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Advice for the New Collector
Wyleenz
Member Posts: 9
Well, I am new to this forum and new to Lego collecting, well new in the sense of re-discovering Lego. I had quite a little collection when I was a kid and now at thirty having sold all my Lego many years ago suddenly stopped in at walmart toy section and bought a couple of city sets. That was last week and now I have forty city sets and now I need to realize I am now a collector and with that I need to ask some questions.
1.) I wanted to build a city up but I am going to need a massive room to lay it all out - I have big plans but simply don't have the room. How do you guys do it?
2.) I can't seem to locate road plates which were the key to my old Lego cities, where can you find them?
4.) How well do the road plates work with sets such as the newer police station, fire station, space launch pad etc?
3.) I am planning on sticking to one particular theme, did anyone else plan to do this but ended up collecting multiple themes?
4.) What's the best way to get old sets for resonable prices, I'm not talking vintage but sets like three to four years old.
5.) Where can you find release dates for new sets coming out?
I can't believe how much I enjoyed putting the sets together but am desperate to set up a city. Like I have read in a number of posts my city due to the sets available is police heavy, its like a police state!!! I have got my first ever Lego train which I have always wanted - I don't care for the electronics, I'd actually prefer just a push train.
Anyway thanks for reading, and advanced thank you for any questions that can be answered
1.) I wanted to build a city up but I am going to need a massive room to lay it all out - I have big plans but simply don't have the room. How do you guys do it?
2.) I can't seem to locate road plates which were the key to my old Lego cities, where can you find them?
4.) How well do the road plates work with sets such as the newer police station, fire station, space launch pad etc?
3.) I am planning on sticking to one particular theme, did anyone else plan to do this but ended up collecting multiple themes?
4.) What's the best way to get old sets for resonable prices, I'm not talking vintage but sets like three to four years old.
5.) Where can you find release dates for new sets coming out?
I can't believe how much I enjoyed putting the sets together but am desperate to set up a city. Like I have read in a number of posts my city due to the sets available is police heavy, its like a police state!!! I have got my first ever Lego train which I have always wanted - I don't care for the electronics, I'd actually prefer just a push train.
Anyway thanks for reading, and advanced thank you for any questions that can be answered
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Comments
to start with, try going to brickset and searching for 'road plate'!
http://www.brickset.com/search/?sourceid=Mozilla-search&query=road+plate
The road plates generally work well with the city sets. But beware, if you start to get into the Modular buildings (the three- to four-story realistic looking buildings that run between $150-200 each), they come with a more detailed sidewalk and you'll want to make some modifications to tie in your road network.
I generally stick with the city/modular theme, but can't help myself with some "classic" Star Wars stuff.
It's hard to find older sets at reasonable prices, but you can try eBay and Amazon (especially if you are willing to get a "used" set -- just be very careful and make sure the set is 100% complete. I believe Brickset and Bricklink among other sites also bring collectors and sellers together.
Stick around here and you'll find out all the info you need on release dates!!
a few weeks out of my dark ages, and a few $k lighter.
Here's a discussion showing home modifications:
http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/2399/what-have-you-done-to-your-house-to-accommodate-your-lego-hobbyaddiction
There are also a number of discussions in the 'Building and Techniques' category that discuss approaches to storing sets and part inventories. Here is a link to road plates available for purchase from LEGO.com: http://shop.lego.com/en-US/T-Junction-Curved-Road-Plates-7281
You'll have varying levels of success finding them at Toys R Us.
Bricklink (third party marketplace for LEGO) will probably be your best bet: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogList.asp?catType=P&catString=130 This is actually a pretty good question. Of course the road plates are meant to be compatible, but gone are the days when they are integrated into sets. I suspect that TLG concluded that road/base plates didn't add enough appeal to a model to warrant the cost of their inclusion, or that it was easily overlooked, whereas keeping the set price down a few dollars would not be as easily missed.
Here is a good general discussion about roads: http://www.bricksetforum.com/discussion/comment/18279
From that great mashup that DaveE made, you can see that though they are essentially compatible, there are idiosyncrasies that don't make them perfect. Thus, I would strongly suggest brick built roads as a solution. This is going to offer the most flexibility with your layout. An example can be seen at the end of this link: http://gimmelego.blogspot.com/2011/08/change-of-plan.html Slippery slope indeed. It's a noble intention, anyhow :P This probably goes without saying, but the best approach is one that leaves no stone unturned: eBay, Bricklink, craigslist, garage sales, trading with members here and elsewhere. Although TLG's annual line of sets is available for preview to retailers and trickles down to the general public, the corresponding release dates are not made readily available, and I don't think there is that much value in doing the legwork to track all this down. Instead, I would just familiarize yourself with the sets planned for the year, and keep an eye out as people start posting when anticipated sets start showing up on shelves: http://www.brickset.com/search/?year=2012
The brick roads look amazing and it Offers so many possibilities and alot of challenges.
