good bargain. Even though I only count 7 sets (not 9), getting all of these individually on the after market would cost you way in excess of 1000€. The 5 that are still available in retail go for about 120-140€ used, with the exception of Town Hall, which is more in the 150-170€ area, being more expensive in retail aswell. Fire Brigade usually goes for about 200-225€ these days. And I don't follow Green Grocer listings anymore as I've given up on that one, but it's propably still in the 400-500€ range, if not more... So even by conservative estimates this offer is a good 300€ below the current secondhand market prices. And if there are doubles of some of the sets (to get up to that 9 modulars), it's even more of a bargain.

Personally, I'm very glad that the modulars use the old smiley faces, and I would be very disappointed if they changed that. It's a nice nod to Lego's heritage. Obviously, nostalgia plays a role here, too, but in a good way . I distinctly remember building Fire Brigade (my first lego set in about 20 years) and being very impressed by the overall building experience, but having the classic faces was a nice flashback to my childhood. I think that some of the modern faces are too exaggerated, which I don't like. Some of them also show momentary expressions like shock, surprise, intense joy, and having a minifig displaying those expressions permanently for me feels kinda creepy.

Spent the weekend in Leipzig and went to the Lego store. First time I've been to one, unfortunately I didn't have much time. I had considered buying something from the PAB wall, but it didn't have many pieces that interested me. Still, I got these sets: The Simpsons House Benny's Space, Spaceship, SPACESHIP! Ghostbusters Ecto-1 And the Balloon stand :)

Great work, I especially like the grill. Youi've taken many design elements from the official modulars and some nice ideas of your own to create something unique, well done!

Thank you, Rufus, for this outstanding review of an awesome set. If I hadn't decided to buy this the very minute I saw the first pictures that surfaced, your review certainly would've convinced me. I always enjoy your writing style and attention to detail, along with the humor you always sneak in. And your photography is flawless.

Wow, that perfectly captures the old 'Länderbahn'-Flair. Exceptionally executed, I even thought "T3 with tender" when I saw the locomotive. The passenger cars are very well-done aswell andlook very realistic.

Well done, truly a beautiful building. Building a medieval house is on my list of possible future projects too, maybe I'll even model it after the one I live in :D

The post office might also work if they just put it on the ground floor, and something else above it. Kind of like the Green Grocer, only maybe put something commercial on the first floor (second floor in the US). I just had this idea, how about a dancing school? Still not much in terms of play features, but done right they might reel in some girls (like they did with the Fire Brigade and boys). Plus, they could basically cheapen out of doing a whole lot of interior on that floor at the cost of a few additional minifigs. Third floor could be an apartment for the dancing master or something. Good point about the Post Office play features, didn't really think of the behind the scenes stuff there. Still I do think that the more stories a modular inspires, the more individual "scenes" it contains, the more popular it is. Parisian Restaurant offers lots of small scenes (the proposal in the restaurant, the general people going out to eat concept, the artist in the top floor painting, and whoever lives in the apartment relaxing, then folding out his bed... That's quite a lot of different angles for such a small building. In contrast, think of the Town Hall where you can basically stage out the marriage, and that's pretty much it, aside from doing some administrative stuff (which is about as interesting as returning books to the library or buying a stamp) But, I guess there's lots of reasons why one modular gets really popular and another doesn't. These are all just theories. I also think that the computer is a glitch. All other technology visible in the modulars looks like something straight out of the 1930ies-1950ies.

I think a Police Station is the most likeliest if the next modular is going to be a civic building again. It would be the perfect replacement for the Fire Brigade. And both themes, fire fighters and police, have always featured heavily in the City theme. If the theory that one of the reasons Fire Brigade was so popular was because it bridged the gap between City and the modulars, it would seem only logical to try and repeat that with a police station. The only other obvious choice from among possible civic buildings that could offer similar play value would be a hospital, and I just don't see that working in the modular scale. A Library or a post office would surely make for a great building, but they don't offer those kind of obvious play features - or did anyone ever think, "Damn, I'd like to play 'returning books to the library' now!"? They serve very mundane tasks, so the play or story features that most modulars have would have to be equally constructed as the wedding stuff in the Town Hall. Thus, they would share that trait with the Town Hall, and apparently that one isn't doing as well as the other modulars. A museum might be another story, as they could either have an exciting exhibit (I hear dinosaurs are always popular) or maybe do an art museum and stage a break-in. Still, I'd put my money with the Police Station.

Very cool review. Makes me want to get the set even more.

Is it that valuable overseas? Anyway, 80$ for shipping sounds like a total ripoff, so I'd wait for another offer.

Not impressed by this. It looks more like something that would get released in the City line than an Creator Expert model. There's worlds between the Grand Carousel and this. I'm not into carnival stuff in general, but still I always thought that the Grand Carousel was a breathtaking model. The Fairground mixer was obviously designed with a huge focus on playabilty and interesting play features. And it succeeds at that, some of the features shown are really impressive. But it does so at the cost of realism and basically just looks like a huge playset. It would look right at home next to, say, the City Square, but strangely out of place next to the Grand Carousel, which also works perfectly as a display model. So I guess it's all right if you're into that kind of sets, but for me it just doesn't cut it.

That window is 8 studs from the back of the groundplate. It will be obscured if you put the PR next to a corner building or next to the Town Hall. Fire Brigade or Pet Shop all have 8 studs clearance from the back wall of the building to the end of the plate, so the window will not be obscured if you put PR next to either of those.

The set number could very well be real, but that in no way signifies that that set would fit in with the modular buildings, just because its number is in the 10.000-range does in no way signify that. That range is used for many big, exclusive sets. The Grand Carousel was #10196 (Fire Brigade was 10197). The Maersk Ship is 10241, while Parisian Restaurant is 10243. And so on. They just give these out in the order the exclusive sets are released.

Wow. That's going to be a massive, beautiful build. You need to take some pics together with the DeLorean when you're done