fred67

While I agree with this (and it's probably really unpopular around here to do so), there's two sides to this. I recall the discussions I'd had years ago about the MPAA and the RIAA going after people "pirating" movies and music. I firmly believe in IP and copyright and patent protections, and I think when people try to capitalize on the work of others in a way that can financially harm the IP holder, it's really terrible and a big part of what is wrong in the world today - lack of respect for the rights of other people. In the case of the RIAA and MPAA, all the lawsuits they filed amounted to practically nothing - they spend millions of dollars on lawyers and court fees, and don't recover even a fraction of what they lost. They also lied about the amount of "harm" that was done to them, but that's a different discussion. Ultimately they blew a lot of money that comes from guess where? The consumers are who are legally purchasing the products. The same thing is happening here - I will never try to justify what LEPIN has done, NEVER, but the people buying LEPIN sets were never likely going to buy the LEGO original in the vast majority of cases. People buy LEPIN because it's cheap. LEGO is expensive. It's that simple. It's not a justification, and in both the media companies and LEGO cases, I would never suggest that it's OK to buy a bootleg of something - either pay what the IP holder is asking, or don't; this isn't like stealing bread to feed a starving family. So TLG may succeed in slowing down LEPINs IP infringement, but it won't stop, it won't stop with LEPIN, as other companies are also doing it, and ultimately TLG is spending far more on legal fees than they could hope to recover in the form of people buying their sets instead of knockoffs. At the same time, TLG is required to defend it's IP or risk losing it. So there's a fine balance there between spending too much on legal fees, or not defending your IP enough. It's not a simple question, and there's no simple answer. It just sucks that there are so many greedy people out there. I don't buy from these knockoff brands, but I do see original content coming from some of them that is sullied by the other sets they are selling that are blatant rip offs.

Cool. Yes, I am a huge fan of Supernatural, and while I'm working I even leave it on in the background (TNT shows it for several hours every day). Cool representation of the car and Sam and Dean, I will have to consider doing something like this.

That's one giant Uni-Kitty. Is that a set? Well done, though - with tight space, most of need a higher grade in order to make a nice layout.

If you're going to sell on Ebay, I'd check the 6 months sales average on bricklink (for used sets). It's not perfect, but it's a good way maybe to set your reserve prices. I would add up to 25% for a buy-it-now option. I've had bad luck trying to sell here and elsewhere (including Craigslist and Reddit, among others). But I take that sales average, consider the lowest currently available price on bricklink, and then lop off another 10 to 20% because I figure people don't know me, and they could just as easily buy it from bricklink. So I feel like I'm offering great prices, and yet i don't have a lot of success selling and I don't know why. I think one of the problems is that I'm offering pretty much the lowest I'll accept and so some people might think it's a scam to get a set that low; others want to haggle and are turned off when I won't do it. I think it's a mental thing - I should ask for more to leave in some haggling room, but my mentality asks "why make things more complicated, just ask for what you will accept."

That's pretty amazing, really well done.

That's about right, but the baseplate won't fit in the display case I use. If you're not going to use one of those cases, then it looks like it'll work just fine.

@jonwil In my Fire Brigade, every single dark red 1x1 tile broke when I tried to apply it. It frankly looked like they were too small, based on the way they were damaged (they all cracked in half from a corner to the opposite corner). Now people will suggest I was somehow doing it wrong, that I'm just a ham-handed moron, and I might think the same of someone else if it weren't for the fact that I could go into my own collection of parts, pull out 19 red 1x1 tiles, and happily place them all without breaking a single one. So there is definitely a quality control issue there. It's difficult to think that it was a mold problem, despite the fact they seemed just a bit too small. They definitely had to be more brittle, and perhaps weren't cooled properly. I don't know - but I do know that it seems to be a particular problem with these colors. Oh, and for the record, it's the one and only time TLG totally failed me - they said they would replace them (I sent them a link to the picture I had of the broken pieces); when I never received them (like a month later), I called back and they claimed the parts were on the way. I never got them. I never pursued it, as the time I wasted on the phone with them was worth more than the parts themselves.

No, I really can't. It would make me build a new one that I don't have time for right now. Why don't you try in Stud.io or LDD?

I have the luxury of having some bonus room space that I put cheap shelves in.

