What percentage of your sets get broken down or even not built?

ethanjwall · March 2016

For me, more recently with new, bigger sets coming out, I have found myself less and less breaking my sets down.

Legoboy · March 2016

99.9999999%? Maybe?

monstblitz · March 2016

A very large percentage of mine do not get built. That's based mostly on having a 3 year old and 2 year old in the house. I only build stuff I don't care if they destroy (take apart). The rest is accumulating in my office closet and now spilling into the office. It's getting out of control.

datsunrobbie · March 2016

I'll estimate 90% broken down, because most of mine was purchased used.

Coolguy5000 · March 2016

Hardly any gets broken down and every set is built just to see it on the flesh

flord · March 2016

monstblitz said:

A very large percentage of mine do not get built. That's based mostly on having a 3 year old and 2 year old in the house. I only build stuff I don't care if they destroy (take apart). The rest is accumulating in my office closet and now spilling into the office. It's getting out of control.

I fall into the same category. I'm very selective about what I build with small children in the house. I have kragled many things for them to play with after having gotten so frustrated with lost pieces. Certain things I let them play with if I am around to supervise, otherwise most of my big ticket items remain unopened.

bandit778 · March 2016

Only ever brought 4 sets that were brought not to be built, #2236 was purchased off eBay for the Lime Green parts #92222 for my alternate Bat-Pod last year and more recently #60105 , #31040 & #31027 purely because I had no small car parts to have a go at the mighty micros competition. Everything else that is brought as a set, gets built then stored as a set. For mocs I usually just buy parts from the usual places.

datsunrobbie · March 2016

I've been surprised by the durability of several of my LEGO creations. The red truck and tracked vehicle in #8863 and the #31037 jeep hold up really well. I do usually try to get a sheet spread out in the play area in case parts fall off while playing.

catwrangler · March 2016

I build everything but sometimes I hold off for a special occasion. I've got an Easter bunny set I'm going to put together this week, plus a Palace Cinema for later. Sooner or later, everything gets disassembled because it's all grist to the MOC mill... except that nine months on, I haven't been able to bring myself to touch the Medieval Market Village. The tree fell apart while I was boxing it up to move it to the attic, but I think it's going to be tidied up and put on display again soon. The real test will be to see how long the Palace Cinema gets to stay together, considering that I had it in mind when buying it that it would be very useful for castle-building parts...

CHAINSAW · March 2016

Quite a few don't get built, though some I purposely keep in the box. As for broken well, my sets never get broken I take to good care of them. ;)

rdflego · March 2016

I hereby openly praise anyone who can withhold the urge to rip open a set as soon as you get it home. I struggle with the idea of 'saving' a set for a time that is greater than three minutes after walking through the front door. To those with willpower; I commend you.

99.8% of the sets I own have been assimilated to form my collection of parts for mocing, I own 0 MISB sets, I display a grand total of 24 unmodified sets, I have 0 sets stored.

SumoLego · March 2016

^ Praise is probably not quite the right word. Although I believe that they should be played with or atleast built, I still have 'extra' sets from 15 years ago that still haven't been liberated from their cardboard and plastic prisons.

And probably won't be...

Lego91 · March 2016

0% get broken down. Not even built (space issues) 5% or something like that. Mostly smaller Creator sets. I save huge sets until special dates to built. Currently three of them are waiting (Grand Hotel, Brick Bounty, Simpsons House).

Bumblepants · March 2016

Some sets I buy and just put them straight into sorting without building them. Did this with a number of Chima and Hobbit sets among others. Then sell or trade off the minifigures and it comes pretty close to free MOC material.

JudgeChuck · March 2016

Built - 100%
Broken down - 95% at a time
Rebuilt - 100%

I simply don't have room in my study to display many sets so, at the moment, I have all 5 of my modulars on shelves, along with my new #10235 Winter Village Market.

I also have #70751 Temple of Airjitzu built, as I wanted to finally apply the stickers, as I had received a duplicate sheet via BL.

I will shortly be taking apart the WV Market and Temple and building something else to put up for a while.

MaffyD · March 2016

My smaller sets get built fairly quickly after purchase so my youngest son can play with them. They stay built until they go back into storage a few weeks later. The larger sets can wait weeks/months/years and still be MISB. Right now I imagine I'm 15% built and out, 60% built but back in storage, and 25% never opened (but they will be some day, dammit!)

Recce · March 2016

My built sets stay built. Some of the small sets/polybags do get broken down for parts. Also those that I bought multiples of, 1 or 2 sets of which may be used as parts too.

mustang69 · March 2016

Of the sets I own the only two that arent currently built are #40124 Winter Fun and #40125 Santa's Visit. Mostly because I'm trying to decide if I just want to add the parts to my MOC building supply.

