Here's the latest from the admin at Bricklink: www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1450622 I'm curious to hear what comes next! The idea of this information being preserved in the Help pages as Admin_Russell suggests is somewhat intriguing to me! Anything has to be better than just wiping it from the website, haha. With that being said though, *accessibility* to the information is just as important as the information itself, in my opinion. Burying this stuff away in the Help pages or simply resorting to using the Wayback Machine as others suggested are NOT ideal scenarios to me. A lot of folks have been informing me of errors I made in my understanding of some of the proposed changes - I really appreciate the clarifications! However, with that being said, focusing on the trees that look incorrect and not seeing the forest is something we need to avoid here. Correcting folks on a couple of smaller points *does not* debunk the message or the overall sentiment here. Additionally, my hypothetical scenarios in this video were unfortunately based on a misinterpretation on my part - but, no worries! Simply transpose the examples onto something like the smooth vs textured slopes or X vs + axle holes and the message still rings true. Lastly, I have been truly shocked by how many people have come out of the woodwork to chime in on the matter! Given how lowkey and rushed the timeline seems to be on this "proposed" update to Bricklink, there's a very real chance that many people would not have had an opportunity to weigh in had this story not taken off. Thank you for sharing it around! There's still a very real possibility that the admin at Bricklink will just push this through despite the overwhelmingly negative backlash they're receiving, but that's their prerogative. It's their website - they're free to make unpopular changes should they wish. For me, I'm going to start taking the time to learn utilizing other websites such as Rebrickable and Brick Owl. This whole debacle has been a good wake up call for me, I think. Time to start holding Bricklink at arms length. I know some folks are going to expect a follow up video to all this, but that's exactly the "current event for clicks" spiral I want to avoid. Like I said in this video, I didn't monetize it and that's largely because I don't want to financially incentivize myself to turn on a microphone and ramble for a few minutes; despite making some good points (if I do say so myself!), this video is not indicative of what I want to create on this channel. I only wanted to get the ball rolling on this discussion, and let me tell you, mission accomplished!! Thanks everyone! ❤
Honestly, this reeks of managerial decision a miles away. Probably someone high up in lego questioning why they should keep paying to maintain such a huge database, when they stopped making those parts decades ago. It is clear that whoever made the decision never bought Lego parts in their life...
Agree with all of this in principle, but as a practical matter: what functional difference is there between the “x-shaped” and “+-shaped” axle holes? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anything that one does and the other doesn’t - wait, can the x-shaped axle holes grab a bar piece?
@@natbarmore I don't believe there is a functional difference between the two, no - only aesthetic/cosmetic. However, if we're only going to judge these differences based on functional matters, then we might as well lump all the old and new greys together, right? What's the functional difference between them? 🤔
thx for the video and update. a few years ago, I bought 80 pounds of bricks off a guy, and even today, I'm still going through it and using BL to ID unique parts and discover whole new sets nearly lost to time. like you, I use BL every day, always diving down rabbit holes and learning. this whole thing immediately brought memories to my mind of 3 times in the last ~15 years, the feelings of sadness and loss that accompanied learning that some music sharing sites were shut down. it's not the lack of access to free music; it's losing the most thorough, the most complete library of music in the world. people that want to eliminate information *suck*.
From Legos perspective it makes sense because they are convinced that the newest version is the best. Subsequently all the sets should have contained the new version and all the sold pieces should be the new ones. Lego only makes Money on new bricks.
They had a solution for store owners: "undetermined type". A while ago they started eliminating the "undetermined type" category. So now they're eliminating the "type" entirely?
Trying to clean up the data by determining which part everything is, so that no set inventory uses the “undetermined type” version of a part was - and is - an excellent goal. And if Bricklink were _just_ a catalog, the info science best practice at that point would be to eliminate the “undetermined type” for that part, and insist that all future additions to the catalog identify the specific part variation. But I understand that Bricklink is also a market. Many of these mold variations _don’t_ have functional implications and thus, arguably, requiring sellers to differentiate when buyers mostly don’t care _is_ silly. But you don’t have to degrade the catalog data to solve this. All you have to do is keep the “undetermined type” categories around and allow sellers to list parts that way. Boom! Problem solved! Add a little bit of code to allow searches for “undetermined type” to also turn up sellers of the specific types of that part, too, and maybe a user-facing switch to turn that on and off individually*, and you’ve simplified for the folks who are just trying to build something cool, while still having all that detailed data available for historians and folks who want to put together vintage sets with period-appropriate parts and sellers who want to take the trouble to identify and sell vintage parts separately (presumably at a markup). * honestly, I’m having trouble even thinking of a reason to be able to turn that off, if the feature existed. If you specifically wanted 1x2 tile without groove or 1x2 tile with groove, you’d still be able to search for them. But if you searched for 1x2 tile, you’d get both, plus anyone who has listed the part as “1x2 tile (undetermined)”. Can anyone else think of a reason you’d want to search for sellers of “1x2 tile (undetermined)” and *_not_* also find listings for “1x2 tile with groove” or “1x2 tile without groove”?
The problem is that they are already merging pieces with very different functionality, namely the number of teeth or the presence of a cross-shaped hole! That's insane!
As someone who lists thousands of used parts, some of these changes are going to make my life a LOT easier. But as a weird Lego nerd who wants to use era-appropriate parts for my sets, I'm going to hate getting a sprue-y chair in my order instead of the (clearly superior) non-spruified chair.
I totally get it! This update benefits sellers, and if Bricklink doesn't have sellers, it ceases to be! There's got to be some way to do this though *without* erasing the accessibility to information for the user, right? I'm no professional at website design, but maybe a mould variation drop down menu like they do for colours? 🤔
@@RRSluggerYeah I'm 100% with you that the loss of information/detail is never a good thing. I think regardless of how you'd handle variants, sellers would have to take the hit in sorting out which is which when listing. But that's absolutely worth the effort in my mind. If anything, I wish there was MORE detail around vintage parts. I want to get a 4x8 black plate for the 570 Fire House I'm piecing together, and I want it to be era-appropriate. So it needs to have the little injection-molding spots on the side of the plate instead of on one of the studs. Only way I can find that is if a seller goes out of their way to note it, or I ask them directly.
