Why I Stopped Buying Bulk LEGO
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 25 ส.ค. 2024
- This phase of my LEGO collecting journey might be over... At least for now! I wanted to make a little follow up to my previous video of 'Tips for Buying Bulk LEGO'. It's linked below. This video outlines a little more of my collecting journey and why I ultimately stopped buying bulk LEGO. I still think it was the best decision for me starting out and I highly recommend doing your research and figuring out what is best for you!
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I quit buying bulk lots for 2 reasons. 1) prices rocketed from £4-5.00 per KG, to over £20 per KG in some cases. 2) Sellers of bulk lots (charity shops etc) used the name to pretty much maximise what they could get for pretty much "bags of crap". A 20KG bulk lot listed as Lego, and under scrutiny the pics mainly being of Lego, once arrived turn out to be box's of general crap, (Chinese knock off bricks, broken toys etc) and very little Lego at all
This is a great shout. It’s definitely a crap shoot and depending on where you are in the world it might be even more of a gamble.. buyer beware with everything and do your research! Thanks for sharing!
Setting up a bricklink store was the best thing I ever did for managing my collection and dealing with bulk lots. I was also drowning in parts I would never use and constantly trying to find solutions on how to store it all.
Once I setup my store I posted all parts I knew I’d never use. I posted minifigs I had no interest in. Now when I buy a bulk lot I do a preliminary sort of what I want and what the store gets. It’s helps fund the next lot too.
Yesssss this. Ok. So this was my exact thinking of something to consider.. I feel overwhelmed by creating the store and investing time into keeping correct inventories. Do you find that to be time consuming? Because I have thought of this exact option as well! Would love your thoughts!
@@JJJBricks It took me a bit to figure out how I wanted things at first but uploading is no big deal. I set things aside and upload little a time. I count everything as used (except new minifigs) to keep inventory neater. Bricklink can be super time consuming if you want it to be a source of income. But as a means to keep things under control it’s easy to manage.
Great to know! I figured setting it up and relying on it as a business can be stressful and time consuming, but taking it a little at a time just like sorting would be really great I think. I do love the sorting and organization part of this hobby which is no secret! 😂 thanks so much for your input! ❤️
As someone who runs a part time online store I feel there is an inner shopkeeper in many of us and this might scratch that itch for you
Yesss! I think I might love it… that’s what scares me! Where do I find the time???
I got out of Lego and back in around the same time as you. I ordered two separate 10lbs bulk Lego boxes from Goodwill to introduce me to the new bricks. I’m glad I did, but it’s a young man’s game. I’d like to do more orders but I don’t have the time
Hey that’s awesome! Yeah the goodwill finds boxes can be real cost effective if you can snag them when they have deals on clearance or shipping. But yes I hear you… it’s a lot of work processing bulk. It’s definitely something that’s easier if you enjoy the process!
I agree with buying bulk lots, at the start I was also buying everything, which had a lot of colored bricks you dont use a lot, now I try to only get bulk lots with lots of greys/browns or bulk lots you can visibly see some interesting sets. Processing bulk lego is a lot of work and is so time consuming, but in the end it gives such a satisfaction and really helps you build up a decent part inventory long term! For info, in europe the used bulk lego price per kg is €10 ($5 a pound)
Thank you for sharing! Good to know on bulk prices in the EU. I feel the same on trying to find lots that seem to have parts that I am looking for!
€ 15 Euros in Germany and Austria, Lego is becoming more expensive.
Indeed.. always finding more ways to find it for cheap and economical is key!
I'm just starting out, and bulk Lego is hard to find in my city. There's a thriving Lego culture here and the cheaper bulk stuff is snapped up quickly by seasoned resellers, and the prices are opportunistically excessive as most recognise the value of the Lego they have to sell. It would take an incredibly lucky stumble for me to find an affordable and substantial selection of pieces.
