Purchasing sets with no minifigs

Brainslugged

Is there a way to record sets in your collection that you own but don't have the minifigs for?

CCC

Under condition, maybe choose modified or unknown, then under notes put "no minifigures".

Mr_Cross

There should be a tick box on the right hand side. If not go into your profile, or menu settings there should be a feature there somewhere that allows you to record when you have a set without them.

Mr_Cross

here: https://brickset.com/profile/flagpreferences

Brainslugged

Thanks for the input. I do use the different flag preferences already. For example, half of my collection is in the US and half in the UK so I track that.

However, I don't think flags will work in this case for two reasons. One is that I will soon have two Ninjago Citys (thanks to a purchase from these forums) so I'd ideally like to show in my collection that I have two sets, but only one set of minifigs. Even if there is a way to do that with the flags, it would still show two sets of minifigs in my collection, wouldn't it.

Mr_Cross

Ah, okay. Yes I have the same issue with a number of sets. It would be nice to be able to log each set to show minifigs present or not in each.

Brainslugged

I'd have thought such an option wouldn't be too hard to implement and would benefit a good portion of Brickset users. I've bought quite a few minifugureless (but otherwise new) sets over the years but not added them to my Brickset collection. It's nice being able to add loose figures to our collections, just a shame we can't do the inverse - add loose sets. Thanks again.

Recce

I would love to have this option as well. 

paulmison

The Advanced Collection Manager has checkboxes for Parts, Instructions, Minifigs, and Packaging, but the minifigs / parts owned calculations don’t appear to use them.

Astrobricks

It sounds like this would be a large-ish change to the underlying database. Instead of each of us having a single record per set, we would need a list of records per set so that different information could be held for each. Then, a new unique key would probably be needed for each record since the set number (which I assume is the current key?) would no longer be unique. I’m no DBA, but I can see this becoming more complex than it first appears. 

HugeYellowBrick

^The Advanced Collection Manager already allows data on more than one copy of each set to be stored, so that is in place. The OP can show that he has two sets, maybe one in the US and one in the UK (he already uses flags for this). There is already a checkbox, which can be set differently for each copy, for Minifigs, so this could be interpreted by humans (who know how it is being used) as Minifigs included/not included. But as @paulmison states, the owned/not owned calculations do not reflect this. 

I'm sure if @Huw tried to change the behaviour of the flags we have now, there would be howls of protest from all the people who interpret them each in their own way.

Fodder

You can create your own flags. There is a check-box specifically for sets without minifigs

Huw

What's being proposed would complicate things considerably as suggested. Nevertheless I'll add it to the list for next time there's a major database update.

snowhitie

It would be great if there is a way to link the ACM or have data seperate for several sets, so would also be a big fan if that is possible !

This is how I do it now: I often buy doubles of sets but trade away the figures. This is my workaround, it's not very tidy and but that way my database is correct at least :)

I tick the flag 'no minifigures', so all the minifigures are gone from both sets, then I go to the 'minifigure' tab where I then check all the figures as 'I own loose'.

For example, I got 2 hotels, one I own with all the figures, one I traded away all but Nate, so I still own '2' loose of him and only '1' of each of the other ones. It bugs me a little bit that I actually don't own them 'loose' but in a set.

You also have to keep your brain with it when you do it, since ticking 'no minifigs' will only update the amount after you refresh your collection.

Maybe that can help you for now?