fred67

Agreed... I like the Friends AND Elves sets, I just don't like the minidolls - and LEGO is too expensive to throw away the most expensive parts of the sets (and really, who wants to buy them?) This is a great idea, though. Sadly minidolls have caught on... I wish they just used regular minifigures.

VERY nice! I think it's an awesome little ship (see my signature for my first attempt... I think yours is much better).

The problem is that if you are interested in a theme, it's hard to give up on a set that you might very well regret missing out on later on. There's a lot of examples, here, especially licensed sets... when they discontinued Harry Potter, for example, people were very upset about it - they perhaps weren't into LEGO early on in the HP series, or didn't really get interested in HP until later on (that's my experience - I didn't start liking HP until Goblet of Fire). So I missed out on a lot... and when they started releasing a few new HP sets for the last movies, I 'had to" get them all. For a theme like Star Wars I think it's very different - I was ten years old when the first Star Wars film came out; that put me at the PRIME age for being a Star Wars nerd. But I didn't like the later movies (there were things about them I liked, but on the whole not so much); I also decided that, for the most part, I was happy with just ships - since Star Wars seems to be evergreen at the moment, I don't need every version of every ship - I don't need another Millennium Falcon, I don't need another TIE Fighter or X-Wing or Land Speeder - I have an older version of all of those, so I can pass on the newer versions. When LOTR came out, I figured I'd be in it for good... I would need every set released. But I think I started to get jaded about LEGO around that time. I was not happy with the sets that came out, and I was able to start picking and choosing particular sets... in fact, I eschewed most of the sets and bricklinked the remaining party from the Hobbit that I didn't have, and then that was it. I'm glad I was able to break out of the collector 'got to get them all' mentality, but it's easy to understand that a fan of both LEGO and a particular theme will go deep into debt trying to get them all before missing out. They shouldn't, but they do. Exactly (as I said above). I got into LEGO because of trains. The hobby started out small for me, but then it grew to include Star Wars, Harry Potter, Castle, Architecture... it was costing me an arm and a leg, and while I make decent money, I also have a family to support, so it was not good. If I were only interested in one theme, it wouldn't be an issue... I'd say I've spent from 1/5th to 1/6th in the past couple of years what I'd been spending before. I even stopped getting invited to the local store's pre-Black Friday event.... I was invited to the first two, and when I realized why I was invited, I knew it was time to cut back. TLG itself hasn't helped, either. I don't buy train stuff from them anymore because there's so little to buy (I don't like the big sets, and the "creator" engines - Emerald Night, Horizon Express, and Maersk) are so few and far between that it's not even consequential to the budget. The architecture sets have gotten so huge and expensive that I just stopped... In recent years, I've only gotten an Eiffel Tower for my daughter. I have all the Star Wars ships I'm going to want... they only things they still have me hooked on are Modular Buildings and collectible minifigures - both things I can use to bulk up my some-day LEGO train layout. Modular buildings are only once a year anymore, so they're no big deal, and I'm really starting to lose any excitement I had towards CMFs.

Three's a coincidence, not a pattern. I think that's what Duq is alluding to. <pessimist mode enabled> In fact, I'm starting to find it tiresome that, not only in this thread, but just about every thread for some theme - pirates, vikings, and castle in particular, that people suggest "it's time" for a certain set to come out. The LEGO Group doesn't care about what you think... they are in it for the money, and they make what they think will make them the most money. Kids aren't into trains they way they were when I was little, that's just a fact of life, so LEGO trains will be fewer and farther between as time goes on. TLG lost a TON of money way back when they did a-la-carte trains, selling straight and curve packs separately, selling cars and engines separately... they are NOT going to repeat that mistake again. If you want LEGO trains to be your serious hobby, you will HAVE to look to third parties in order to make it happen - from people like SavaTheAggie selling engine plans on Bricklink, RailBricks instructions and the like, to places like ME models making track in the lengths and curves radii that you want.... The LEGO Group is NOT going to give you what you want, you're not a kid, you're not their target audience. The occasional creator train aside, you have to be more proactive in order to keep L-Guage going as a hobby.

I've been buying whole boxes from Ebay since series 3 and have yet to have a problem. The only drawback is that I often have to wait maybe a month after the figures are released in stores to get mine, but I'm a patient man, so that's not been an issue. If you order early enough, it's also at (sometimes a little below) cost, and free shipping from the seller I've been buying from. Also knowing what the counts will be from WhiteFang's reviews allows me to go to the stores and pick out the few extras I might want early on. I will likely start reverting back to hand picking them at the store, but that is not without it's pitfalls, too... I don't think I've seen anyone get a hot-dog guy in the store after the box has been opened. I'm not a huge fan of hot dog guy, but I would still want one for my complete collection.

