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I’ve recently moved and am getting my new LEGO space set up in my new house. One of the first things I did was pull my collection of modular buildings going back to 2010 when I I left my dark ages and I had the strangest feelings of meh when putting them up. The more I look at them it’s almost as if I’ve come to dislike them, because they take up so much of my display space. In fact I haven’t build any since the Assembly Square back in 2017 and it almost feels I’ve just been buying them every year out of habit and the fear of missing out on keeping the collection complete.
Does anyone else feel that way?
One of the things I’m trying to do is right size my collection, and I’m considering the that maybe it’s time for my collection of modular buildings to move on to new homes. I could certainly disassemble them as store them for later building (but how much later will that be? Likely years) and that seems selfish of me when so many other fans would love the chance to build the retired modular buildings and enjoy looking at them every day.
I’d have the opportunity to buy them in the future when (if?) I wanted to rebuild them but given the rate that LEGO releases new sets, I have plenty of other building options.
Anyone go through some similar and have any advice and/or recommendations?
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However, having gradually brought all my unbuilt Lego to the new house and stuck it in the (new) loft over the past couple of weeks, I've kinda scared myself about just how much there is. I thought I'd feel proud and excited getting all the sets organised, but now I feel kinda embarrassed and overwhelmed about how much I have. It would take years and years to build it all, not to mention probably an entirely new house to display it all. And all this has been accumulated in the past 6 years with my first 5 years of post dark age Lego still in a storage locker in the US (which is also a ridiculous amount) which I still need to ship back here.
In the past I've pretty much bought any lego set if it's been a good deal and of any slight intereat to me. Also multiples of sets I really love. In my mind's eye I have visions of having a giant Hoth scene set up one week, then switch it out for a big city scene, then maybe a Tatooine scene etc. But now I'm asking myself am I really going to have the time to do that with other hobbies a wife and two small kids with ever-increasing extracurricular activities? I'm also thinking I should just open a bunch of sets and sort then straight into my parts storage just to save space, but that seems like a real waste.
So now I'm now thinking I should have a huge cull of sets that I don't love. For example, I bought the re-issue of the Taj Mahal, not because I liked the set or the subject matter, but because it was one of the biggest sets ever and being a lego fan surely I should have it in my collection. However, since then, 6000 piece sets are becoming more and more common.
Equally, I have the first three giant Technic supercars, but I'm not really a technic or car fan. With limited time and space and so many other sets, am I really going to spend maybe 30 hours building these instead of all the sets I have that I would love to build? For example, I still need to build every single modular save for the two I have built.
I guess I'll have a better idea once I actually move into my new house, but don't be surprised to see me selling off a bunch of sets in the future. Although doing that would also take a huge amount of time and hassle.
It also frustrating that I'm having this crisis just at the point where I (and my daughters) will finally have the chance to really appreciate and access my collection for the first time in my life (thanks to the Lego room).
Definitely not the worst problem to have at a time when there is so much turmoil going on in the world, but it's definitely stuff I need to give some serious thought to over the next few months.
I do miss the display though. The full street is gorgeous, and it fills a big Kallax really well too. All the little stories you get to tell yourself when looking at each of them!
I keep saying I'll buy less and I really have slowed down my purchases of sets over the past few years. This is a good first step but my small room in the basement isn't getting any bigger.
I keep buying the modulars for fear of missing out on 1 of them and not havig the entire run but I seriously don't have the room for them anymore.
It seems like a lot of us long time AFOLs have run into this same issue, that of the need for space to store our collections. As a result, I've decided against Ecto-1 and the Delorean. I just don't have the space for them.
Now it's not only financially prohibitive (for most people) to keep on top of all the huge releases, but as someone that's been collecting for over a decade, it's also impractical from a space perspective, and even a time perspective.
Even if I had all the money, all the space, and all the time, I'm not sure how desirable it would be to have everything. I'm actually experiencing a version of that right now; I bought my first house in December, and I'm lucky enough to have a home office/LEGO room, so I'm unpacking all of the sets that I've bought in more than a decade that have been in storage for a long time, and I'm building them. But I'm not sure I'm savouring them as much as I should be, because there's always a next set to build as soon as I'm finished one. It's like the more you have, the less you can enjoy any single thing.
I think burnout is occurring for a lot of people because we have a collector's mentality of wanting to have everything, and that's clashing with the reality of not being able to have everything. I think a lot of people would much rather there be fewer great sets available to reduce the headache than just accept that they can't have everything and have to prioritise. But prioritisation is good, IMO - there are so many sets I bought in the last 10 years that I wouldn't dream about buying now, because the bar is so high. And if none of us can have everything, and we all prioritise a little differently, then it means there is some heterogeneity in our collections, which is also good.
Sets over 2,000 pieces that I purchased by year:
2005: I purchased 0/2 sets
2006: I purchased 0/0 sets
2007: I purchased 3/3 sets 10179-1 10181-1 10182-1
2008: I purchased 3/3 sets 10189-1 10188-1 10185-1
2009: I purchased 1/2 sets 10197-1
2010: I purchased 3/3 sets 10214-1 10212-1 10211-1
2011: I purchased 4/5 sets 10221-1 8110-1 10218-1 10217-1
2012: I purchased 3/3 sets 10224-1 10225-1 10228-1
2013: I purchased 2/4 sets 10237-1 10232-1
2014: I purchased 3/4 sets 75059-1 70810-1 10243-1
2015: I purchased 2/6 sets 10247-1 10246-1
2016: I purchased 1/9 sets 10251-1
2017: I purchased 3/11 sets 75192-1 70620-1 10255-1
2018: I purchased 3/13 sets 42082-1 42083-1 10260-1
2019: I purchased 4/12 sets 75252-1 42100-1 21318-1 10264-1
2020: I purchased 2/17 sets 21322-1 10270-1
2021: I purchased 3/25 sets 71741-1 10278-1 21325-1
2022: I purchased 2/28 sets 10305-1 10297-1
* Education sets not included
* Sets I purchased to flip are not included
11111-1 Sets I purchased and still own
11111-1 Sets I purchased and sold after building
Gathering these numbers has revealed to me that even though I am very much feeling like I am entering my second dark age, the numbers do not support that conclusion. I think I am feeling discouraged by the hobby because I am not interested in purchasing most of the large offerings of today. Of the almost 30 larges sets over 2000 pieces that have been release in 2022, I have purchased the two that I want. The rest just don't interest me (I may get Bowser). It is not financial constraints, but space and time constraints that cause me to pass on sets that may have lured me in 10 years ago. And this passing up of good sets is what may be discouraging me.
All of that said, I still have all of my modular buildings, and I will continue to buy it every year, but even the modular is not a day one purchase anymore, and I am not that excited, less as the years go by.
P.S. A yearly castle would get me excited and would be a day one purchase.
Modular buildings though, along with the Ninjago city series, well I still love them. Thought the last 2 were great. I'll probably keep buying them unless they change the formula into something I don't like, like a facade as they did with the Winter Village