I think it's probably easier for machines to sort. They are also probably sourced from different locations, and it's easier to keep those pieces separated if they're in their own bags, but I don't really know - it's all just conjecture on my part. To answer your other question, the bags are great for keeping the set together, but then they typically go into box (I use those "bankers boxes" a lot, as well as for my instructions), or sometimes into the plastic "shoe box" size (6qt) containers when they are small enough to fit a whole set (or multiple sets).

@Coren http://www.brickgun.com/Labels/BrickGun_Storage_Labels.html There are other labels, but they were designed for a Brother label maker, which I didn't feel like spending something like $70 for. They are probably better, though. I just printed these on plain paper and taped them; I also had to hand write a few as they are definitely lacking.

Very cool; thanks for posting this. I really enjoyed reading it.

There's not really a whole lot to say - there are links to the container store above, if I'm not mistaken; the build is pretty simple - exactly what it looks like. Every one I've done so far is different, I just use filler bricks underneath. Here's a very recent look at my collection: https://imgur.com/a/fiyLB7E Here is a longer thread that shows a lot of other options:

It helps if you set your country or region, or at least say it somewhere in the post.

Reddish-Brown and Dark Red are notorious.

Buyer pays shipping except for over $25 in polybags. Keep in mind large boxes cost a lot to ship. I will unbox if desired. Outside of North America, buyer pays all shipping. https://imgur.com/a/D2tnyNd Polybags are listed at the current lowest BL prices in North America - I'm certainly willing to negotiate down form there, especially for multiples. If you look at the pictures, you'll see I have a lot of multiples of some bags. Polybags: TMNT Shredder 5002127 $3.00 Rocket Racoon 5002145 $8.00 Hulk 5000022 $22.00 Thor 30163 $7.00 X-Wing 30051 $9.50 Shuttle 30050 $5.50 Speeder Bike 30005 $9.00 AT-ST 30054 $5.50 Hoth Han 5001621 $4.50 Brickmaster Shuttle 20016 $8.50 Brickmaster POP 20017 $5.00 Harry Potter Trolley 30110 $17.00 Gandalf 30213 $7.00 Mirkwood Elf (they are under Gandalf in the pictures) 30212 $7.00 Frodo Cooking 30210 $4.50 Target Practice 30062 $5.00 Builder (the one in the box) 5610 $11.00 Fireman 30010 $5.00 Police Boat 30002 $2.00 Balloon Cart 40108 MBA Plane 20203 $15 Atlantis Octopus 30040 $7.75 Atlantis Minisub 30042 $3.00 Used Sets: Ashoka's Starfighter, Used, complete 7751 $55 The Twilight, Used, complete 7680 $72 Sets are complete (no extra pieces), including minifigures and instructions. Have been stored, covered, little to no dust. Will completely disassemble if desired. Complete Sets: 4504-2 Millennium Falcon $200 10186 UCS General Grievous $190 7946 King's Castle $220 10231 Shuttle Expedition $330 21010 Robie House $330 7672 Rogue Shadow $180 I feel these are good prices - lower than the lowest currently available on bricklink, and way lower than the six months sales averages. I may be inclined to take a slightly smaller amount for multiple sets. Boxes have some shelf wear. I also have the following available: 10199 Winter Village Toy Shop $90 2283 Bionicles Witch Doctor $80

I got that error pop-up while clicking "search" on a specific part. As far as generally using the site, I find it's best to find the part ID either on brickset or bricklink (if you know the set, I think brickset might be easier, because then you click on "parts" and then you can easily find the part ids for the various colors). Make a list. Don't browse, know what you want, then just search by ID instead of by sets. Do it all in one shot - don't go to B&P, then back to the store, then back to B&P - you will lose everything. It is pretty bad, and very awkward to use, and I think it's ridiculous that, even logged in, you still have to enter your age every time. EDIT: I'm also currently getting a "service unavailable" page when clicking on the link for instructions.

Yes. While I've sold a lot of LEGO, I've never bought it without the intention of actually building it. Like a lot of people, I have little space to display, but I don't want to miss out on certain sets, so I buy and find a place to sock it away.

I think the Thestral will be worth more than $5 on, for example, Bricklink, but what I meant was that it's not costing TLG $5 more to put it in the set - new mold notwithstanding.

I have to say I wasn't really impressed with the last movie. I'm glad we're getting a new wave of sets for people who may not have gotten them before, but I'm not too thrilled with any of the new sets. HOWEVER, I really love this little carriage just a carriage itself. It's a really clever design with a minimum of parts; I love the curly vegetation part to hold the bar in front of the driver - I didn't even know you could use those parts that way (and wouldn't have guessed they'd do it "officially"). Great review, pricing not so good (a Thestral is not worth $5 on it's own, let alone $5 plus 20 pieces). I will pass, but I will probably use the carriage for reference.