@@CthulhuTooI think if you made it an optional choice that would help. Then if a seller wants to select which mold variation they can but if not they can just leave it blank
exactly, but apparently it's easier to be lazy & just mash pieces together & call it a day, instead of investing actual effort/time/$ to improve the platform, real shame
@@benjaminstorace6699 this is the world we live in, communities can bend backwards and be 3000% dedicated to a cause, only to be shat on by corpos. For me this was a huge dick move on LEGO's part & my respect dropped for them
As someone who uses bricklink for both a database to figure out which parts belong to which sets and a way to get missing parts for my old sets this seems like a terrible idea Edit: also goes without saying but thank you Slugger for bringing to our attention as someone with a similar level of passion to you I’m grateful for you telling us
I find it ironic that Lego created an entire animated short dedicated to the history of Lego, and yet they won't step in to preserve this essential part of Lego's history.
Man, this is really frustrating. I've been parting together older sets from my collection and I'm always careful to select era accurate parts. This change will make this almost impossible.
I just found out the the website Rebrickable tracks mold variants for sets so at least this information will still exist. I still feel like this change will result in more difficulty for the aftermarket on Bricklink though with used/retired sets.
You're more patient than me. Most of my orders on Bricklink end up with missing multiple pieces or straight up wrong colors/pieces when ordering "100% complete" sets, even with sellers with 100% positive feedback. I can't imagine trying to get the era accurate molds when most sellers can't even compare the inventory of a set on BL vs what they have. Everytime I receive a set from Bricklink, I dread building it because odds are there will be missing/wrong pieces. And I always have to contact the seller for compensation or resolution. Most of the time they don't have the missing pieces, so they just send a refund equal to the value of the missing pieces, so I'm still losing because I'll have to order and pay for shipping again from another seller, and risk AGAIN to get the wrong pieces. So, my "wanted list" of missing pieces is ever growing on Bricklink.
Luckily I did that same thing during my college winter breaks over the last few years. My brother and I had a lot of stuff from the early 2000s. Knowing that this change is coming makes me very happy I rebuilt everything when I did
So many places are just unaware of the importance of archiving in terms of history. It's especially ignored in more modern fields like videogames or toy manufacturing. Once something is completed, things get thrown away or forgotten.
Indeed! The whole reason LEGO is such a well documented toy is because of the fans, not the company itself. I wish they could at least try to meet us halfway though... ☹
To a company, it was a means to an end - it was how they made money. To a fan, it was their life - it was how they made memories. We know why it happens this way. A different set of priorities.
Here's a message Bricklink recently sent out to the sellers on their platform: drive.google.com/file/d/11DutLU07VIe_9V4L46QNtaPMb6Nbjt1B/view?usp=drive_link Describing these mould variations as "unimportant and cumbersome" and recommending that sellers do not continue to make these distinctions in their inventories is... certainly not the direction I want to see Bricklink go. 💀 If you haven't done so already and wish to let the admin know your thoughts on the matter, the Help Desk link is right here: www.bricklink.com/v3/help/contact.page
They wrote "RELATIVELY unimportant and cumbersome FROM VIEWPOINT OF BRICKLINK MARKET". From my expirience, when I wanted some recolored model, I had sometimes problem with finding piece in color just because this variants. I think most poeple dont care about minor differences. Does it mean that this information should be scarted? NO! What I like to see is make subtypes - if I want brick with specific subtype, I can, but If I dont care, which is most time I finding for piece in color, I like to choose undetermined and find all.
I'm always happy to see the links that say "This part is similar to [link to the variant], @@emmetbrickhacker5029. If they already have a list of parts that are going to have their info merged, they know where to add those links.
If they want to help sellers, they could just add an "undetermined type" category for parts with mould variations. Then sellers who don't want to distinguish between variation, can list it that way, and we keep the catalog as detailed as possible
Always wanted a classic dragon with the flame that sticks in their mouth with the extra tiny pegs to finally fill that childhood dream, so i nabbed one off of bricklink and they gave me a new flame piece that doesn't work with it when it wasn't listed as that one. This updates going to make that way easier to overlook :7
As someone working in heritage conservation that is terrifying... Adapting an archive to fit into the market in a way that is purely detrimental to history records
@@AndrewNineTen maybe they should change their name to buildingtoyconnection, and Lego isn't allowed to use their name anymore. maybe just call everything a block. why even use words? just grunt at people until they understand, no need for these "databases." this makes me sad. I use bl every day, can't imagine such a massive, unique, community-built library is just like, "eh, this isn't a real problem, and the solution is already deployed, but let's eliminate history and data and information because ________"
I work for a bricklink store and this will actually lead to making more work for listing things and making the distinction in the comments, I’ll also seen a lot of sellers that are upset about this
You are absolutely right, it is a bad change. I think that as a seller. However, the groove/non groove tiles are a bad example. As I have been told, they just remove the "with groove" part. meaning a tile is either: a) a tile b) a tile without groove.
Oh! Simplifying names so that the modern/current part doesn’t have any descriptive modifiers is fine! So long as those details are still available (like in comparison photos). …except that it makes it harder to get started as a newb. If you look up a part and see “…with 7 teeth”, you immediately have your attention drawn to the fact that there might be variants with different numbers of teeth - why else would you call that detail out? But if all you see is “brick 1x2 click hinge, 1 finger vertical”, it might not occur to you that there are other variants of that part. At a minimum, it can be a mild form of gatekeeping. There was somebody in the Rebrickable forum a few months back advocating for essentially this sort of change to how parts are named. They were a fairly new adult user, and had gotten very frustrated because they spent a lot of time building something in Stud.io, accidentally using vintage/rare parts, and when they finally figured it out, having to go back and change all their part inventories so they could actually buy the parts. They specifically called out that they had been using “tile” insert of “tile with groove”, because they had no idea that the ‘with groove’ was the current default. Not exactly a parallel, but I think the basic point carries over to others new to the online Lego world and trying to figure Bricklink out. So I understand TLG wanting to make Bricklink less impenetrable - I just don’t think this is a good way to do that.
I can't stress enought how much Bricklink is THE LEGO ROSETTA STONE. A couple of years ago I found a random bag of toys at the flea market, identified some "weird" lego bricks in the bunch, old man sold it to me for $4. Turns out the bag included a whole bunch of parts to build the original Forestmen River Fortress and a few LEGO Space bricks from at least 1985! How did I found this out? Just by looking up the parts on bricklink, back when I had no idea what the forestmen even where, or when I found myself frowning at weird rockets I had never seen before. Sad to see them disregarding all the hard work that has went into the archive in favour of the market aspect of the website. Anyways, message sent to bricklink! Thanks for voicing this problem and keep up the good work!
