LEGO Nostalgia

Yeah, NES is cool and neat, but it's rather have the pirate themed set than a hella lot of grey bricks.

We saw a pirate creator set at Meijer today while picking out something for a friend's bday set. My oldest was frothing for it. We had no idea they were bringing that back.

Yeah I saw that set too, $99. It’s interesting in that the sails are bricks rather than cloth like usual. I may buy that soon too

I just remembered that piano. Want it so, so bad, but the $$$.

That Piano will end up on my wish list as another silly extreme thing, like the $800 Millennium Falcon that has been on my wish list since it was released.

And then the Typewriter will be released...

The Piano has been hard to find this month. They may have underestimated demand.

Just saw some news from LEGOs 1H 2020 results. Some analysts mentioned that 20% of the revenue came from adults buying LEGO for themselves, and that this has grown quite a bit during the corona virus. Kinda awesome.

That Boone Builds is great!

Shadout wrote:

Just saw some news from LEGOs 1H 2020 results. Some analysts mentioned that 20% of the revenue came from adults buying LEGO for themselves, and that this has grown quite a bit during the corona virus. Kinda awesome.

That's probably how they justified the new Adults line.

My eldest wants to build a Droid army and there aren't many sets out currently with Battle Droids in them.

The Battle Droid Carrier sets are going for $80+ on Bricklink, which isn't unreasonable, and I can get the individual droids for a few bucks from there, but I was wondering if you guys had any ideas about a cheaper/easier way to acquire a bunch of Battle Droids?

If you don't care if they are actually Lego branded you can get knock offs on ebay pretty easily - they may also take a bit longer to get. Otherwise you got to pay the big bucks for the retires stuff.

I'll admit I'm a Lego snob. I hate pretty much any other brick type because they don't work as well. MegaBlocks have so many cool designs! Still hate em.

That said, he isn't against knockoffs. He agrees with me they aren't as high quality, but for this he wants quantity over quality.

Tbh, I didn't even consider knockoffs on ebay. Didn't think Battle Droids would be a huge thing. Guess they make knockoffs of everything, but especially Star Wars stuff.

Edit: Whoa, knockoffs are indeed DIRT cheap.

Another option is a Lego Resale store, such as Bricks and Minifigs, if there is one in your neck of the woods.

have a weird request. Lego just released the Series 2 Harry Potter minifigures, and my daughter is looking for four specific ones. I've looked in most of the usual places, but they are either not there or incomplete. She's looking for Hermione Granger with the cup, Ron Weasley with the cup, Lily Potter with baby Harry, and James Potter. In case anyone gets or has those and is willing to part with them, let me know, we can work some kind of payment out.

Some Lego leaks for the Lego heads.

IMAGE(https://i.redd.it/865eolkwbin51.jpg)

My hovercraft is full of eels.

I told you to get that thing out of Pensacola before the storm hit...

I might try and grab that skid steer to try out with my kid.

Next Lego Ideas will be the Globe, and Sonic is still being considered. I'm not interested in either, but I'm sure some are.

Anyone have advice or thoughts on selling old Lego sets? Part of my pandemic coping has been to haul out all of our various Lego bins, instructions, and try to rebuild as many Lego sets as I can. We have a mix of old Castle, Town, and Space sets plus newer sets from Harry Potter, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Ninjago. All the stuff my kids were interested in but never did much with. We probably have 3 or 4 dozen sets with a couple hundred various minifigs.

Barring a handful I might keep for nostalgia and because they're pretty sweet, I'd like to get rid of the rest. I suspect they hold their value really well but I have no idea where the best option would be and - maybe more importantly - how exacting I need to be with making sure everything is 100% complete. As one example, it's clear that having a mix of old Castle sets and newer sets means I have a mix of ever-so-slightly different-colored light grey bricks. Some older sets might have a random "new grey" brick in them, and vice versa. For some sets it's really hard to tell exactly what shade of windshield or transparent color I need, so I went with the best match I could find.

Are Lego-specific sites like Bricklink better than eBay? What if I don't have any boxes, just the bricks and instructions? Anyone interested in some old Lego sets?