JudgeChuck · March 2016

@mustang69 Why wouldn't you just build them and then decide? They'd only take 15 minutes each... :-)
Winter Fun is a lovely little set - one of my favourite Seasonal ones, with lots of trans-blue tiles! Lovely! :-)

CHAINSAW · March 2016

JudgeChuck said:

@mustang69 Why wouldn't you just build them and then decide? They'd only take 15 minutes each... :-)
Winter Fun is a lovely little set - one of my favourite Seasonal ones, with lots of trans-blue tiles! Lovely! :-)

It is a good set, idk why I just don't like taking apart my legos, like ever.

mustang69 · March 2016

CHAINSAW said:

JudgeChuck said:

@mustang69 Why wouldn't you just build them and then decide? They'd only take 15 minutes each... :-)
Winter Fun is a lovely little set - one of my favourite Seasonal ones, with lots of trans-blue tiles! Lovely! :-)

It is a good set, idk why I just don't like taking apart my legos, like ever.

That's my problem, I can never bring myself to take apart a set once built unless I'm just rebuilding it.

JudgeChuck · March 2016

mustang69 said:

CHAINSAW said:

JudgeChuck said:

@mustang69 Why wouldn't you just build them and then decide? They'd only take 15 minutes each... :-)
Winter Fun is a lovely little set - one of my favourite Seasonal ones, with lots of trans-blue tiles! Lovely! :-)

It is a good set, idk why I just don't like taking apart my legos, like ever.

That's my problem, I can never bring myself to take apart a set once built unless I'm just rebuilding it.

Ah, I understand your dilemma... I would say "build them", as they're both really nice little dioramas.

:-)

MrShinyAndNew · March 2016

Every set that I've never built before gets built at least once. You never know when you'll learn something and it's nice to admire or criticize the official models.

The nicest sets get displayed for a time until I get tired of them or need the parts. The not-so-nice sets get shredded immediately.

Every single set is fair game for parting out.

CHAINSAW · March 2016

mustang69 said:

CHAINSAW said:

JudgeChuck said:

@mustang69 Why wouldn't you just build them and then decide? They'd only take 15 minutes each... :-)
Winter Fun is a lovely little set - one of my favourite Seasonal ones, with lots of trans-blue tiles! Lovely! :-)

It is a good set, idk why I just don't like taking apart my legos, like ever.

That's my problem, I can never bring myself to take apart a set once built unless I'm just rebuilding it.

Right unless it's creator then I'll take it apart qutie a bit.

CHAINSAW · April 2016

My sets finally just got taken down for a while. Hopefully most of them will get re-built in the next three months or so.

msanders · April 2016

Interesting discussion. Having recently moved abroad I had to dismantle all of my sets and to save space, I unbowed the others. I'm slowly rebuilding the big sets and the other small-medium sets are bagged up in the basement (or cave as the Swiss call it). I buy to build and when I run out of space I dismantle. Having said that, there are sets that having been built yet and are stored.

Also I have a 3 year old and no set is off limits when it comes to play. Yes, bits come off but he's very good at putting those bits in a special storage box. He dropped one set because it was too heavy to carry (I didn't know he was getting it), but it can be rebuilt!!

snowhitie · April 2016

Everything I buy, even if I an buying for parts, I want to buying at least once. Even if it's not my cup of tea, I agree with @MrShinyAndNew you can learn interesting techniques and it's always nice to see something come together. Parts packs or sets to change and (try to) improve are about 10% of the collection.

Part of the sets get built by my son and those usually stay together. When he was younger I helped but now he mages find on his own, even with sets for older kids (regrettably). They get stored per theme in boxes in the cupboard. I'd say that's 30% of the collection.

My sets get built and displayed by I don't leave it all out, too much dust and too little space. So things get put on zip-lock bags and saved to be rebuilt another day, about 25%at the moment. I can't get myself to break up most sets for MOCing though, however cool the pieces are. I think about 10% is on display + some MOc's.

And then there is the stuff in the box in the cupboard that has yet to see the light of day. Some of it is bought to make sure I don't miss out on it, other stuff because I try to buy (as you do) when there is a good deal and other stuff is for when my son deserves a present. That collection keeps growing at the moment seeing as I haven't been able to built for almost three months (little rant: it's driving me crazy). I (and basic maths) would say 25% of the collection in the cupboard.

