meyerc13

I haven't been able to access it at all today either. Oddly enough, just yesterday I was thinking that it's been a while since I'd seen missing photos from their last crash. Hopefully this was a planned outage.

Just wanted to add my compliments for this great creation. The ship alone is wonderful, but when you add the hanger equipment it's even better. Definitely eye catching and deserving of its spot on the front page.

I just saw this on Brickshelf, and I was hoping it would be posted on Eurobricks so I could tell you how incredible this is. I'm a fan of old school LEGO sets with the missing fourth wall to increase playability, so to me a creation like this is the best of both worlds since it looks great but also opens for playability. I love all of the little details, the microscope especially caught my eye. Well done! I wouldn't be surprised to see this on the frontpage soon, it is certainly worthy.

You aren't alone, as I'm building a set I start thinking about how useful (or not) the pieces might be. If the set is full of useful parts, I'll probably pick up another for the parts. In some cases a set just doesn't appeal to me, so I'll scavenge it for parts. Examples of this are the Toy Story sets and many Creator sets.

For a $40 set, my first answer would be any set that you can find on clearance now, because you might be able to get $80 worth of LEGO for $40 if you are lucky. I picked up a Mill Village Raid for $35USD and an Alien Conquest HQ for $45, both 50% off, but those deals are getting sparse now. If you're lucky you might still find one. Other than that, take a look at some of the new Bricks and More and basic brick boxes. LEGO seems to be moving toward including more interesting parts in these collections, as well as 1-2 minifigs. The new police and safari sets would net you 4 minifigs and a good number of bricks for about $20-$25 USD (depending on where you shop). Add the airplane building set and you're at about $40 with a bunch of bricks and another couple of minifigs. Creator sets will also get you lots of parts, but not many minifigs (1 at most). If you are looking for a theme set the new 2012 City Vehicles are nice (could pick up a pair for $40US), as are the Friends sets (a bit high on the price/piece, and minidolls instead of minifigs, but the parts are nice to have).

You just had to ask this question didn't you? ;) I just added up my purchases from TRU alone, and it was just under $1200 in 2011. Add another $400+ in second hand purchases, and I'm over $1600. Add another $300-400 from the LEGO store... not to mention Wal Mart, Target, and local resellers. Let's just say I'm quite positive I've spent over $3000, but probably less than $5,000. According to Brickset, the value of my sets is $6,000 which doesn't include most of my second hand purchases or the many pick-a-brick cups I've purchased. Also, sets for my nephews I purchased as gifts wouldn't show up there. And that shows MSRP, but I take advantage of a lot of sales in my LEGO purchasing. I started collecting again around 2009-2010, so 2011 was definitely an expensive year. With all the great new City sets, Friends, LOTR, Creator, and Superheroes, 2012 probably won't fair much better.

We just bought a new couch and love seat, so I had to dig under the cushions before letting the old ones out of the house. Among the LEGO I found (in or under the couch): Trans Clear and Red Cheese slopes Trans Clear Goblet A trans clear facted dome piece that I only remember buying in an Atlantis set, but didn't know was missing A red 1x1 brick a Green slope a Sausage piece The Collectible Minifig Elf's shield (so that's where it went!) various 1x1 round plates A few small Technic pieces Overall, mostly the parts LEGO always gives extras of (and now I think I know why), along with a few pieces I didn't realize were missing (darn kids). Kudos to the couch manufacturer (sadly now out of business, since it was a nice sturdy couch that lasted a long time) for designing the couch to catch LEGO so well (along with lots of crumbs and other assorted bits - both edible and not (aside - how my kids manage to lose almost a whole bowl of cheese nips I can't understand... probably involved them wandering off and a dog trying to steal from the bowl)).

I'm glad I looked in this thread, because normally I wouldn't have given this set a second look since my daughter already has the last version of this. A few things are interesting, first that LEGO seems to be including more plates and other interesting parts. Second, the new brick separator. Not to mention a new minfig torso... this set has now gone on my must buy list. So thanks to whoever asked the question first, and for those who responded with written and pictorial inventories.

One set I found fun to build was Jay's Storm Fighter, which would get you Jay ZX and a Snake staff. The Friends sets are also surprisingly good. The vet has a lot of great accessories like an otoscope and a pen.

I think it is fair to blame the retailer in this case. Almost universally, when someone finds a toy that has been tampered with the retailer is Wal Mart. Sometimes the scammers are sneaky, but I've seen blatant examples in one Wal Mart near me where entire action figures were missing from a package, leaving empty plastic shells in their place. The worst thing, after I pointed this out to an employee the next day the item was back on the shelf! So it's apathetic workers tied with loss prevention specialists who seem to be writing this problem off. I can't believe that there are that many people doing this stuff, it's probably limited to a few bad apples. How hard would it be to correlate returned products with complaints about missing items? A quick database search should show that John Doe returned these five items that later had complaints about missing parts. Obviously they don't consider it enough of a problem to bother. What's interesting to me is that Wal Mart is the same store that won't let me leave with an unbagged item in my cart without checking my receipt (in other words, accusing an honest customer of theft), while doing nothing to stop these dishonest customers from running the same scam over and over. To answer the question... what do I do about stolen pieces? I avoid shopping at Wal Mart as much as possible, and when I do I make darn sure that the box hasn't been tampered with. True, for a scammer who takes the time, they might trick me, but I think that in many cases the scammers don't need to because the employees at Wal Mart don't care.

This is a nice little set, but those life jackets detract from it. Perhaps I am mistaken, but didn't some of these sets ship with the old style life jackets? I have two of these polybags packed away for stocking stuffers, so I'll find out soon enough which life jackets mine came with. Since this is one of the few polybags with two minifigs, that's definitely a high point. 4936 Doctor and Patient is another one that I liked very much for that same reason.

