Buying a whole set, just for a certain piece

knuclear200x

Have you ever bought a set without the intention of building what you're supposed to? And not just those buckets or impulse sets, but big sets that simply have specific pieces you want since it would be the only set that would have them?

I once bought Magikus. We weren't a board-game playing family or group of friends so I had no intention of setting it up for play, but it had all these translucent, green wands, a pot and a couple of gold goblets. So I get one and dump the others into my container.

Then there's the 7990-1: Cement Mixer. I happened to pass by this one day and thought I could use that blue mixer piece and make it a cannon instead. It was $15, for one interesting piece + a bunch of others I have a lot of anyway. Wasn't too interested in building some truck neither, but I did want that piece.

anyone else do the same?

prof1515

More often than not I buy licensed sets for specific pieces, not because I actually care about the set itself. Harry Potter? Bleh. Pirates of the Caribbean? You must be joking! Prince of Persia? Pardon me while I cough up a lung from laughing so hard. But they've got some great pieces in them which makes them must-get sets.

Bricklink can serve for a single piece but if there's enough to validate the purchase, I go with the sets themselves. Aside from providing lots of other pieces that might be needed later, I also avoid the spectre of deceit. Too many bad experiences with Bricklink (9 out of 12 where the quality of the piece or once even the piece itself did not match their description) to trust them too often.

Yellowcastle

I definitely do this. I found the Creator Triceratops on sale and bought it just for all the green plates, swivels, and teeth. I did the same with the giant Castle Troll Wheel Pushy thing. There is zero chance I would build that. I was also not a big fan of the PoP Alamut set but the pieces and figures are just so amazing so I got 3 of them (on sale, of course). :o)

rocao

Most serious builders do this. This is essentially how BrickLink started; builders parting out the elements they needed and selling the leftovers. To this day, I would guess that a large percentage of the sellers still fit this description.

Also, buying a set for minifigures is essentially the same thing and again, there are plenty of people doing this as evidenced by the abundance of eBay auctions that are the minifigs alone, or the sets without minifigs.

As a collector, I find it kind of tragic to deliberately make a set incomplete. But I understand the rationale. When 7163 Republic Gunship was in production and the only source of Clone Troopers and Super Battle Droids, one could sell the minifigs and recoup perhaps 80% of the cost of the set; that's a pretty cheap gunship. Conversely, some people love minifigures and since Lego is quite expensive, only collecting the minifigs keeps the hobby affordable.

kor

I rarely build the sets. I usually buy to absorb some or all of the pieces into my collection. Whatever I don't need I put in our bricklink store.

With that being said I do have some classic sets assembled and displayed.

brickmatt

I've never got into MOCing very much, but, not being a movie person, the parts are mostly why I pick up licensed sets (who wouldn't want a Lego ostrich?).

Matthew

I'm in the process of buying as many Hogwarts Castles as I can, in order to make an UCS Hogwarts. It almost pays for itself, selling the minifigs on Ebay. This has been helped a lot by the Amazon price at the moment!

bluemoose

Have you ever bought a set without the intention of building what you're supposed to?

Yes. I've bought hundreds of sets with this intention. The Taj Mahal is probably the most extreme example I have, but, yes, it was bought purely for the parts & was never built. Honestly, in recent years, I've parted out more sets straight from the bags than I have built first. This is true of most other builders (rather than set collectors, obviously) that I know.

brickmatt

While I did mention that I buy some licensed sets for the pieces, I'm more of a set collector. I haven't had a whole lot of extra time to really get into MOCing, and, being a set collector, most of my sets are stored in their original boxes. Sorting out over 130,000 pieces would take quite a while, unfortunately.

fox171171

I've always been a set collector, and built everything. I've acquired some pieces online, as I want to do more MOCs. I just bought a few sets for pieces, but built them first. Some I had no problem taking apart and adding to the parts bin, but others I kind of like now that they are built. *sigh*

jgadget

I bought a Statue of Liberty set on ebay, mainly to get hold of a few more sand-green macaroni pieces.
Of course, knowing that the macaronis would come with a load of other sand-green bricks helped with my decision to bid.
It cost me £150, just under 2 years ago.
It cost me another £15 or so to replace a few missing pieces, since I needed to know that it was complete.
I've not built the set, since I had one that I bought and built when it was new.
Interestingly, I paid £135 for it, from [email protected], back in 2000.