How picky are you about the condition of the Legos you use for your MOCs?

chuxtoybox

I am 43 years old and I have always liked Legos although I never really had any when I was young. I have been seriously collecting for about ten years. I usually build the models exactly as the instructions say but I am trying to get over my stigma of keeping every set intact so I can build MOCs. The other stigma I have is that I want all of my Legos to be in new or as close to new as possible. So when you're doing a build, do you use whatever Legos you can get your hands on or are you trying to use new bricks? And can you actually get a good lot of used Legos in bulk on e-bay or can I expect to get burned?

peterlinddk

I have sorted my bricks according to age - old pat.pend. bricks (from before 1974) are in their own boxes, and I don't use them for MOCs. Bricks from the 1970s, without pat.pend., but with spruce-marks are in separate containers, and only used for inner structures in my MOCs.

All other bricks are considered new(ish) and used for original models aswell as for MOCs. However I have a special box for broken (or almost broken) pieces, and another one for very dirty and/or yellowed parts. I try to not use those - except for inner structure, as mentioned.

I have been quite lucky buying lots of used collections on ebay (or rather a similar local auction-site). There is quite a lot of sorting and cleaning involved, but mostly I've gotten a lot of nice bricks for a very low price.

When I need a lot of bricks in one color, I either go to the local LEGO Store, and fill some Pick'a'brick-cups, or check out bricklink for larger orders of similar pieces.

Dread_Pirate

If my MOC were to be of an old structure or something that needed to look a little worn out then I would use old scratched up bricks to help with the effect. Otherwise new is the name of my game.

woony2

As per @chuxtoybox I too like my sets to stay together as sets, however my problem gets worse. If I've made a decent MOC I can't bear to dismantle that either. Since I don't do much micro-scale building this can get very expensive and space consuming.
Oddly though I can live with slightly battered or discoloured bricks (although shiny new ones a great).
In the past I have had some great bulk buys from ebay and my work intranet, very useful for just building up stock, but lately its all been bricklink purchases for MOC's as I have wanted specific elements.