@GallardoLU, that's an interesting point. I was just thinking about this the other day. Keeping in mind that people living in those areas generally have higher incomes, though... I was offered significantly more pay for a job in the San Jose, CA area than I was for a job in GA. I took the job in GA because, by cost of living estimates, the amount was roughly equal. However, financially speaking, the job for more money in CA would have been better. Theoretically I would have had the same spending power, but LEGO costs the same (before taxes) no matter where you go, as do a lot of goods - MSRP for cars, for example, doesn't vary by state (although CA adds other charges, so not a great example). IOW, if I had to spend 70% of my income for necessities, that would give me 30% for extra spending... 30% of what I was offered in CA is a LOT more than 30% of what I made in Atlanta. Financially I'd have been much better off in CA. Luckily, having lived on both coasts, that's what really made the decision for me... I'm an East Coast guy.

How does it compare to the Mythical Creatures (4894) Dragon? I have the smaller fantasy era dragons and this one... Smaug and this one are obviously bigger, but I don't have a Smaug to compare.

Thanks for posting this. I have very simple needs, I don't have a complicated layout... I'd just like to do something like a train doing it's loop some random number of times and stopping occasionally at a station; I'd also like to play out train sounds. I'm not sure if I want to try RaspberryPi or Aduino; I've seen some cool mini-LCD displays (like train schedules) with RaspberryPi. In any event, I'm barely electronics literate, but these things are inexpensive enough to experiment with, so thanks for posting again - it's the kind of push someone like me needs to actually try it out instead of thinking about it.

I posted the solution... explicitly filter it into your inbox. Problem solved.

What zux said... if you know a set that the part was in, look it up in bricklink's catalog. In the listing, it will show an "(inv)" link to go directly to the set's inventory. If you go to the catalog page instead, the upper right will have a link... for the 4504 Millennium Falcon, it looks like this: This Set Consists Of: 971 Parts 5 Minifigs (View Inv) View Inv the inventory link. You can also go to catalog tab, click on "parts" link, and just browse the whole thing... you never know what you'll find.

Honestly? I didn't visit your page - you're not supposed to use EB to lure people to your ideas page. If you want to put pictures here, then go ahead, and you'd probably spur a lot of great discussion, and if I liked it I would go to your page and support it. But I really don't like when people would start a new thread about some great new MOC they made... and provide a link to ideas to get a page hit or something.

Clarifications about U.S. taxes... First, there's generally no federal sales tax (except on certain things regulated by the federal government, like cigarettes and gasoline), so there's no federal sales tax on LEGO. Second, the United States was originally something a lot more like the European Union than a single country. We often talk about countries around the world and interchange the words country and state ("nation state," "sovereign state," "member state" - so Canada is a member state of the united nations, not a member "country"). The United States joined together a bunch of independent states. The federal government, like the governance of the EU, issued a common currency, set policies for interstate commerce, and set some national standards, and we were joined for a common defense... but mostly states were free to run themselves independently. Our political structure has changed wildly over the years, as has the power of the federal government over states, but a lot of that legacy still exists. So yes, some states have higher sales taxes than others; some states have no income tax. Cities are also free to implement their own sales taxes. In fact, in my state, every county can set it's own sales tax. Every city can have it's own property taxes. So, for example, I live in an "unincorporated" part of my county, so I pay county property taxes. If I lived a tenth mile closer to the closest city, I'd also have to pay city property taxes on top of that.... but I'd also be able to do things like reserve a part of the city park for a party without having to pay for it. I pay 6% sales tax in my county; when I drive into Atlanta for work, not only are they in a different county, but the city also adds sales tax... so I pay 9% if I buy something at or near work. So it doesn't just vary state to state, but county to county. It might seem crazy, but we're still only paying 9% (probably a bit more than that in places like NYC), while people in other countries are paying 20% already built into their prices. It's partly (and intentionally) because of competition... states that want you to live there and do business there often offer lower taxes, both on sales and income.

Probably open studs joined with either a bar, or more likely a hose:

I wouldn't think they'd disqualify you for transportation or setup fees. You could double-check the ideas rules, but let's face it... while we'd love to see a set like, do you really think TLG will choose it anyway? But I could go either way... I might be happy to just do it for free, but I also have a lot of stuff going on, and taking all that time to ship and set it up, I probably wouldn't mind getting a little reimbursement.

Yeah, my conversations were going to spam... simply saying they aren't spam doesn't help. I created a filter (settings->filters) to explicitly tell it to put mail from EB into my inbox.

... and the Death Star will still be worth something five years from now... and will probably increase in value when TLG finally discontinues it. I'm like that... I've cut WAY back, but I have loads of shelf and closet space filled with unopened LEGO because I just don't have display space to build it, but I can't allow myself to miss a good set and regret it later on... so I keep finding new places to stash my unopened LEGO. I've started unboxing sets to make things fit in less space.