Bricklink and ebay are valid sites to sell on. Please don't say it is 100% complete unless you have made sure all the pieces are there for a set. For most people not having the box isn't a problem. If you don't feel like sorting into sets you can make decent money selling by the pound on craigslist or ebay but some older space and castle sets will be worth more sold as a set especially if the minifigs are included. If you want to know the value of a set go to its page on brickset.com and on the right side they have an average price of selling new and used sets.

I may be interested in any Star Wars sets you have.

karmajay wrote:

Please don't say it is 100% complete unless you have made sure all the pieces are there for a set.

No, no - I would never do that. My question might have been more along the lines of "if a set is 99.8% complete, except for these two specialty bricks I can't find, does that make it worthless". I have no idea how exacting Lego collectors are, whether it's a "perfect or nothing" situation. I would guess that if I had a handful of missing bricks they could probably be bought individually as replacements?

It does not make it worthless unless those bricks only come in that set. That means someone may have to spend a lot of money to finish it. If the pieces missing are common it would probably be easy to just buy them off bricklink before selling the set. The majority of common pieces are pennies per piece.

I might be interested in some of those old space sets myself.

I've sold dozens of sets on ebay. This is time intensive, but what I usually do is take the set apart backwards per the instructions and put the pieces in ziploc baggies according to the Step #. That way I know all of the pieces are there and also the new buyer gets the experience of putting the set together like they had purchased it new. I used to sell with the box, but it became a hassle and I realized the extra $10 or so I'd get from shipping in a box wasn't worth the effort of it. Plus, people can get a little particular about box condition. I've never had anyone complain, but I have seen it.

If you know what piece is missing the best bet is to look it up on a Bricklink or a site that will give you the part number and an estimate of a price for it. No joke, some individual pieces will go for $20 alone if it's a specialty piece or minifigure that only came in one set. Get the part number and include that in the listing, so that the buyer can purchase that on their own accord and have the entire set ready when yours arrives. As a buyer, nothing is more frustrating than thinking you have everything and needing to stop a build while you order a part and wait for it to arrive.

Just be honest and say all of the pieces may not be from the original set. I couldn't imagine anyone being chuffed at that. Also, post close-up pictures of all the minifigures that come in a set, because I've noticed a lot of people ask questions specifically about the minifigures. I imagine some sets are sold just for the minifigures included. LEGO is deceptively pricy to ship, so make sure you weigh something out before you decide on the shipping cost. I sold a building once and figured, this isn't much bigger than the spaceship I just sold.....well, it was over double the price to ship because of weight and dimensions.

I would imagine Bricklink is way better than ebay, since ebay and it's 10% cut is pretty rotten. But, it's what I know and I sold mine for space reasons as opposed to money reasons, so I just went the lazy route and took the ebay hit.

So, in the spirit of the latest conversation, is it pretty safe to buy from eBay? I slacked and didn't realize that the Downtown Diner was being discontinued, and it's a set my wife and I really want. I am right now looking at an eBay auction that has both the Diner and the Bookshop for $375, which seems too good to be true.

I see eBay now has a money back guarantee, so I should be protected, no?

Edit: Also, been a while. How are you all doing?

Abu5217 wrote:

So, in the spirit of the latest conversation, is it pretty safe to buy from eBay? I slacked and didn't realize that the Downtown Diner was being discontinued, and it's a set my wife and I really want. I am right now looking at an eBay auction that has both the Diner and the Bookshop for $375, which seems too good to be true.

I see eBay now has a money back guarantee, so I should be protected, no?

Edit: Also, been a while. How are you all doing?

If the person has a good feedback rating then it should be fine. I think both the diner and booksop are 170 or 180 and both are not retired yet.

If they have a good rating and are in the US, you should be fine to buy from there.

Boudreaux, I sold my lego collection a few years ago and just went through the parts lists and made sure I had all of the pieces and bagged them. I think I was missing 5-10 pieces across all of the sets and I just bought them on Bricklink before I listed anything for sale.

When I sold them I sold the sets individually and I remember I sold some here on GWJ first and then I think I sold the rest on Amazon and eBay. I don't know if Amazon still lets regular people sell Lego, they have been shutting off a lot of categories the past couple of years.

I wanted to sell a thing or two on BrickLink, but note that they now make you buy something with your account before you can sell. I understand why, but it was a bit of cold water on my plans.