MissKittyFantastico · April 2016

It's a rare thing for me, nowadays, to take apart a set; with a handful of exceptions, if I bought it, I want it on display (provided there's room, of course, but I think I'm still a year from Peak Lego with my current shelves, so that's okay). Only twice have I bought a set for parts, both quite small: the Juniors Spider-Man set for the Green Goblin minifig, and a Mixel ("Boogly", evidently) for the 'stinger' arms for a revamped Yellowjacket - in both cases, I built them first anyway, because why wouldn't you?

With those shelves to work with, the few sets I have taken apart have been ones I bought because I'm invested in the line, but just didn't much care for - mostly superhero ones, make of that what you will. Batman's the worst offender, with the Bat-Mech and the DKR 'Bat' (the flying whatever-the-heck-it-was) giving their lives for parts while I was building a custom Ultra Agents supertruck - not very big parts either, I'd been hiding both vehicles at the back of shelves so I didn't think very long about sacrificing them, and the swinging-grabby-wing Batwing from the Joker's steamroller set is darned lucky I didn't need anything from it at the time, too. While we're on Batman, his Bat tank-sewer-crawler... thing from the upcoming Killer Croc set is going to have to really impress be during the build if it doesn't want to be immediately taken apart again (same goes for Croc's snappy jaw chariot whatever), making it only the second set (not counting the little 'for parts' ones above) I've bought with no intention of displaying it; the first was the construction site from the Rhino/Sandman Spider-Man set, although the crane, with the addition of a driver cab, did get added to the Marvel New York shelf (I did like the bit where all the crane drivers lined up to help Spidey), so it wasn't a total loss.

Mind you, it's not impossible those upcoming things will impress me and survive, that's happened before. I didn't intend to keep the Emperor's Throne Room Star Wars set as-built - I got it because I had a gift voucher to use, and had a vague idea of turning it into a set of Kligson's Droid World (abandoned due to lack of a really striking 'set' to copy in the available art reference, although I do still want to put together an Imperial Warbot). But, having not done any rebuilding for a little while, I got used to having it around, and ended up adding it to one of the Star Wars shelves, next to Home One and the various Endor-related sets (with Luke and Vader side by side against the Emperor, a la Lego Star Wars 2 game).

DeMontes · April 2016

Very few sets get built and those that do soon get broken down for parts...yes I am officially a Parts Monkey

Yodalicious · April 2016

Any set that I own that isn't built (and that list is currently over 50 sets long) is entirely because I haven't had the time to build it or the space to put it after it has been built. I have a three-year-old (and a seven-month-old for that matter), but I don't not build because he's too young to play with the assembled sets...I don't build because I don't have as much time as I had four years ago.

In my house, we have five types of sets:

1. My oldest son's sets. 100% built and, to his credit, almost all are still completely intact.

2. My sets that have been broken down. In Ziplocs and labeled by set.

3. My sets that are built. These don't stay together for long at the moment as I'm constantly fighting the battle between sorting and building the unbuilt. I have 20 built sets at any given time and as I disassemble one, I crack open the box on another.

4. The unbuilt. Which I totally intend to build.

5. The sets that my boys will get one day. LotR/Hobbit, Death Star, Millenium Falcons (one for each), some select Harry Potter. These I bought for them and they get them in due time.

There are three others that I suppose would fall into No. 6 when it comes to my above list. You could call it my investment sets group, but it's all of three sets and I honestly don't know what I'll end up doing with them.

Pippa · April 2016

I'm a little bit of all of the above.

I'd say about 25% of our Lego in still in boxes/polybags hidden away, some smaller items for treats for my son and some larger sets that either future gifts for him or wait for my to have the time. For whatever reason medium sets seem to get built sooner.

Maybe another 25% is built and available for play - most is out on the train table though his Arctic sets (including ice caves/hideouts built by me), Ninjago and Pirates are kept in bins below.

Everything else is broken down for building. I'd say 5-10% of sets I get are never built and just used for parts - mainly duplicates, Chima and Friends. I do have some bricks set aside for specific projects - currently we have a bunch for future Modular buildings and a treehouse project.

Panda_Hero · May 2016

The sets I haven't built is 0.3% and the sets I break down is 90%. I have only never built one set i own and that is the Kylo Ren's command shuttle.

Tufted_duck · May 2016

All of my sets get built (eventually) although i do have a couple stuck in their boxes waiting for a better opening day.

Then there are those sets that i didnt get round to opening and now are worth a little more being discontinued... breaking those seals suddenly feels a little more precious.

All in all though I'm a parts monkey through and through so once built they get taken apart for the piece i really need right now.

Then its on to the great sorting bucket

What percentage of your sets get broken down or even not built?

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