A quick thing about the ratchet joints: The ones with less teeth don't have less range of motion, it's just that two of the teeth were replaced with equally functional "bumps." Both variants have the same range of motion and lock in the same positions.
Thank you for doing so! I hope we can make an impact here! When I saw that there are over 170,000 pages in the Bricklink catalogue, I knew that migrating this information elsewhere to a different site while preserving the functionality would be completely untenable. We have to try to save Bricklink itself, not rebuild elsewhere. ❤
on one hand, It's nice to eliminate these tiny changes between essentially identical bricks where finding colours can be awkward, much easier for building my own models. On the other hand the option should still be there to differentiate, especially in the interest of preserving the history of these sets or more minute functions of the bricks.
you may or may not have run into this yourself, but with the tight tolerances, the difference between a tile with a lip or no lip can make all the difference in something fitting or not. i work with moc builders who's models can easily run into the 2k+ parts and sometimes just that little variation can mean the difference between something working or an entire section redesign not only for the model but the instructions as well....
I'd love it if all the newer trans-clear parts specifically-all the awful MABS stuff that scratches if you look at it the wrong way-were completely separated out as it's own colour variant. It scratches horribly, is cloudy and has a purplish tint off-axis, and it fluoresces under blacklight, which the old PC trans-clear parts did not. But alas, it's too late. If I'm buying some transparent 1x2s or window panes, I just have to cross my fingers that I get the older superior parts.
Aaaaaaaaa THIS SUCKS!!! I check these sorts of tiny details all the time to make sure the sets I sell are 100% correct and I expect that bricklink sellers should do the same. But we need a proper inventory to do so! This update makes the Bricklink inventories straight-up inaccurate. Full-stop. Not okay. Get your shit together, LEGO.
What a terrible decision. Thanks for bringing this to our attention -- I had no idea this was coming. I have submitted feedback... let's just hope the people in charge listen.
There's already an 'indeterminate type' option if sellers didn't want to sort variations of individual parts, so I'm not sure what the benefit of this change is. Making a website or service worse for everyone to address a problem with an existing solution seems to be a common trend on the internet these days. I've only ever bought from Bricklink once but I visit the site at least once every few days to learn where a specific part comes from, if a specific set contains parts I'm looking for or what colour options I have if I want to use a certain piece. The main change I would actually want to see on Bricklink is a better way to search for printed parts.
To me this change seems insane. These mold differences are NOT just details in a lot of cases. For example, if you are building a wall, or just a big surface, using a lot of jumper plates, it's ESSENTIAL whether they have a bottom groove or not, it's not a small thing, it's gonna be immediately visible. For a lot of these cases the difference is extremely visible if the part is exposed. If I pay the money I'd like to have control over what I'm buying. I'm shocked.
I love build lego architecture buildings And the bottom groove makes a lot of difference! Especially in a small scale like in lego architecture buildings!
@@electromistressI build certain models that require both multiple types of jumper plates, and it hadn’t even occurred to me yet that this change would ruin my ability to ensure that I can build those.
This is absolutely infuriating. There needs to be more differentiation, not less! The person who pushed the change through needs to be at the very least reassigned to a role that can’t hurt consumers.
I mean I highly doubt this was just pushed by one rouge employee without authorization, I'd be sceptical of the decision making process that led to this being approved, whoever's idea it was
@@MatecaCorp maybe not rouge but why all the blame on the person who pushed it rather than the presumably dozens of people involved? We don’t even know if the person pushing the change to the live site agrees with the decision, they’re just a web programmer doing their job.
I can see both sides of this. There’s been times where I’ve been building a moc and need to wishlist certain parts and have been annoyed by adding every variant of a part to my wishlist just incase a seller has one variant but not another. But there’s also been times where I’ve been parting together a set or wanting to know when a certain mold was introduced or which variant is the correct one for a used set I’ve bought. I feel like the best case scenario would be some sort of toggle that you can use so the people who want to sell or search for the specific variations can and the people who just want the general part can sell or search for that. That way if a seller wants to just quickly catalog their parts they can and it will just let users know that they’re undetermined variants.
I really hope not, but I could definitely see them combining pearl light grey and flat silver since people already have a hard time differentiating them. But I would hate that because when I’m trying to piece together a build I want to know which silver I’m buying.
Imagine being TLG, inheriting a platform and community that cares so much about your product that they make a point of cataloging it down to the very minutiae of its design elements... and then choosing to discourage them from doing that.
I think the wet dream of many Lego managers is closing Bricklink alltogether and migrate the clients towards the Pick-a-brick. Every cent you spend on bricklink is a cent you don't spend buying new Lego 🙄
@@Beregorn88People still buy new Lego on bricklink… from new Lego sets people bought from Lego… and presumably Lego gets a cut of the sales of used Lego. Lego gets profit either way, so integrating PAB would be a stupid decision. Bricklink users already know about PAB and use it when it makes more sense to, which it genuinely sometimes does.
Great video! Just sent my message to BL. My solution would be to combine the catalog entries of different variants into a single one for each part, but then add subcategories for each mold variant of that part that would then be optional for sellers and just be set to "any variant" for the buyers who don't care which variant they're getting. IMO this would solve both the problem of making it easier for sellers, but still making it possible to buy specific variants. This would also mean that the record of what variants are in what sets wouldn't be lost as long as they add that subcategory to the part inventory of sets Thanks for bringing this change up!
A lot of the parts function differently and leave the finished product looking differently. There's a brick built figure from the first sand crawler that has an open stud green dome and that part is much more expensive than a closed green. But it changes the appearance. That's important when collecting. I use bricklink because it's for people who know what they're doing and care about it. That's what made it what it was.
I love browsing through Bricklink just to see which set used which pieces or where a specific piece was used. Especially for some unique moulds, its so nice to compare the sets it was used in. Its sad, that they are combining these pieces with small differences, because after this, some of mine could feel less special after this...
