Grrr

I tend to buy one or two copies of a set when new. This ensures that I have a 'mint' copy, box, and instructions. Then, about 2-3 years later (or more), I buy second hand copies of the set, before they become scarce. You often find a $30 set for $10 or so at this time, so can easily build up a collection. Sure some pieces may be missing, but often it's not so much of an issue with second copies anyway, as you might modify them slightly to provide differentiation, or not use all the pieces (eg the accessories with Castle or Pirate sets). I find this works best economically, and avoids buyer's remorse for over-doing it on an oddball set. That said I do still have 50 or so MISB copies of 6004 sitting on a shelf that I bought cheap one day. That was somewhat silly.

I nominate BrickTrain for my recent smooth purchase of a stack of instruction manuals.

I suspect it will be. It's $49.99 on Lego.com :|

Fair enough too. I hate being given incorrect information. I dropped by two warehouses on the way home, and neither of them had 2010 sets in yet. No Lego branded boxes in loading bay either. I suspect they have probably only just been dispatched today, so hopefully will hit stores in the weekend.

The Warehouse has 2010 sets (including Star Wars) listed on their site now: http://www.thewarehouse.co.nz/is-bin/INTER...mp;PageNumber=0

I think one of the key things about town building is that you can start out small and expand. It's a little different from say a pirate diorama where it seems 'incomplete' unless there is at least one ship (which you might not have owned as a kid). More recently I've struggled more with town building due to scale issues. The Modular buildings and 6-wide trucks are a bit big to go with the classic sets. Consider the size of 3180 vs 6683. For that reason I've been buying second copies of many classic town sets to enlarge them, and building four wide truck equivilents to modern trucks.

Moore Wilsons in Wellington. Yes, they are a supermarket type store, but they stock a large amount of lego generally at about 15% less than most retailers. As for Hamilton, it's a lost hope. The Toyworld in Collingwood Street keeps a lousy selection of Lego (though occasionally has trains), and is useless for discounts, and the departments stores are even worse. I'm hoping that the new mall at the Base or the expansion of Westfield Chartwell will bring another toy store to Hamilton. In the interim, I'll continue to support Toyworld in Sylvia Park.

I wonder what that will go for. It's a good set. Don't worry, I already have two of them.

I don't currently have a layout setup. Unfortunately my lego room is modestly sized and very full. So rather than building Lego, I'm building furniture to store lego on! Soon, though, I intend to rebuild my layout and get many of my sets out from storage. The initial layout will be 4x8 foot (the size of one sheet of ply :) ).

You are right - when I mentioned that it was still in the retailer catalog I got it confused with 4996.

It appeared in that leaked 2010 dutch retailer catelog, perhaps it's not gone.

I haven't missed out big pieces like doors, but do often find myself in trouble with large technic sets and modular buildings etc (the Eiffel Tower was a particular issue). The main problems I have are with the greys, and the fact it's hard to distinguish the 'new' pieces in the picture from those that have been there for several steps. The comment on 'baby' steps is completely on the mark, I find the lego steps to small and unsatisfying. What I generally do these days is gather the parts for the next 2 pages worth of steps, then build, and repeat. This reduces the tedium of finding pieces, and of building many similar parts for the model (left and right assemblies in particular I always do in one step). My particular bugbear though is where you are adding a new piece in behind an existing part of the model. For example, step 31 of the truck in 6753, which I build last night. I put the red cylinder in the wrong place!

Do you have a reliable source for this? I'd be highly surprised if Lego itself where to sell to them. Unless they have parallel imported from another country. Also, NZ stocks haven't been that great, so they wouldn't need to sell to these sorts of operators.

I agree with seperating the cab and the bin. Also; I think the 1 stud high red stripe of the original 6693 might help break the expanse of yellow on this one. A good moc none-the-less. I'm doing the opposite with my modern trucks, making them 4 or 5 studs wide.

I had the same thing. I recieved a "you need to renew" card in teh mail, and later that day got a confirmation of my "new" membership. I suspect someone at Lego renewed your subscription for you, and that process sent that automated emial.

The Warehouse has terrible logistics. I've been to their distribution center. They don't pay any attention to what's in boxes, just sending an arbitary amount of boxes to each store. Therefore, it's quite possible that the Albany store got all the Rebel BPs for the whole of NZ!

Some big shelves are good for mocs and boxes and storage. I have about 10m of shelving 60 cm deep along 2 of the walls, floor to ceiling. Then, on another wall I have small 'shelve's. A few brackets like this: http://www.hafele.co.uk/Hafele35a1/images/...0.28.502P1.JPEG and some 10cm wide shelves, and you have the perfect place to store lego boxes, small mocs, and small store containers too (I use 1Litre clear plastic boxes that fit nicely.

I noticed my local Warehouse has a large pallet of new cartons of Lego sitting at the top of one of it's racks. I'm hoping these are the new 2010 sets. They were too high up for me to read the labels. Will check back later in the week.

I have some booklets about the Lego group from the early nineties which state that they aim to include a photo of the set on the cover of the box in the set's 'natural size'. So you are right. However, it was common in the 80's and 90's for the photo to be cropped so that extra rails / airport runway etc where not visible on the cover. I feel that the current boxes are perhaps 4 times the size they need to be. I can understand the arguement that large boxes appeal more to kids (perceived value), but do the boxes really need to be so deep? Many of the sets (Creator in particular) come in boxes 8-10cm deep, and truely massive width and height. If they half the depth, that halves the volume, without affecting said 'perceived value'. Also; I feel that the large box phenomenon is a problem because it affect retailer's stocking levels. Toyshops and department stores have about as much shelf space dedicated to Lego as when I was a kid. However, as the boxes have doubled in volume, the store has less on their shelves and in their storerooms. This makes a product more likely to sell out (or not be stocked at all; eg Trains),and represents potential missed sales for Lego. I feel this factor is quite an offset to the perceived value of a big box. The reason why I say that is becuase there are two types of kids who buy lego; kfols and the kid with the odd few sets. kfols now are still much like we were as children, studying the catelogs indepth and producing lists of set-numbers for their parents to decipher. They are sorely disappointed when the store they get to go to to choose their birthday present doesn't have their desired set in stock, and they are left with second best. This is affecting brand loyalty at a very young age. As for the sprues and so on, I feel we would be better to collect them up and find someone to make custom parts with them.

Sorry, I'm confused now. Are custom decals for shop signs etc allowed or not?

Bah. Proper Lego banks don't need money!

I am intending to try it soon. The website does state 10-15% concentrated OH2. Shouldn't be too bad to get. It sure should beat buying rare old parts of bricklink - though I'll start with a lot of standard plates. Will let you know how I get on. I imagine it will work - I have had reversal of yellowing towards original colours with all lego colours with UV light only, but it is very slow - hopefully it will speed the process up.

I agree, though curves would be difficult - you would need to have negative plain baseplates as well (ie, an inner curve and an outer curve baseplate), perhaps similar to the old belville brick bases: http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/6162 I'd quite like roads to be a bit like train tracks, so you can create roads in non-parallel layouts - the only thing is that I also want to be able to have footpaths over the roads - which is difficult.

Try breaking apart a few ballpoint pens. I found a near perfect match in a pen a while ago. Sorry, I can't recall the brand of the pen.

Wouldn't it have been easier and cheaper just to ship the bricks to Legoland and assemble/glue it there. It seems silly to ship it in one piece like this.