I'd already supported it, as well. Congratulations even if you don't make it to 10k - it's a beautiful build, you should be proud.

That's a great job, @figura

I originally posted this on reddit while taking a break from EB (don't know why, and now I really don't like reddit/r/lego much anymore). ============================================ I mentioned a while back that I was going to write this, and was recently reminded about it the other day. I'm not done cleaning up and putting everything away, but figured now was as good a time as any because, let's face it, I'll never be completely done. Confessions of an Obsessive Sorter: what I did wrong, and what I do now. tl;dr link to the album to show how I have things sorted now: https://imgur.com/a/maz3fBz Life isn’t perfect: A lot of us have seen, with eyes green with envy, pictures of people who have these wonderful LEGO rooms with tons of space and walls of perfectly organized LEGO parts. This is not one of those stories. My house is terrible, and I could write a book about what’s wrong with it, but I still feel fortunate that I have the luxury of having a bonus room. My wife and I have shifted things around the house; while we had a guest room, our bonus room was: my office, her office, our TV watching area, and my “LEGO room.” It’s a pretty good size room, but it’s not THAT big, so no big LEGO city layout for me. So how to organize all that LEGO? Like a lot of people, I started off small. I got little Sterilite drawers when my collection outgrew the LEGO tub (my first purchase as an adult). I started collecting a lot of large sets with no place to actually display them. I bought Sterilite drawer systems, I used “banker” boxes (those cardboard filing boxes) to store partially disassembled sets when I wasn’t using them. My loose LEGO collection was a hodgepodge of various storage solutions. Sterilite drawers, a single “Stack-On” organizer, a couple of Akro-Mils organizers, various hobby/bead type organizers I got from places like Michael’s, JoAnn’s, and Walmart. Then I found the Stanley organizer. https://imgur.com/avOIoSW They seemed perfect - a lot of little various sized bins you could take out and dump if necessary, so I bought a couple of them and started putting a few pieces in there. I always liked Akro-Mils, but who’s got all that wall space I’d need to put my whole collection there, all sorted perfectly? The bug hit me - using these Stanley organizers, I could sort everything by part AND color! And because I could put them sideways on inexpensive storage shelves, like books in a bookcase, the storage density would be very high, and I could sort everything! I ended up with 15 of the smaller units - the ones with 25 bins, and 13 of the larger, deeper units, each with 10 bins. My bright idea was that each color could have an organizer, and each part would get it’s own bin! It didn’t take long before reality smacked me in the face - there are just too many different parts. Each color ended up with two organizers; one small and one large. But it still wasn’t enough. I even added extra organizers for certain colors, but it still wasn’t enough. Enter the baggie. Ok, so I had a lot of black 1x2 plates, but only a couple 1x1, so I’d put them in a little baggie to keep them sorted, and stuff it in the bin with the 1x2 plates. Oh… I also had a couple of 1x3, so I’d do the same thing. Before long I was averaging 1 extra baggie per bin. Sure, some had none, but others had two or three or more! Particularly the large bins. So I had slopes, but not enough of any one to make getting it’s own bin worthwhile, so I’d have one bin with five or six different types of slopes, all in their own baggies. I’m going to jump ahead in the story and give you this picture: this image is roughly half the baggies I ended up with after unsorting. Sorry I have no “before” pictures; sharing the story with you wasn’t on my mind when I started my re-sort. https://imgur.com/4h8eUZK So, imagine how proud I was after weeks of anal-retentively sorting every part and color into its own “thing” (be it a bin or a baggie). Of course, I still wasn’t completely sorted… unless you’re running a business and actually have all that space, I think it’s pretty impossible. But there I was: a shelf unit full of Stanley organizers, each with its own color. Now I knew exactly where each part was, right! Wrong! You see, I put the parts I had few of into the small organizers, and the parts I had more of into the large organizers. So now black 2x4 bricks were in the large black organizer, but blue 2x4 bricks were in the small one. So I’d have to pull all the color containers and look in them to see which one had that part I was looking for. Sometimes large slopes were too much for the small organizers, but the cheese slopes worked well in the small one. To make matters worse, there’s more than one red color; there’s more than one blue, more than one green, yellow, orange, and gray. All the “special” colors had to be kept out and in other organizers - I didn’t have enough of any of those parts to fully utilize its own organizer. Then what happened? After I proudly organized my whole collection, I celebrated by building a modular building. At the end, I had a handful of small leftover parts. It took me a half an hour to put them all away. Even