Of course, every single piece that's affected by this update makes everything meticulously annoying for collectors everywhere, but the one outline I'm scared for is the simplification for the torsos with ribs. This distinction, from what I've gathered, only applies to the reissued minifigs over the past 15 years. However, aside from the plastic ribs, there are clear differences to the older productions of these minifigs, what with torso printing and plastic quality. Newer figures are obviously less color faded than older ones, for example. This does apply to me, because very recently, I was buying and piecing together an updated blue classic space minifig, as I didn't want the older version. If the reissued figures are being lumped in with the older ones, it would hurt both the vintage market, and the market who is after the newly updated minifigs. It sucks, and I really hope that this update gets reversed. by the way, it's awesome to hear you cite Ross Scott. I definitely see a correlation between his videos and your format, and it's cool to find out you're a fan of his ^^
This is a really good point! I wish I would have touched on it in the video! Ross Scott is a favourite of mine. I was shocked with how much time has flown by since I started watching him years ago! ❤
What's particularly interesting is that just a few months ago, they split out the 2x4 'humpback' piece into whether it has a groove at the base (new style) or doesn't (old style) -- if I'm replacing the engine pods on my 6339 Shuttle Launch Pad (1995), the parts without a groove are the correct replacement, the ones with a groove are 2020+ vintage and the wrong piece -- bewaaare the groooove!
I already struggle with ocd, checking if the bricks are from the same mold even when it's completely unnoticeable on the outside of the brick... If I start getting noticeably different bricks in the lots, I will lose my mind.
I've been trying to collect a part of every color lego has ever manufactured, and this is gonna actually make that more difficult. Some pieces were only made in a certain rare color during certain years, so mixing them together removes a way to search for colors.
I feel like you could fairly easily implement a feature that would group these entries together (rather than merge them) so people could ignore the distinction if they want to when shopping or doing inventory but the more detailed info would still be available when relevant, say for stores or customers who do make the distinction or for archival information. Obviously it would take more effort to ship a new feature like this, but I feel like it would be worth it!
I've been a seller and common user of bricklink for several years now, and I found the catalog to be EXTREMELY useful. Especially with selling Bionicle or other retired sets, the inventory display is crucial to making sure you have the right parts. I really hope they hear our side of the issue, it would be a shame if a tool like this just got erased.
It makes so much more sense to have a "This is the correct part" but also a "Here is a comparable replacement" Having just the "This is a part, but you may get a varient of it oh well"
If I ordered jumper plates and recieved ones without the groove, Id be really dissapointed. Its things like this that make me violently against Lego switching to all digital instructions, I dont trust the resource in their hands.
And for me, I often specifically want the ones without the groove! It’s very frustrating to lose that choice. The grooveless ones are meant for old sets and to go alongside plates, and the grooved ones are meant for newer sets and to go alongside tiles
Thank you Slugger for taking the time to make this video. I never would have been aware of this change unless you told us about it. This could wind up being a pretty big deal depending on how far BL is going to go with streamlining their inventory. I think it's important to let Brick Link know that the community doesn't just see them as a marketplace but also as the best source of information when it comes to set inventories. -Jesse
I don't understand this. They already have undetermined type for some bricks. Why not use that for the sellers and buyers that don't care which version they sell/get. - That would be my solution ... EDIT: Sent a message to support ... I hope it will help. as other comments suggested, why not make a drop down menu for different versions like they have for colors ... This is another good idea.
Slug, I’m gonna be honest, sometimes you really do need a specific part variant. Take my droid I designed, XR-44, in order to attach his backpack/jetpack, he needs a specific variation of 1x2 jumper plate, namely the 15573 variant. If I use any other variant, then his jet-back-pack won’t attach correctly due to his head being connected to his battle droid torso via a clip with bar element. Due to the width of that clip, other jumpers won’t work, as they’ll collide their bottom pin with said clip. In other news, I might have a solution that will fit both parties equally. It’s simple, when viewing the parts list of a particular set, you see the mould variant listed, but upon clicking it, you get sent to the unified page for all parts of that type. On top of that, you would also have the option to request a particular variant from the seller if they want to enable that option at checkout. In said system, upon clicking for particular part variants, you would see a list of the parts on your receipt that have mould variants and can select which one you prefer, assuming the seller has that variant, which they can let you know after you order. It’s not a great plan, but it’s a start.
Slugger thank you SO much for bringing this to our attention, I submitted a sternly worded yet respectful message to the help page linking them your video. Let's hope this doesn't go through!!
Another advantage of getting rid of parts variants information is that old sets that were until now locked to a limited, shrinking pool of retired mold variants can now be obtained with currently in production mold variants. One would expect this to have an impact on the price. Yet I don't think that makes it up for what we're losing here, which is valuable information that have been recorded over decades by fans. Not only do I prefer to get my sets with the correct part variants, but I'm also fascinated by the history behind the variantion for each of these molds... And Bricklink was my main source of information on the topic. As a fallback, there's Rebrickable that does also a fantastic (exhausting yet not exhaustive) job at recording part variant history with comparison pictures and graphs depicting distribution over the years... But, again, Rebrickable isn't exhaustive and losing a secondary source like Bricklink is still deplorable
Getting things like 2L axles without ridges, or bluish gray instead of gray is already a common occurrence in my experience. Most sellers are probably unaware versions exist... I imagine the people getting rid of their parts don't share our passion. For what it's worth, I think this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many variations are unlisted and quite possibly unknown. I have two purple pakari (bionicle mask), but only one has added supports on the inside. I have two noble huna (another bionicle mask) and the ID/print position numbers on the back are in different locations! Who knows what other parts we haven't had the opportunity to compare.
I would recommending archiving the entire website prior to the February update. You won’t have ordering functionality, but the information will be stored safely for future use and knowledge.
Actually, we have rebrickable available, which is not owned by lego and has every information about the parts variations But I still think it is a bad choice for bricklink...
I haven’t used Bricklink a lot myself, but you raise a lot of interesting points. I wonder if there would a way to streamline the database on the seller end to ease their load, while maintaining accessibility of info on these piece variants in their general catalog.
Having worked at an archive that was in the process of digitization, I don't understand why they don't just archive the part sites with a little note that says that these won't be separated on the market due to differences being too minor. The update page seen here means all of the little work required to point this out has already been done, just copy it over to the parts page, slap a little red banner on top that it's no longer getting updates and link to the part that is now treated as equal. I know there's a (very slight) cost involved in keeping that archived site running, but it's LEGO, it won't exactly cause their earnings to drop.
