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Guys,
I've just compiled the checklist for the Cafe Corner off of Peeron. I remember someone saying that the dark red slopes were expensive and I see them for $1 a piece and I need 36. Well, that ain't gonna happen. Red slopes are about $0.19 a piece. I'm not really concerned about the minifigs or animals at this point.
My question is... what are the expensive pieces I should beware of? I don't mind changing the whole color scheme of the building. So, if I change the slopes to red, should I change any other colors? I can use blue instead of the dark blue, etc. I also picked up one of the XXL boxes (1600 pieces) and a smaller box so I have some newer common colored pieces.
Also, if anyone can help out on this and has some extra pieces lying around (that I'll pay for of course and I decide on any replacements), let me know. If this is successful, I may try market street and the green grocer. (Also, if I should pick up any pieces that are in the other two, please let me know.)
Thanks,
Mike
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This is our pieced together (by someone else) Cafe Corner. The changes he chose were swapping out the $20 arch, swapping the pieces holding the awnings on from white to grey, and the only really visible difference is the roof. He didn't want to pay $1 for each of the roof pieces so chose to use the x2 pieces instead. It is definitely different but not terribly obvious.
I think you may not want to go to the trouble that this person did but thought it would be something to think about. It is a nice color scheme and if you have the mini modulars you don't want to wander too far :).
:)
Also, be patient on a few of the higher priced pieces (blue arch, right door) and you can get them for a good price. Just pieced mine together with all original pieces for 300....took me about a month though to get all the pieces, but i didnt overpay and got some good deals. Just have to keep checking, because you're not the only one looking for a deal or two on the expensive pieces!
You can Import a BrickLink inventory for a set then set the price to current Bricklink prices. Then it's very easy to select all pieces in a certain colour, change them to a new colour then run the price check again.
Now, to see if I can limit ordering for too many people and increasing shipping costs.
Oh the door, if you want that color, just watch it closely...i got mine for 14.17 and .90 (yes, 90 cents both in February).
I didn't want the minifigures, but did try to get the same colors and did so except for the blue arch, light grey door, dark blue birds, and white clips for the awning. I found it easier to get the other dark blue bricks direct from LEGO as they were hard to get from a few vendors on Bricklink. If I wanted to get the blue arch and door, I believe it would push the total up to around $370 and I couldn't justify the cost for those parts.
I traded my Santa Fe-sets for a nearly complete Green Groocer and a 2/3 complete Café Corner two weeks ago, so I've placed some Bricklink orders for the missing parts. I'm going to replace the lt stone door for the CC, and perhaps some other parts as well. All the dark red slopes were there, along with the other dark red parts. The problem is that IIRC, Lego made two versions of dark red. This set seems to have both of them. It doesn't look great, unfortunately....
For the Cafe Corner I split the search into two runs, half the parts in each run, with each run limited to searching across ~110 vendors for combinations up to 5 vendors. This took about about 90minutes each. Then I took the entire part list and limited the search to only include 40 vendors, but forced it to include the 10 vendors from the previous results. This step isn't necessary, but it helped to find a solution that minimized the vendors ( and shipping costs) required to fill the order. The final search for up to 7 vendor combos took about 50 minutes.
I also found it helped by excluding certain vendors that charge high prices or that only sell parts in 20 unit increments.
I've done the same thing for Green Grocer and found a solution for ~$300, including all the sand green pieces (order them from LEGO).
I first tackled all the rare parts, and bought those along with enough other items to meet store mins (doing some manual price checking to determine which items to buy), I then removed all these purchased items from the master list.
Next, I looked at the in stores count in bricklink for the remainder of the items. There were about 10 stores at the top of the list who all had a much higher % of items than everyone else. I went to each store, filled out my cart with all items they each had, then compared the totals. I also spot-checked all the most expensive items from each to ensure i wasn't getting gouged on any of them. I ended up choosing the store from this list of 10 that had the best overall price/value ratio, and ordered all the parts from them that weren't completely overpriced.
Yes, I fully realized that doing all this did not completely minimize my costs thus far, but I think it was close enough, and also got the most amount of items from the least amount of stores.
This left about 75 items, which I ran through the cost minimization program. The program found me a 3-store and two 4-store combinations, of which I selected the option that made the most sense when factoring shipping prices in.
I think I need to learn how to reduce the number of vendors CostMin is searching. Right now it's doing 600+ stores on a 120 part list... this one has been running for about 6 hours and getting no where :-)
What do you mean by "IIRC"?
IIRC = "If I Recall Correctly"
See this:
http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=55386
For pricing the Green Grocer, are you calculating this based on getting all of your parts from a second source (ie not including any of your own)? I'm in the market to make my own, maybe two. Any suggestions?
Or am I missing the obvious?
http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemIn.asp?P=4460b&colorID=59&in=A
as it implies that part # 4267279 in Cafe Corner are the same as part #4623597 in Pet Shop.
I'd be very concerned about what you get from Bricklink before high supply suggests that those parts are being augmented by the Pet Shop bricks... http://www.bricklink.com/catalogPG.asp?P=4460b&colorID=59
The Pet Shop one is a brighter red, the Cafe Corner one is more browny coloured.
I'm at work right now, but I'll try to take some pics and post them here tonight.
"Thank you for getting in touch with us regarding your missing LEGO® pieces.
We will be happy to sell you the 200x #4623597 pieces but, unfortunately, the parts you need are temporarily out of stock. The demand for these particular LEGO pieces has been unexpectedly high and there is a delay while our factories make extra quantities. Don't worry though, the parts have been made and will be available for you on or around 03/30/2012. Please contact us during or after this date in order to complete your parts purchase.
Sorry for any inconvenience."
But in light of the Bricklink merging of 2 different bricks, I am hesitant as to what to do with these pieces if I do order them.