I see the value of the regular System colourful bricks, though, as they can be used for constructing landscaping and anything else hidden by the surface texture pieces. I also would use them in making prototypes for testing out sizes and techniques before committing to buying the correctly coloured pieces you need for the final.
Yes! Regular bricks are great for building structures and MILS. May I ask what city you are in? And yes resellers mostly know what they have and are priced very competitive for the market. It’s tough to stumble on great deals. You either have to get a little lucky or spend a lot of time and energy on the hunt.
@JJJBricks I'm in Melbourne, Australia, where prices are high, and the distances to travel are far.
Ahh yes. Makes sense. Definitely more of a limited supply.
I'm definitely at this point in my collection as well. A deal has to be exceptionally good for me to and to pick up a bulk lot on Facebook marketplace or somewhere similar.
100%. I still have to keep myself from even looking sometimes though. It’s just so tempting 🫣
I totally get this. I feel the same way about bulk Lego. Lot's of joy but I'm to a point now that I maybe don't need so much Lego. I still like digging through bulk though, it's like a treasure hunt!
Yes! 100%! You never know what you’re gonna get! There may be some gems hiding in there!
I’m relatively new to buying bulk Lego but I think forcing yourself to 100% clean and process each large bulk box you buy before buying a new one is a good rule to implement for anyone getting into this. It’s hard to turn down a good deal or a lot with parts you’ll want but aside from it preventing you getting in over your head, it’ll make you more patient and thoughtful with what you buy. There’s no rule that everything from bulk lots needs to stay in your collection either and that doesn’t mean you have to go all in and start a Bricklink store. Plenty of people will buy bulk of whatever you don’t use, especially if it’s cleaned and somewhat sorted.
I totally think this is a good strategy just to really temper getting over your head like I did 😂 you also then know what you have in your inventory all the time. Not wondering if you might have a part sitting in a box of unsorted and uncleaned Lego
Great vid buddy!
Thanks Steve! I just love sharing these videos with the Lego community. Really just enjoying the hobby to the fullest ❤️ thanks for watching!
I rather look on eBay for bulk sales of specific colors or pieces, let's say 100 x 2x4 bricks in grey. I know what I need, I know what I get. That may cost me more than a FB marketplace purchase, but especially the time I have to spend sorting and cleaning is way less.
This is absolutely a great way to go as well! It’s almost like purchasing from Bricklink or Pick and Build! I haven’t really done much of that myself on eBay for specific parts but all those options are definitely there. So many ways to tackle collecting parts! Thanks for sharing! 😊
I get your point. I bought to my son 16kg (35lbs) bulk lego in FB marketplace. Of course my son loved it. But if I think about how many parts there´s are in that amount that I myself would like or could use in my own moc's... Not much.
100% but great for your kid to be creative and heck, maybe they will give you ideas of how to use some of those parts! ❤️
I loved lego growing up and now I got a young son who is now into lego even though he destroys the sets almost as fast as we build them haha. I am wanting to basically do the same things, buy in bulk lots of parts so we can build almost any set we wanted, still going to cost a small fortune.
I have even considered buying good knock off lego bits as some of them are really good.
For now im just happy to build things again and have a good excuse lol.
Yes! I love that! It is an expensive hobby. No question. But there definitely some more quality non-Lego brick makers out there making some great looking sets!
I'm a cheapskate. And I'm new to the hobby and interested in city building. So what I'm trying to do is identify buildings I'm interested in having and then doing as you've been doing, which is "shopping my collection" to try to piece together sets. At this early stage it hasn't been a hugely successful enterprise, but it has been fun. I've been buying mainly from thrift stores and augmenting with BrickLink buys.
I suspect that as my collection of loose pieces grows it'll be easier to find parts for sets. In the meantime, I'm learning a lot about patience....
Yes Beth! You can have so much fun with the different parts and piecing things together. So many elements of this hobby that you can explore with limited parts! But yes patience is hard when it’s at your fingertips to get what you are looking for!