I feel like they should do something like the "new > used > any" choices for quality and make an option for you to choose specifically by variant or choose "any" if you don't care about variants. Make it then so sellers can list their inventory as "assorted" or "sorted - A variant", "sorted - B variant" etc. It may make it a little harder (and pricier) to guarantee the proper pieces since most sellers will take the easier "assorted" route, but at least the information and the option will both still be there. (They also should change the "new-used-any" options to be "new > used > damaged > any - good condition [which would be either new or used] > any - any condition [which would include the damaged pieces]", but I digress)
I notified 3 Lego-comunities in Germany to have a look at your video and on this issue. Hopefully they will respond to Bricklink and raise some pressure. Keep up your good work.
They should address this, but I'm not sure leaving it as-is is working for everyone. The data preservation aspect is extremely important but it's a mess for buyers and sellers, especially because Lego sometimes updates molds every year or two, and they've done so for half a century now. Certain colours only exist in one mold variant so you need to go through multiple pages to find it, and frankly most people don't care or want to care about all that. Ease of use is important too. But deleting pages for that ease isn't the way to go.
Bricklink's catalogue architecture has always been the worst of both worlds. Instead of having dedicated pages for each variant, they need to allows each part to have a base entry with a drop-down selection of versions. This would be mandatory for catalogue entries, but optional for seller listings; and would be useful for all of buyers who could choose how picky they want to (not) be depending on their use-case. Then we need a system to navigate printed and/or duel-molded parts...
I'm of two minds on this matter. One, I've only recently gotten back into Lego, and a lot of the part variations kinda muddy the waters when it comes to getting some things. I especially specifically want to collect (eventually) all the parts needed to build M:Tron sets, so your example of the Mega Core Magnetizer was helpful. But I don't know if I'd especially care that much to have the original element variations, especially if they're rarer pieces and I'd accidentally pay a lot more for them instead of functional equivalents. For the vent pieces you mention, I'd actually prefer from a rebuilding standpoint to have the variation with a lip to make for easier disassembly. I know there are a lot of other variations of parts, like clips, where I don't really care which variation I get. So something like this change where I can just get any variation would help me as a buyer. But as you say, there's the catalog and preservationist side of things, and losing that information forever in the name of easier buying/selling would be a shame. Some sort of happy medium where buyers could specify an exact variation if needed but default to "don't care / any variation"? Maybe sellers who want to keep variations separate for these discerning buyers can opt in, but have a pile of unspecified inventory if they don't? I don't really feel qualified enough as a recent/casual user to think my voice matters. Especially not enough to try to deal with the 30-year-old looking interface of the BrickLink forums.
Thanks for weighing in! Indeed, a happy medium like the one you're suggesting seems to be the common consensus among the users of the site, (who knows if the admin share this thought). And I don't blame you for not touching the Bricklink forums - I've been on the site for years and have only learned how that system works in the past two days, haha. It's a mess, even for old forum standards. 😅
The thing about differentiating the different kinds of trans neon orange would be so incredibly useful… I love ice planet and the newer parts of that color are nothing compared to the neon and beautifully vibrant colors of the original ones. I actually experienced it first hand when i went to a local lego store and i bought an antenna piece but after I got home and compared it to the one on my ice sat v it was extremely dull in comparison. The seemingly small differences really do matter so much.
I concur--considering the way that molds change during prototyping, a catalogue like this helps ensure that no official parts are mischaracterized as prototypes in the future.
This is the complete opposite of what they should be doing.. Rather than getting rid of the identifier, they should be making the differentiation clearer! Anyone who's going out of their way to navigate bricklink for old sets is unlikely to be someone who _doesn't_ care about the accuracy of the pieces. 16:25 is exactly it. What I'd actually like to see is better pictures/description to help everyone identify the differences better. I'd go as far as suggesting using an additional system similar to hex code for specifying color, rather than relying on words/names.
With the fact they’re at least telling us what parts are being folded in we should start making our own archives while we can as there is no guarantee that Bricklink will listen to our complaints. As someone who in practice doesn’t care about mold variants but loves knowing about them this is really frustrating.
A fellow Accursed Farms enjoyer! I understand now why you're so focused on preservation, and I agree. This would be bad for the Lego community to lose this history simply for the sake of convenience. If it comes down to it though, I know that Rebrickable is a good alternative website with a lot of this information as well, but I don't know if it's had the same amount of exhaustive cataloguing as BrickLink. Either way, it's good to have redundancy.
I think the issue might be a little bigger than just history preservation. Some of the updated pieces are more convenient to use, stable etc than the old counter part. As such, anyone who wants to buy one of the pieces would have no option to go with the "better" piece. Also, have you checked rebrickable? I've been using it as a database for a while, since it has more search options than bricklink making it a little easier to use. I don't think they are any major downsides to it.
I need to get into using rebrickable a bit more. I don't know where they source their data from though? Does it have the decades of refinement that Bricklink sports? 🤔
@@RRSlugger Have you heard about Peeron? It is very old site, I used it a lot back in the days when bricklink still had that vintage layout...kkk I just googled it and discovered it is still online.
Any database doing simplification to the point of completely removing information... that's a bad thing. I can understand that plenty of sellers probably aren't tracking these variants...but for those of us who like Bricklink for their accurate set inventories this is a big deal
Ngl, I’m not even mad that the parts are being eliminated for set accuracy reasons, I’m more mad that I won’t be able to find a greater variety of bricks for my original builds. For example, the grill with the groove on the bottom can only be attached atop the 1x2 flat brick with a stud in the middle in two places. But the one without it can be placed in hundreds of more positions because the groove isn’t in the way. mixing a variety of parts can give me more possible building potential while maintaining structural integrity. So removing this is going to be annoying for me to work around when I like having very specific parts.
Something I don't see anything when talking about is how it seems clear that Lego intends to replace trans-brown with the new trans-black. I noticed it while looking at 2024 sets, and building set 71716. After the Grey/Bley debacle, Lego said they wouldn't change any of their core colors again, but it seems like a slow phase-out bypasses that. Just like what happened to trans-neon-orange and trans-neon-green. Although those two were not as prominent as trans-brown.
