Two missing sets : 434 & 437

andyscouse

Hi!

I had both of these sets as a kid, but don't see them listed here ...

434 Letters on 1x1 bricks ... blue sans-sefif font (50 total, including dups).

437 Numbers on 1x1 bricks ... as above (5 of each number, 50 total)


Not the early/mid 1960s ones, the ones available up to early 1970s in the UK.

Huw

We don't have any of the '60s parts packs listed, and don't intend to add them just yet: there are too many, they are of limited interest, and decent pictures of them are hard to come by without plagiarizing other sources.

andyscouse

Ah ok. As I said, I had these, and couldn't find them listed anywhere - just the older early 60's ones, which are NOT the same!

Cheers ...

Istokg

Andy, the 1x1 letter bricks were introduced in November 1957 in continental Europe. The number bricks were introduced in 1960. These were produced in several different letter/number varieties (parts packs in parentheses):

1) 1957-65 European (#234/#237)
2) 1961-65 USA/Canada (#234/#237)
3) 1966-68 Continental Europe (#488/#487)
4) 1966-72 UK/Ireland/Australia (#434/#437)
5) 1968-72 Continental Europe (#988/#987)

The last image is of very rare Norwegian 1957 #1234 blue alphabet bricks with gold lettering. All of these images are from my LEGO DVD - Chapter 48 - Printed & Painted LEGO Elements (1955-75).

Standard_Grin

I recently found some of these in a bag of misc pieces from a UK antique fair (also see the 'Help identifying parts'-thread). Based on the pictures of the different versions Istokg posted, I'd say they are indeed the UK-version.

andyscouse

@Istokg - thank you for that! I have some (about half of each set) of both the middle kinds (mostly the UK ones), but mostly referrals I came across were to non-UK ones.

I think I shall have to invest in your DVD, methinks ...


@Standard_Grin indeed they are! I'm going to order some UK ones from Bricklink, as I want to put a Latin motto on a MOC I have, and I have some but not all available right now.

Istokg

@andyscouse Thanks for your comments! The UK/Ireland/Australia 1x1 number/letter bricks were produced in Wrexham Wales from 1966-72. They were of a larger size than any of the other ones (the USA/Canada were the smallest). One would have thought that with the thousands of parts in the LEGO TLG inventory.. that they could have given us a nice set of alpha-numeric bricks like they did back in the 60s. Sadly all we get are limited black 1x1 round bricks or 1x1 tiles with lettering for a very short period. Also the 2x2 white tiles would have been an excellent way to provide nice lettering (besides using stickers for the vertical marquee CINEMA sign in the 2008 Town Plan Set).

The LEGO DVD is now available as a DVD or as a downloadable file (saves shipping charges)...
http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=istokg&itemID=32384933
http://www.bricklink.com/store.asp?p=istokg&itemID=32819532

Istokg

@Standard_Grin All I needed to see was one of those 1x6 or 1x8 Named Beams... and I would have been able to tell that those were UK/AUS signs. 1955-75 was the golden age of named beams (majority were 1x6 and 1x8 beams)... and there are over 1000 different ones known. Some are found in many different colors.

Chapter 48 of my LEGO DVD goes into exhaustive details about the signs of that era... including all the signs of the countries of continental Europe, USA/Canada, and Britain/Ireland/Australia. Below are a sample from that chapter... the 1950s signs of Sweden... also the variety of different country spelling for "BAKER"... and the different colors for "KINO" (Cinema) and "KIOSK". Last image is a group of miscellaneous signs of Continental Europe from 1965-75.