Very nice toy shop. You've given me some ideas for how to use the parts in the LEGO Truck I just bought. LEGO Semi Trucks look great, but they're just too big for a small LEGO City. I'll probably scale the truck down a bit and will likely have quite a few extra parts. The sign on the toy shop is well done, and I like your sports car too. Great job overall!

My son received this set as an early Christmas present, and I built it with him today. This set is an awesome parts pack, lots of new parts and lots of useful but uncommon parts (plates, slopes, hinges, clips). I'm sure I'll pick up another copy to use for parts. The set itself is fun to play with. Yeah, sword blades on the wings are silly, but isn't all of the Ninjago theme? It will be interesting to see the storyline on why the Ninjas switched from dragons to jet fighters... did the snake people charm the dragons and turn them against the Ninjas? We'll see when the cartoon is back next month. The jet itself is fun to play with. Put the snake guy on the edge of a table and Jay can swoop down and make some snake sushi with those wings (try it, it's fun). The wing mechanism on mine doesn't open much on one side, I can't figure out why. Maybe one of the hinge plates is more sticky than the others. Overall the jet is a really solid build. One missing thing is some type of landing gear, but honestly the jet is so fun to swoop around, who wants to land it? Definitely a great set that I'd recommend picking up. Even if you hate it, you'll still have lots of great parts to use for MOCs.

I saw that too, very surprising. Compare that to 7726 Coast Guard Truck with Speed Boat, which had less pieces but was the same price, 3 years ago! I'm really shocked since the trend lately seems to be toward a higher price per piece. This looks like a set I may be picking up now.

I had a similar idea to this, but I think we need some better items to compare. I can live without a McDonald's Cheeseburger, but there are items I always purchase when I go to the grocery store. I think the first step is we should come up with some common items we all purchase regularly. Some of it may be difficult, with different units of measurement, so we'll need to explain how to convert. Some ideas I had: Gasoline Milk Loaf of Bread Pound of Hamburger (this might be a sensitive issue in come countries) Pair of socks (this could vary greatly by type and brand) Even with challenges such as I've noted above, I think a comparison such as this would reveal some interesting things. I suspect that the places where LEGO is more expensive are the places where everything is more expensive. Also, as mentioned above, we'd know to know what the average person takes home in pay. Salary is one measure, but here in the US income tax is deducted, as are things such as health insurance, retirement savings, etc. so my actual net take home pay is much less than my salary.

At my TRU, the $5.99 set is now a $6.99 set. Although that wasn't as bad as the Super Heroes sets... the $12.99 Catwoman set was $19.99. That's got to be a new record 'TRU Tax' markup percentage. Back on topic, the reason I did buy the set was the uniform.

That set is awesome, but 400+ pieces and a boat hull? I'm afraid this is going to cost as much as the Bank and Money Transfer set. Hopefully it clocks in closer to $35-$40... but the Marina is 100 less pieces and has an MSRP of $50 (although it did come with two extra minifigs), so I'm thinking $50 on this set.

I'm not usually a fan of 6 wide cars, but I really, really like these. They look great and the modularity of them is also interesting. MOCs like these make it hard for me to resist converting to 6 wide cars/small trucks. Well done!

I usually apply the stickers, but I wish that LEGO shipped all sets with the sticker sheets backed by cardboard. I was looking at the 2010 Fire Station that I built last year for my kids. At the time the sticker sheet was curled due to packaging, but I tried to straighten it out and use the stickers. Now some of the stickers have curled loose, and with 2 cats and 3 dogs you can imagine how much dust/hair has already started to cover the sticky side. There are a few sets I've bought for parts that I haven't used the stickers. I save the stickers because I can already imagine other users for some of them.

Thanks for the great review! I didn't realize that there were different tan torsos for the officers until I saw your pictures. Is the one supposed to be the female torso and the other the male torso? I love that we are getting female police officers and fire fighters and all of that, but I wish they would release a female hair/hat combo of some sort instead of only having the lipstick to tell the boys from the girls.

Looks good. I don't think I've seen anything like this here... almost every gas station has 24 hour pay at the pump if you have a debit/credit card. The only thing you can't do is pay by cash. Do they allow you to do that at these automated service stations?

I think it looks really good, much better than the original layout. My kids are getting this set, the marina, and the fireboat for Christmas, so I'm going to have to figure out how to integrate those sets into their existing City. This looks great, but might be hard to do on our current tables.

Very nice looking truck. I don't think I've seen that technique with the sideways door used before. Any idea if that is a 'legal' connection under LEGO's design rules, or does it put stress on the pieces? In one of your pictures, it almost looks like one of the bricks is being pushed away.

I'm always excited to see a new MOC posted by you, and once again you've created a great one! I really like the front fenders, I think they are perfect. Well done!

I think with eBay there are some tricks you can use, but my best advice is to know what you are willing to pay and don't go over that amount. One trick I've used in the past is to watch for sales ending at odd hours. If you are a 'night owl' who stays up late, you can sometimes snag a deal before an auction closes later in the evening when other bidders have gone to bed. Keep timezones in mind too. In the US, if you're on the east coast and it's 2am, it's only 11pm on the west coast. So for an east coaster it may be better to get up early to check for auctions that are ending rather than trying to stay up later than the west coasters. Also, watch for auctions ending on Holidays. There are usually less people bidding since they're wrapped up in family activities. One other trick, watch for multiple listings of the same item. Sometimes one is getting a lot of attention, while another ending a short time later isn't getting much attention at all.