You're not wrong! I have to admit my bias against trans-brown as a colour though - is was *everywhere* in the early 2000s. I'm kind of sick of it, haha. 😅
They haven't done the inventory on it yet, but I'm fairly certain that the windows on 21254 The Turtle Beach House are trans-neon green. Might be trans-lime (if that's a thing), but I thought I'd point that out.
I agree with you; Bricklink is more valuable as a catalog than as a marketplace; combining the matte- and gloss-finish slopes is going to cause havoc. Edit: It appears that not all of the changes are substantial (such as the hinge pieces with different numbers of teeth don't actually function differently). Still, visual differences, however small, can have an impact on people's MOCs. 😢
I hate this kind of changes because multiple times I tried to replace parts from used sets so the set is more authentic, this matters to me because sometimes ths variations in color and mold is subtle but once you see it you can't unsee it and it's frustrating not being able to know if the part you buy is the one you want.
You make a crucial point. Now, I think this decision is probably partly due to Bricklink trying to become more accessible to casual buyers. Bricklink can be intimidating if you're not a big LEGO nerd. In that sense, I understand it. But like you said, vintage fans now have no way to know wich part they need to complete certain sets. BL defended the decision by saying you can still put the specifics in the description, but that's missing the point of the catalog function. P.S. By "no entries will be merged", they mean that there are currently no differing entries for that part, I think. So no-one's inventory will currently be impacted by it.
I lot of these part variations are things I haven't really noticed or cared about but I agree with you on keeping track of them from a historical perspective The exception is the smooth slope bricks. I'm used to the rough texture and the smooth ones feel fake to me even though they're real Lego. Guess I'd better get started on buying replacements for the smooth slopes while I still can
As someone who pieces together older sets sometimes, or needs pieces for older sets, this is sad. I like the details, and now I need to look at a manual closely to see the mold variant for an order? If they don't do something, then somone(WE/US) needs to make a STRICTLY CATALOG website and take ALL the info we can off the website before it's gone forever...much love to you all for a good journey through bricklink! The times are changing a lot...aren't they? ✌🙏😭
Hey Slugger , I might think I might understand why this is happening now . In germany ( and EU ) there is big legal strike going on between Building Brick Brands and Lego . Because Lego is using tons of 'legal' bureaucratic tricks , to bring down Lego-of Brand companies and even small shop owners which sell them ( that happens to a lot of german speaking buildingbrick companies , sellers and even some TH-camrs) . But in every category , may it be be use of a Logo/avatar , because it a stutts on it (happens to a YT channel promoting other brands) , selling Sets with non Lego minifigures , and selling sets with part where Lego put a design protection . The main topic and very complicated even . It has a lot to do with design but also funcunality , a huge portion of this has something to do or rather will be excused with the Lego System patent , that Lego don't any more since the 2000s . It is very complicated to explain that in detail , especially when I just understand any of this in german myself . So I just heared in a german YT video about an ongoing case from 2016 , where the Lidl group (yes they make construction toys) fights again Lego about the design of the 3x4 plate we all know from the Minifig Series since 2010 . In that one court case Lidl used Bricklink as a source of howlong a Lego piece in use , because after a time limit that design protection should be lost automatically , buy Lego tries to fight it , even when Lego is now using parts you find in other companies sets , like the 1x5 plate from Cobi (which ironically Lego has a design protection on it) or the "new" 73507 technic lift arm , which CADA had in use for years at this point . So if other companies using Bricklink as an evidence piece (even tho the judge in this case argued that this source can be also inaccurate) it's seems to me that can be manipulate by Lego to benefit them or their own gain . The newer the Brickvariation is on Bricklink , than nobody can say for sure how old that peice indeed is , which would help Lego a lot . And I feel like that this is just the tip of the ice berg . And again , that whole topic of design protection is catastrophically petty and so niche you will get a headache . I mean , I would understand that I come across very sceptic and cynic , but for all the stuff happing within the EU and Lego in the legal system , I see this as a part of their legal defense strategy . Ofcourse I can not prove if this is correct or not , so you can take that with a grain of salt . Just sharing my feelings and thoughts on this .
They don't make 'em like they used to... I'm not an active Bricklink user, I just browse and play "I want but can't afford" all the time, but I would agree that it's better to try and preserve the history of the hobby; especially if Lego themselves won't.
I've been a member of Bricklink since it was conceived. It is such a valuable resource, like you @RRSlugger I use it for all of the reasons you've mentioned. I _do_ understand the change (although I disagree with it), maybe new users (and those who opt in) can get a 'simplified inventorys/parts' and it hides all the part a/b parts BUT it allows for the information to be preserved. I will really miss this information if they just throw it away... very sad.
@@RRSlugger I included this suggestion in my customer support message, thanks for suggesting to contact them I wrote my comment prior to getting to that point in the video. Thanks for sharing this info too, and making more people aware of it.
I really hope these changes won't happen, or at least won't spread further. I do think a website often overlooked when it comes to lego databases it Rebrickable. Even though a big purpouse of the site is to share MOCs, the folks over there have been working a ton to make inventories as accurate as possible for sets. (they even have colors that bricklink doesn't list) But obviously bricklink was required to do all this, and nothing is close enough yet. I want to be able to buy parts with X shaped axle holes if that's what a set originally came with. What's gonne go next, the clip variants?Thanks for letting so many people know about this Slugger!
Indeed! If we can't stop it here, I think that's okay. Not great, but okay. Hopefully they'll know not to spread this consolidation further. But you're right to speculate - where *do* you draw the line then? 🤔
Admin says they won't add notes, it's up to seller to write the variant in the selling description. Now I wonder how many sellers will and if people buy those instead of mixed part versions. Cuz if people mostly buy the more expensive checked entries, people without checked entries will set a higher selling price because the average selling price went up... oh my god this is just to drive up lego's value even more
As a buyer, seller and collector I fully agree to all what you say! This is a terrible change and a huge step into the wrong direction. Instead, they should give both, the buyers and sellers the option. A seller should have the option to list his/her parts specific or undetermined. Also, a buyer should have the option to say "I care" or "I don't care". If a buyer doesn't care, he/she should get all elements listed, the specific ones and the undetermined ones. If a buyer cares, he/she should have the option to get the proper part.