Hi, I was thinking the same about the Castle in the Forest. The instruction is free and getting the parts from Bricklink may be a lot cheaper than buying one of the rare sets. And You can buy forestmen minifigures at Lego PaB and decide Yourself how many You want to buy and how to configure them. May I ask You what You approximately paid for all the parts You used for the castle in the forest?
Yes totally! I paid about $90 USD but I also had been collecting castle type parts for a bit before then and also that takes into consideration some parts I will be stealing from the 3 in 1 castle set and bits from Lion Knights castle as well.
I decided a similar thing for the Lion Knight’s Castle: because I have a fairly large collection, and a lot of it is grays, I decided to check what I would need to build it. Turns out for I’d need around $100 in parts to complete it, slightly less with some minor color substitutions, and another ~$30-$50 if I wanted the exact minifigs.
So I’ve been slowly acquiring those parts when I find them cheap on Bricklink or available on PickaBrick. At this point I have everything except the terrain (large dark azure plates and green slopes), a handful of arches and oddball bricks (might just substitute 3 1x4 bricks for each of the 1x4x3 bricks), and the thatching (59 medium nougat rock/claw pieces). I paid the ~$6 each for the horse barding, but I’m not gonna spend $10 just for the pennant flag or $8 for the queen’s cape.
I also created Bricklink wanted lists for a couple other huge sets that I might want to build, but not badly enough to pay what they cost. I got all the parts I needed to add to my collection so I can build the Technic Bugatti Chiron for about $150 - mostly I needed the blue and azure panels, plus the wheels. While cheaper than the full set, that’s on the upper range of what I think makes sense for a set that I’ll build and then take apart right away - I’m not really into cars, so I don’t want this to have on display. Which normally would mean color doesn’t matter - I’m building it for the build experience or to learn techniques. But those are colors I love using so I wanted them anyway, and setting my quantity targets at “enough to build the Chiron” was as good a number as any.
I also created lists for Ninjago City and Ninjago City Docks. They’re not very high priority, but would be cool to build someday.
@@natbarmore Yes, this makes sense. In the good old days Lego was about building, destroying and re-building. If its not just about having a display model You can build a lot of different castles, especially those from the Bricklink-Designer-Programm, if You have a certain inventory of bricks and parts already. And all the minifigures can be currently bought at Lego PaB.
Yes! This type of research is so fun! Good luck!
100%!!
unforts I don't think I will ever stop buying bulk - its kind of an addiction now, I have everything now at least sorted into boxes of types (plates, slopes, tiles, you get the idea) and once in a while I'll sort a bag of *rounds/something* down into individual components but of mixed colours. I really need to go buy a tub or 3 as I haven't in a few weeks so I can sit down and sort - its relaxing if nothing else, the only real problem is storage - but big plastic drawer storage with bags of each part in seems to work ok. (also there's nothing quite like finding a couple of nice mini figs in a random tub of Lego)..
When you have a couple of pounds of just one component you know there's an issue :)
See I also love this! Space is definitely an issue for me currently though. The thrill of bulk is very fun for me, but I do have like 8 more boxes to go through yet. It will be interesting to see where I am at in my Lego journey by the time I finish cleaning sorting and storing all of it.
By then I might be at a point where I’m ready to get more. I just love the whole process!
7:17 so…many…tires.
Even with my collection that is almost entirely intentional (that is, buying or being gifted sets I wanted, buying parts I wanted, not buying bulk/mystery parts), there are just so many wheels and tires that I’m unlikely to use. It’s the nature of Lego: each and every car/truck/ninjamobile has 4+ wheels , whether it’s a 9-piece Classic Space rover or a 1200-piece Land Bounty. But when you’re building your own things, even if they’re much bigger and more elaborate than official sets, they probably don’t need tons more wheels. So you buy 5 100-piece cars, build a 500-piece vehicle, and use maybe 8 wheels, and now you’ve got 12 left over. Build a bigger castle, you’ll use more bricks. Build a bigger spaceship, you’ll use more wedge plates. Build a bigger rover? Good chance it’ll still only have 4-8 wheels. It adds up.