I don't like brickowl. I understand the complaints about bricklink - the look and feel of the site is straight out of the 90s. I don't need bells and whistles, but we need better functionality. However, the crux to using either site is the wish/wanted list functionality. I found BL a bit clumsy, but was able to figure my way through it and found it very useful. The BO wanted list was terrible, by comparison. BO looks a lot nicer, but a lot of the actual interaction with the site, building lists and searching, isn't any better than BL at all. And when I wanted to limit my wanted list to the U.S., and couldn't figure it out, I asked in the forum and got NO answers for several days (I stopped checking afterwards). By comparison you get answers to questions on the BL forum in minutes. Having the complete payment option in BO is great... I know they are trying to roll out something like that for BL, but I have yet to see it. For everything else, I find BO has a prettier face, but doesn't work any better... and in some ways worse. To stay back on topic, I agree with the others and, in particular, Timinchicago; The first choice is always the wall at the LEGO store if they have what you want, and you're nearby. Second, I look at both BL and S@H PAB; if what I want is uncommon, and I need a lot of them, it's actually often cheaper to S@H... but it does take a lot longer to ship. But those are rare occurrences when it's an odd part. There's also a LOT of parts that S@H just doesn't sell anymore, and of course, you can't buy licensed stuff from PAB (like licensed figures). I have well north of 100 BL orders, and have encountered problems from time to time. Sometimes I'll be missing a batch, or a batch will be light (get 99 instead of 100 pieces). I only had one really bad experience with a guy who just disappeared for a couple of weeks without even invoicing me. That said, the good sellers make it up to you when the mess up an order, and I've only really had the one time where I was really unhappy. By contrast, when you've had that many orders, there's bound to be problems (unfortunately). I can rag on BL, but I've had problems with S@H, too. I guess, ultimately, all of these services are ok to use with some diligence... a lot better than ebay.

Agree with everyone else, although I have hopes that ME models will pull through with their metal track and maybe introduce a new compatible motor. Until then, PF is the only really reasonable solution.

I think it's less about pose-ability than play-ability. These are probably easier for kids to keep them standing.

Wondering what percentage of EB readers are scratching their heads and what percentage knows what the heck you're talking about. FWIW, sci-fi and horror are rife with "mad" scientists, they're not all Victor Frankenstein!

Oi, Raphael! Good luck on your study. I know LEGO is hard to come by in Brazil compared to other countries... My wife is from Belo Horizonte, so I've visited often enough. Boa noite.

The time I got a k-box of 2x4, I think I got something like 640 bricks. It might have been slightly higher priced compared to optimally packing cups, but only if your time isn't valuable. At $110 it's an absurd price. I agree with B Whitty. Parts like this should be relatively cheap... but then if they were, people would buy fewer sets for parting out.

Yeah... again, not a fan of this series (but Halloween is absolutely my favorite holiday, so I don't think that's it), but if we were getting the exact same things, I could see the complaint, but we're not. What's a Zombie Apocalypse with 100 of the exact same zombie? Diversity is good... you don't want 5 police officers in your LEGO city that all look identical, you don't want 5 identical child figures walking down the LEGO street with 5 identical moms or dads, or a dozen peasants in your castle MOC that are all the same. Everyone seems to go nuts over a figure because it's got new print on the legs, or some really (IMO) minor little detail-ly things... but when you get diversity for monsters it's just "rehashes." I think having several wolf-men is great for MOCs, especially given their continuity... one bites the lumber jack, the lumber jack becomes a werewolf... perfect. Zombie Apocalypses need many varied zombies; different crazy/mad scientists fit better in different MOCs... Yes, I'd like to see more new things, more mythology and historical figures... I think that's part of the problem, is we have these threads where we talk about things like what we really want in a series, and are then doubly disappointed when the next series is actually nothing like what we were hoping for. I think why I'm disappointed is that I wanted more "serious" figures... on one hand it's laughable because, hey, it's minifigures! And it's for kids, not me... but if I want variety in witches, I don't want a cartoony kid dressed as a witch, I want another Macbeth witch. About the only one that I think is a valid complaint is Frankenstein's monster, because there's only one. Having more than one seems pointless. Having one making a silly face seems pointless. But that's just me. Like I said before, shrug and move on. Of course, like the post above mine says... it's easy for me to be annoyed at Frankenstein's monster because I already have one (and one without a silly, pointless expression).

That's what makes you so creative... I have tons of bricks and often lament that I don't have the right parts. You work with what you have. Hat's off to you.

Well... what are you blocking? If you have fluorescent lights, I'd suggest replacing them with LED. If it's light from windows, then there's something like this you can get for the windows. Depending on your glass display case, you could put that coating on it, as well, but it wouldn't work for unusual (like dome) shapes. Some display cases already have UV protection.