It's cold comfort, but I'm sure at least some of the work people have done to catalog will be preserved thanks to Internet Archive and the Wayback machine, but still, what a fundamental misunderstanding of their platfom
Thanks for making this video, because this situation is genuinely horrible, and spreading awareness about it and why it's bad is good, and arguably necessary, thing to do in such unacceptable situation. And also thanks for bringing up Ross from Accused Farms after Louis Rossmann too, glad to see him being known by other TH-camrs 😃
THANK YOU for this. I just commented. It's very important for preservation and the hobby. If I order a set from the 80's, I want the variants of pieces (when possible) and don't want a modern reprint, head, etc.
I think even for people who don't care about what variant of a part they might get, I completely agree with your sentiment that Bricklink is not just a marketplace but an archive of the history of Lego parts, and it's such important knowledge that, as you said, is not really catalogued anywhere else. I really hope Bricklink doesn't move forward with this change. Yes it would make it easier for some sellers, but BL is so much bigger than that.
Been awhile since I've been on Bricklink but I feel like if it allowed sellers to list parts as an unchecked variant on piece X, while also allowing them to specify that part X is variant a b or c that could help out. That way the variants are still denoted for preservations sake within set catalogs, but if you have a seller listing loose bricks who doesn't want to check the details of each they could just describe it as having an unchecked variant? Obviously that may incentivize some sellers to mark all as generics, but there may still be some who'd pride themselves on specifity and it'd at least preserve the catalog. It'd be better then what we're getting at least
Well made video. While it’s not the end of the world to lose this information it is still annoying to know that information can just be lost on the whim of bricklink admin like this, and this doesn’t bode well for the future.
I have always used Bricklink as an ultimate though incomplete source of LEGO databases, from bricks to figures, to paraphernalia and beyond. Since the 2019 purchase of Bricklink by LEGO/Kirkby, I have always been fearful of what changes can be made. As discussed last weekend with a LEGO Flagship Store employee, Bricklink as a huge outside resource for LEGO also affects the reputation of the toy company, even if each reseller is their own entity abiding by rules in order to use the site. However, my fear was that LEGO's policing of Bricklink, no matter how distant, also means they could affect categories and the range of items resold by independents. Makes sense to eliminate Custom items not produced by the company, but it's easy for them to shut down sales of displays, employee exclusives, or other official products and materials, no matter how old, that left their factory by any means. And as a result, losing some of the identity of the brand's subsidiaries as small as Forma to as large as Star Wars. (Insert gif of Marty from Back to the Future losing his hand fading away.) Thank you for posting about this Slugger, and I look forward to as much LEGO Fandom preservation as possible, or at minimum, another reliable source of backup information if BrickLink purges its entries.
As it seems to be a hot topic: the "groove" info is incorrect. It’s only meaning that the added "with groove" behind the tile's name is erased, to tidy up the catalogue. So there will still be different entries for the versions with or without grooves! It’s just that instead of 'Tile 1x2 with groove' / 'Tile 1x2 without groove' it’ll be 'Tile 1x2' / 'Tile 1x2 without groove'. This is what’s meant with the "no items will be merged".
Thanks for the clarification there! I knew I was missing something. We'll just have to transpose the hypothetical scenarios in the video to any of the other mould variations being effected then! 😉
i think one of the most important things we can do rn before the change is to try to archive on the internet archive all the items that will be being changed rn. then when those are all grabbed and saved we can systematically go through the other parts of the pages and work on creating a seperate version of bricklink for more parts and pieces
Youre not wrong but on the positive side we could prioritize the ones that are currently going to be effected by the change then add the others as we go@@RRSlugger
Regarding the grooved tiles, this is something that got clarification early on - they are just being renamed and renumbered, not merged. 3069b will be 3069 "Tile 1 x 2", 3069a will keep its name as 3069old. This also only affects four parts: 3068, 3069, 3070, and 3062 (not sure exactly how that one is being handled, but it's in regards to its hollow stud). Also during this thread, I realized a set in my collection has smooth slopes - one not noted on BL - that set being 7237. But obviously I can't add that information because of this change :/ Worse, I lost one of the slopes and the replacement one I got was not smooth, now it will be infinitely more difficult to find a proper smooth one.
Thanks for the clarification! On your second point, that's exactly why I want to see a greater attention to detail and accuracy from the Bricklink team, rather than the "it can't be helped" mantra they've seemingly adopted. 😕
I have been searching for pieces on the site for a long time and yeah, it's a needed change and it was getting tiring trying to find the same piece across 15 small variations. BUT these changes should still be notified INSIDE the page of the piece itself (main piece code+variation piece codes being signaled, and sellers being able to sell both mixed and differentiated)
I think it largely stems from the admin not realizing what their means to many of us. I think they likely view it as a marketplace only, when it's so much more than that.
Here's the latest from the admin at Bricklink:
www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=1450622
I'm curious to hear what comes next! The idea of this information being preserved in the Help pages as Admin_Russell suggests is somewhat intriguing to me! Anything has to be better than just wiping it from the website, haha.
With that being said though, *accessibility* to the information is just as important as the information itself, in my opinion. Burying this stuff away in the Help pages or simply resorting to using the Wayback Machine as others suggested are NOT ideal scenarios to me.
A lot of folks have been informing me of errors I made in my understanding of some of the proposed changes - I really appreciate the clarifications! However, with that being said, focusing on the trees that look incorrect and not seeing the forest is something we need to avoid here. Correcting folks on a couple of smaller points *does not* debunk the message or the overall sentiment here.
Additionally, my hypothetical scenarios in this video were unfortunately based on a misinterpretation on my part - but, no worries! Simply transpose the examples onto something like the smooth vs textured slopes or X vs + axle holes and the message still rings true.
Lastly, I have been truly shocked by how many people have come out of the woodwork to chime in on the matter! Given how lowkey and rushed the timeline seems to be on this "proposed" update to Bricklink, there's a very real chance that many people would not have had an opportunity to weigh in had this story not taken off. Thank you for sharing it around!
There's still a very real possibility that the admin at Bricklink will just push this through despite the overwhelmingly negative backlash they're receiving, but that's their prerogative. It's their website - they're free to make unpopular changes should they wish.
For me, I'm going to start taking the time to learn utilizing other websites such as Rebrickable and Brick Owl. This whole debacle has been a good wake up call for me, I think. Time to start holding Bricklink at arms length.