• I have a small tub of vintage wheels and tires (‘60s-‘70s).
• I have a small tub of old small wheels and tires (metal axle, permanently attached to the brick or plate).
• I have a small tub of newer small wheels (starting when they introduced removable wheels) and tires and axle plates.
• I have a small tub of medium wheels and tires that fit on axle plates.
• I have a small tub of medium wheels and tires in the Speed Champions style and similar sizes.
• I have a small tub _just_ for wheel 55981 and its variants and tires for it. And it’s probably not big enough, whenever I next part out and sort built things. This is the smallest size of wheel I use on the regular, and I more often use them for other things, rather than as wheels.
• I have a medium tub of wheels and tires the next step up in size.
• I have a medium tub for wheels and tires the _next_ step up in size, including wagon wheels.
• I have a medium tub for older wheels and tires of a similar size, that aren’t interchangeable with the standardized rims Lego has been using since the mid-‘00s.
• I have a medium tub for large Technic wheels and tires.
• I have a medium tub for Technic motorcycle wheels and tires.
• I have a large tub for large Technic wheels and tires.
• I have a large drawer for hard plastic wheels.
• I have two medium-size boxes tucked away, just for the really large Technic wheels and tires.
• I have a small tub for tread sprockets, a small tub for modern Technic tread links, and a small tub for the small Technic tread links, rubber tank treads, and vintage tread links. These are the only ones that really scale with larger creations.
So, yeah, totally a self-inflicted, first-world problem, but I suspect the only AFOLs who _don’t_ have a “too many tires” problem are the folks who build large city layouts and build dozens or hundreds of small vehicles to populate them.
So true on the wheels math!! You’ll just never use them all!
I am new to lego and and I though about getting a bulk. I keep coming to the question of useful will those random pieces be.
That is absolutely the question. Even if you feel good about the lot you purchase, it’s always a bit of a gamble since you can’t know everything that’s in it!
I also like to touch the parts.
I see what you did there
my rules with bulk lego
1 clear pictures
2 1 euro for 100 gram 10 for 1 kilogram
3 i dont have the last bought bulk in mine collection clean.
These are excellent rules! Mostly #3 😂
hi 20 years ago lego changed star was came and start to pull them out of the pit
note there's alot of lego in alot of homes i know the wife in a home is going to say no more lego we are losing the space for it
i know there are older men in man cove with there cat or dog with lego are now getting low on space
i am lucky i have space i stopped because i is eating up the space i have talked to alot of lego fans in 10 years
100% what you saying is real PAB BRICKLINK is super 20 years more i think sells will be down alot be cause of space
i used to pick up alot of recording gear from people and alot was from lock up's i know lego i end up in lock up
in my town there a big yellow and town next to me has 2 of them my in laws and sister's is full of lego
we think co vid was bad i see lego going this way over time great point
Space is definitely always a problem 😂 thanks for sharing your story friend! ❤️
You are too cute, don’t you buy another brick! 😅
Well ok…..
But if it’s a R E A L L Y good deal 😏😏
There’s some disgusting stuff and used Lego,. Let me tell you pew, nasty and a lot of them are fake Lego lotta old rusted screws sharp objects I’ve seen at all. Be very very careful if you buy used Lego, and a box. Kids may have played with it and kids. Will be kids, so there could be anything, in the middle of that Lego, and you stick your hands in it you want to puke yuck. So be careful be very careful just like the old ball pits. There’s everything at the bottom in the middle of that thing. Beware.
Indeed there is some gross stuff! I thankfully haven’t ran into anything real bad, but yes be careful of sifting through unknown Lego with your bare hands. You never know!
A friend of mine bought some used LEGO in bulk and found petrified marble poos in the box. Pretty gross.
Yeah.. I imagine especially if you are getting a collection from a hoarder perhaps or it sits for a long time that is to be expected..
Oh my god… spider nests inside the bricks?? That just unlocked a new fear 😰
😂