I suspect any layout is going to take a fair while, I also imagine I will keep buying sets which would make any possible layout need expansion. I pretty much can guess I will be building sets, putting them anywhere around the house there is space and have some vague grand plan for a layout.
It depends on how rare the sets are. Garage sales all depend on if someone looked at eBay or not (I have heard of garage sales charging outrageous amounts of money for a bin of LEGO). If you buy sets or lots on eBay then Bricklink.com will be your friend
As for road plates, the prices are just absurd for a road plate (vintage ones are going anywhere from 5 bucks per to about 10 dollars per). But if you can find a TRU selling new ones in the in store and can catch them in a BOGO sale then it is not bad.
Also check out LEGO.com now for road plates, as they are doing double VIP points (if you are signed up) AND free shipping online- The Double points offer is good until March 15th. And if you have now LEGO store in your state then you may not have to pay sales tax either. So getting road plates may be a good deal now if you want brand new ones
Also keep in mind that the road plates are differently configured than others (all are 32x32 but some have wider road sections than others, some have 'bike lanes' some do not, etc), with the newest ones out by LEGO currently being the widest road sections if I am not mistaken.
The road plate packs increase the size of the layout nicely, and also different sub-themes of City help define areas in the layout - like setting a corner aside as a harbour or marina, maybe another side with the new Forest line of emergency sets etc.
Also your question about how well the road plates fit with the current sets - I only have the Fire Station, and setting that up with road plates into the driveways is a bit difficult - you need a separate road for each driveway, and the driveway is only half as wide as the road. Check this out and pause at 4 seconds:
I use 2 'T' intersection or 'X' intersections on my sons layout.
Good luck also with sticking to one theme! I stuck it out for a couple of years just on Castle - now its anything and everything I like the look of (or is at the right price)!
For space I have floored a fair percentage of the loft. To sort out my layout I did a 'plan view' in excel to show what was going where and then adjusted it as I was going. It does give you a good idea of overall size and where you want things to go, e.g. Main Street, Airpport area, Farm, Harbour and work the minor details around that.
To get older sets it's as the rest have said, ebay, etc but keep an eye on here for the bargains!!
Something you will want to look at is the modulars. TH, GE, PS and FS are still available. They look awesome in a city. getting your hands on GG, CC and MS won't be so easy (unless you have a very full wallet).
Most of all have fun......there is not a wrong way to do it!
I am attempting to keep from collecting some themes like Ninjago because they are so immense and the completionist in me would probably go crazy trying to get them all(Star Wars is driving me nuts....).
The collection resides in an area of my basement that's set aside for it and we're now in the process of constructing a few two tier tables to house the quickly growing amount of sets. If I keep buying at the rate I'm buying now, my basement will most likely be full by the end of the year. Thankfully, my wife is totally on board with this as it gives us something to do with our kids and we both love building the bigger sets when they're sleeping.
One thing we are doing with the Star Wars starfighters is that we're hanging them from the ceiling of our boys' bedroom to simulate a gigantic battle. They boys just love it and we've hung a rotating solar system to add to the look.
Overall, it's becoming a major collection quickly and I'm just glad that I've got the space to let it grow and a wife that's just as nuts about it as me!
I like the idea of using excel to plan the city out, is there a list of footprint sizes like 10x6 etc for each set, just curious before I count them all out myself I'm hoping someone has done this already. I'm in Florida and wanted to know if anyone has been to the legoland store? I am thinking off going there to shop for some of the hard to get sets - I know online is easier and cheaper and you'll find alot more sets available but there's something about choosing at the store.
One advantage in collecting Castle sets is that you don't have to worry about base plates. I picked up a sheet of "ReadyGrass" from a local hobby shop:
http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/category/ReadyGrassVinylMat
Looks better to me than a studded base plate and allows more flexibility to layout. It does have a strong odor that subsides after a few days.
I realized the advantage of no road plates with castle, I am already looking at the castle .......