when I knew exactly where it went, I had to pull the organizer off the shelf and open it, find the little baggie that the part went in, open it, put the part away, seal up the bag, close the organizer and put it away. I knew instantly I screwed up, but I had no idea what to do about it. The terrible thing is that if you’d asked me how to sort, I would have given you the tried and true answer that I’ve given since my first sorting, and that is echoed by most people with experience, and I didn’t follow my own advice. I didn’t have the heart to completely redo everything; I didn’t have the wall space to not have to use the higher density storage of the Stanley organizers, and I knew there was still a lot of value in the Stanley organizers. I’d been stuck this way for years, dreading putting little bits away, spending ages getting parts together for MOCs. The subjectively best way to sort: by part, then by color. Simply put, your collection grows organically. I might have a lot of part A, you might have a lot of part B, so we won’t sort exactly the same way. When you start collecting, and have that bin of LEGO you decide is too much to wade through to find what you want, you want to sort some stuff out. The first rule of sorting is that the goal is to make it easy and quick to find the part you want. What’s the point otherwise? The second rule of sorting is there are no other rules. First of all, if you’re like most people, you have begun to accumulate a lot of smaller parts. The best first step is then to pull out those smaller parts to separate storage. It could mean just using a sandwich bag, then those parts don’t get lost on the bottom. Now you have fast access to those smaller parts without having to dump the entire bin. As your collection grows, you have to decide at what point it’s taking you too long to find the part you want. Now, forget the small, not-basic parts (like 1x1 plates with clips and minifigure accessories), and let’s stick with the basics: 1x1 up to 2x8 plates, bricks, and tiles. Sort by part: I said it 15 years ago, and I’ve been saying it ever since: it’s easier to find a 2x2 red brick in a bin full of 2x2 bricks than it is to find a red 2x2 brick in a bin full of all red bricks; it’s become a common statement from people making this point. So your collection is growing, you look and see what part types you have the most of, and you pull those parts out to their own storage. Now your main collection should instantly be a lot easier to look through, but if it’s still not up to your standard, pull the next most common part out to its own storage. Repeat until you’re happy with how quickly you can look through what’s left. Sort by color: At some point, though, you may end up with a lot of one kind of part, and it’s getting hard to find the color you want or, more typically, you’ll want 10 of a certain color of that part, and finding one or two is OK, but it’s gotten annoying to find more. That’s when you pull out the most common color of that part into its own storage. Again, until it’s up to your standard, repeat the process… you sort until you can find each part quickly, and don’t over-do it. Back to the smaller parts, you repeat the same process, but how you do it exactly is up to you. For example, instead of pulling out minifigure guns or hats or head ware from your small parts, you may just pull them all - just pull all the minifigure parts out to separate storage. Then treat those parts the same way - you start to get a lot of minifigure heads that you want more organized, you pull them out to their own storage. My complete re-sort: Recently, my wife and I decided to turn the guest bedroom into her office. That gave me a lot of extra space in the bonus room. I’d still need a place for us to watch TV together (we actually have a nicer TV area in the house, but the kids use it), but I was left to my own devices to completely reorganize the room as I wanted. I started by getting even more inexpensive plastic storage shelves and took over the corner where my wife was. I reoriented the furniture in the room to open up some space and, most importantly, I cleared a large section of wall for Akro-Mils: https://imgur.com/9YQNYtA LEGO hit me with an obvious idea: As I looked at the wall, I knew there still wasn’t enough space for complete sorting. Instead of digging in to those Stanley organizers, I had the fortunate problem of wanting to roll in some of the creator boxes I had into my new storage, so I actually started fresh with them. I had gotten four of the giant creator boxes Walmart has had in the past on Black-Friday. I’d wanted to snag these for a long time, but they were always gone by the time I got there. One year I was fortunate enough to find pallets of them, and picked up four of these 1500 parts boxes. When I started my sort, I opened up the box and found something very interesting: The LEGO Group had sorted the parts into these sets by color groupings, not by specific colors. You know what? That’s actually good enough. Yes, they didn’t sort by part, which is what I was going to do, but instead of every color needing it’s own spot, I could put color groups of each part into bins. If I needed a blue 2x3, I knew right where to look - and I might see I had more interesting blues than just the standard common one, too - and maybe that would allow me to build more creatively even. In any event, the basic bricks in any color are all findable immediately, without any searching: https://imgur.com/PKkPDFF From reds down to grays vertically, from 1x1 to 2x8 horizontally (in order). Any basic part can be found as quickly as any storage solution could possible allow. The only exception was pinks and purples, which I have so few of each of that I put them in one row, but they still follow size convention from left to right. That’s obviously not enough because you typically find yourself with a LOT of basic bricks. I was going to reuse the Stanley organizers for overflow, but instead I ended up getting a couple of IRIS 10 drawer units. I’ve ordered dividers, but for now they are working out great. Now if I need a LOT of a basic brick that I have a lot of, I know right where to go. https://imgur.com/3yHMw8B Other sections of the wall are all sorted similarly. There’s a section with plates, and one for tiles - they are all arranged likewise, starting in upper left of their area with 1x1 and spreading out to 1x8, 2x and beyond. Plates have the problem of there being so many large sizes. I have an abundance of 4x4 plates, so I have them separated out into the 6qt bins - one each for light and dark gray, and 1 for the rest. Larger than that go into other 6qt bins, when they start getting too large they go to drawers. That’s not the perfect solution, but they are not common to use - the whole idea here is that the more common a part is, the easier it should be to find. In any event, I still followed the rule - if one color was dominant (particularly if all of one part wouldn’t fit in a single bin), I pulled that color out to its own drawer. There is a slope section which seems horrendous, but follows a pretty easy pattern - 1x1 cheese that spreads out down and over to larger and larger slopes, then inverse slopes follow the same pattern. Then there are round parts, wall parts, bar parts… these are harder to keep in any kind of perfect order to find exactly what you want quickly, but I know generally where to look and am in the middle of adding labels to drawers. I still use Stanley organizers: Despite being more of a pain to get into, these organizes still have a lot of merit. If you look at this picture: https://imgur.com/6iVTu1e All the Stanley’s without labels are empty, but the ones with labels include Technic (link above) and trans: https://imgur.com/ZPyCyBt And also: vehicle parts (not inclusive - there are some very large vehicle parts that won’t fit), two complete organizers (large and small) just for wheels, and more Technic parts. Also one with various animals and storage (barrels and chests). One key point here is that I have enough that I do not need to have hundreds of little baggies - it’s far easier to find things, and it’s also far easier when building Technic to pull the Technic organizers out and have all the little parts, axles, connectors and so forth right there. I have another drawer organizer - not Akro-Mils, but ACE Hardware. I reviewed it a while back on Reddit. I’ve decided to use that one for minifigures. All the parts, torsos, legs, heads, armor, weapons, etc.. https://imgur.com/dHUaYbP The bottom line, A.K.A. The Lesson Learned: Do NOT over sort. There’s no reason to commit LEGO apartheid when it’s not necessary - it doesn’t make it easier to find parts, and it can lead to making it more difficult, take more time, and be more frustrating when trying to find and put away parts. Just say “no” to LEGO apartheid: https://imgur.com/nS74eTH And just say "no" to excessively organizing by baggies. Again, the key is to be able to find parts quickly and easily. The most common parts should have the easiest access. Overflow takes slightly more effort. Having the Stanley “suitcase” style organizers allow you to put collections of commonly used parts together, like vehicle parts and Technic. Now I can put away the extra parts from a modular build in 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes.

An overview: https://imgur.com/9YQNYtA (any way to embed imgur images?) I actually work at my desk, which is not pictured. The main desk has my computer and monitors on it, but the return gets cleaned off for building things. If I build a set, I usually take it to the living room and build it on the coffee table.

I submit to you: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/f1e812d2-f446-41fa-b0b7-aa4f8f3bd945 I haven't been around much, so don't know if the topic here has changed from what we think are good submissions to only discussions of what has achieved support. I would like to promote this project (it's NOT mine) because I think it's one of the few, smaller, original and creative projects I've seen on Ideas. I also have strong feelings about it as a friend of mine gave me a poster for an art exhibit that featured that painting, and I've had it for over 30 years and it still has meaning to me. I'm getting sick of the imitation "brickhedz" that will never succeed, nor the plates with a few parts thrown on top. I know EB allows users to post a thread abut a MOC that links to the Ideas page (as long as it's not just a "support my project" page), but what about projects we really like? I didn't know, so I thought here was the most appropriate.