Who do you think has the bug worst, new (or RE-newed) collectors, or long time mavens? Right now, I have no patience. Starting from scratch I have tried to cover my son's room in Mars sets, for him I say, for me my wife corrects. I really have work to do right now but I just want to talk about Legos... We need a lawnmower, I just ransacked the paypal account... Bad, bad, compulsive brick-hoarding dad am I...
1. Make most of the space.
2. LEGO Shop at Home has the newer ones. Check eBay for both the newer and older baseplates. BrickLink also has the newer and older ones.
3. The newer dark gray roadplates look great with them.
4. Impossible to stick to one theme. ;)
5. eBay, BrickLink, Craigslist
6. Mainly from TLG, but there are/were some rumors that were true like Town Hall.
I usually explain multipurchases by saying I have a family who love Lego.
I went through a second phase of lego collecting about eight years ago and filled half my attic quite quickly with any bargains I could find. I did stop collecting. So it is possible. :) If only for a while :)
Renewing my interest in November last year I have more than doubled that collection.....
I am building a mixed old city/ new city in my mind, until I have the space to set up my diorama for real. So I find myself collecting HP, Castle, City, Winter Village and CMF.
I have found the only way to make this economical is to buy any sets that are reduced below 75% of retail price, following those themes. Luckily I have found a few real bargains below 40% retail. Grab them when you can or you will probably regret it, unless you have a long term buying strategy.
Unfortunately for my wallet I also have an interest in Star Wars / Space .... So I am also building two alternate worlds in my mind. Will I ever have enough space to set them out? I hope so.
One, it's usually easier and cheaper to collect a whole theme while it's an actively sold one versus having to search the aftermarket later. Even if this means paying RRP (aka MSRP aka Regular Retail Price), if you have to Bricklink or ebay a set later it's very, very rarely going to be cheaper.
Two, Decide if you want to collect theme at all or do MOC's. If you are going to primarily do MOC's then who cares if you got a whole theme....
Three, Decide how you plan on sorting everything, at least in general terms. Keep stuff sorted by sets? by piece type? by color? Also related, what are you going to store stuff in? there's a thread here about storage and a BIG thread over on Eurobricks that has a LOT of thoughts, advice and even pictures on how folks store their collection. It will be MUCH, *MUCH* easier to start your sorting while the collection is smaller and easier to manage than to wait until you have 50,000+ pieces (or more) to start taking a serious jab at it. Try and pick a design that will stick around a while so you can match it later, or 'overbuy' a current style so you will have room to continue to sort/store as your collection expands over time.
Four, boxes, do you want to save them or not? perhaps certain core theme(s) might be worthy to be saved (or not).
Five, remember, Parts are Parts, just because a certain piece or color or set doesn't come as part of theme X, doesn't mean that if you get a good deal on it you shouldn't buy it if you can make a use for it. Personally I see Friends as a way get some interesting parts in different colors that could easily make for nice accents somewhere.... Or to put it differently, don't let some marketing guy decide where YOU can or cannot use a part just by a label they put on a box.
One of the beauties of LEGO is that it's use is limited by creativity more than any other factor (part availability in certain color/shapes is sadly sometimes limiting as well).
towntheme.I know in my heart I should be chucking the boxes out - instead of a couple of bins my collection in boxes takes up alot of room. I just can't bring myself do actually do it!
I think I will start going online to get old sets but not in the number that I was getting at the store. I did love going to the differenet stores and discovering what sets were available, the day before yesterday I got the public transport set from toys r us on sale. I had given up on the set and was looking at online prices, it was a nice surprise.
I guess being a newbie I am going through issues I am sure any re-newed or new collector has struggled with.
1.) Get rid of the boxes (but I don't think I would be wanting to buy a used set without the box, then again if I get rid of all my boxes I could start buying unboxed sets which are cheaper)
2.) How to store it and organize it
3.) Mix the sets so I can start on MOCs - I never had my sets built when I was young lego was all about MOCs which is why I loved Lego in the first place. But again its like the boxes I just cant do it!
One of these days these three things will just happen ..... hopefully
I made a 'strategic' decision to put my Architecture and Creator landmarks at my office.
I don't keep the Superhero playsets, just the figs. (Except for the Milano and the Quinjet.)
It pained me to also jettison all of the sets of LotR and display the minifigures.
All of the UCS Star Wars are entombed in their boxes. Probably never to be built...
Maybe I will see you on there? If anyone in ATX is looking to make reasonable trades on extra sets, I would be happy to talk.