I know some folks are going to expect a follow up video to all this, but that's exactly the "current event for clicks" spiral I want to avoid. Like I said in this video, I didn't monetize it and that's largely because I don't want to financially incentivize myself to turn on a microphone and ramble for a few minutes; despite making some good points (if I do say so myself!), this video is not indicative of what I want to create on this channel. I only wanted to get the ball rolling on this discussion, and let me tell you, mission accomplished!!
Thanks everyone! ❤
Glad they seem to understand the concern of preserving this knowledge. Fingers crossed it'll all work out
Honestly, this reeks of managerial decision a miles away. Probably someone high up in lego questioning why they should keep paying to maintain such a huge database, when they stopped making those parts decades ago. It is clear that whoever made the decision never bought Lego parts in their life...
Agree with all of this in principle, but as a practical matter: what functional difference is there between the “x-shaped” and “+-shaped” axle holes? I don’t think I’ve ever encountered anything that one does and the other doesn’t - wait, can the x-shaped axle holes grab a bar piece?
@@natbarmore I don't believe there is a functional difference between the two, no - only aesthetic/cosmetic.
However, if we're only going to judge these differences based on functional matters, then we might as well lump all the old and new greys together, right? What's the functional difference between them? 🤔
thx for the video and update. a few years ago, I bought 80 pounds of bricks off a guy, and even today, I'm still going through it and using BL to ID unique parts and discover whole new sets nearly lost to time.
like you, I use BL every day, always diving down rabbit holes and learning.
this whole thing immediately brought memories to my mind of 3 times in the last ~15 years, the feelings of sadness and loss that accompanied learning that some music sharing sites were shut down. it's not the lack of access to free music; it's losing the most thorough, the most complete library of music in the world. people that want to eliminate information *suck*.
That is remarkably frustrating. What the heck are they thinking, “we just don’t need to catalog things anymore?”
From Legos perspective it makes sense because they are convinced that the newest version is the best. Subsequently all the sets should have contained the new version and all the sold pieces should be the new ones. Lego only makes Money on new bricks.
@@Held_der_Feuer Yeah, Lego piece designers intend to have such small improvements to bricks be imperceptible.
They had a solution for store owners: "undetermined type".
A while ago they started eliminating the "undetermined type" category.
So now they're eliminating the "type" entirely?
That's my understanding, yeah. ☹
Trying to clean up the data by determining which part everything is, so that no set inventory uses the “undetermined type” version of a part was - and is - an excellent goal. And if Bricklink were _just_ a catalog, the info science best practice at that point would be to eliminate the “undetermined type” for that part, and insist that all future additions to the catalog identify the specific part variation.
But I understand that Bricklink is also a market. Many of these mold variations _don’t_ have functional implications and thus, arguably, requiring sellers to differentiate when buyers mostly don’t care _is_ silly.
But you don’t have to degrade the catalog data to solve this. All you have to do is keep the “undetermined type” categories around and allow sellers to list parts that way. Boom! Problem solved! Add a little bit of code to allow searches for “undetermined type” to also turn up sellers of the specific types of that part, too, and maybe a user-facing switch to turn that on and off individually*, and you’ve simplified for the folks who are just trying to build something cool, while still having all that detailed data available for historians and folks who want to put together vintage sets with period-appropriate parts and sellers who want to take the trouble to identify and sell vintage parts separately (presumably at a markup).
* honestly, I’m having trouble even thinking of a reason to be able to turn that off, if the feature existed. If you specifically wanted 1x2 tile without groove or 1x2 tile with groove, you’d still be able to search for them. But if you searched for 1x2 tile, you’d get both, plus anyone who has listed the part as “1x2 tile (undetermined)”. Can anyone else think of a reason you’d want to search for sellers of “1x2 tile (undetermined)” and *_not_* also find listings for “1x2 tile with groove” or “1x2 tile without groove”?
The problem is that they are already merging pieces with very different functionality, namely the number of teeth or the presence of a cross-shaped hole! That's insane!
These details are very important to anyone deep enough into building to use bricklink. Such an odd move.
As someone who lists thousands of used parts, some of these changes are going to make my life a LOT easier. But as a weird Lego nerd who wants to use era-appropriate parts for my sets, I'm going to hate getting a sprue-y chair in my order instead of the (clearly superior) non-spruified chair.
I totally get it! This update benefits sellers, and if Bricklink doesn't have sellers, it ceases to be!
There's got to be some way to do this though *without* erasing the accessibility to information for the user, right? I'm no professional at website design, but maybe a mould variation drop down menu like they do for colours? 🤔
@@RRSluggerYeah I'm 100% with you that the loss of information/detail is never a good thing. I think regardless of how you'd handle variants, sellers would have to take the hit in sorting out which is which when listing. But that's absolutely worth the effort in my mind.
If anything, I wish there was MORE detail around vintage parts. I want to get a 4x8 black plate for the 570 Fire House I'm piecing together, and I want it to be era-appropriate. So it needs to have the little injection-molding spots on the side of the plate instead of on one of the studs. Only way I can find that is if a seller goes out of their way to note it, or I ask them directly.
@@CthulhuTooI think if you made it an optional choice that would help. Then if a seller wants to select which mold variation they can but if not they can just leave it blank
@@CthulhuToo I couldn't have said it better myself! 💯
@@lukestarkiller1470 Yeah, that's probably the best way to go about it at this point.
Bricklink is an archive. A library. It needs to maintain the full catalogue, even if they do simplify UI or seller options.
exactly, but apparently it's easier to be lazy & just mash pieces together & call it a day, instead of investing actual effort/time/$ to improve the platform, real shame
I agree it SHOULD be, but it was sold to the LEGO Company, and therefore is doomed to be controlled as a corporate asset. This was sadly inevitable.
@@benjaminstorace6699 this is the world we live in, communities can bend backwards and be 3000% dedicated to a cause, only to be shat on by corpos.
For me this was a huge dick move on LEGO's part & my respect dropped for them
As someone who uses bricklink for both a database to figure out which parts belong to which sets and a way to get missing parts for my old sets this seems like a terrible idea
Edit: also goes without saying but thank you Slugger for bringing to our attention as someone with a similar level of passion to you I’m grateful for you telling us
Bricklink needs to learn, NEVER piss off RR Slugger. You’d hate to see him bring out the negative Slugometer
It's insane that they're doing this but there's a new "part" created for every piece that has a sticker applied.
Yep; that's a bigger problem than mold variants.
I find it ironic that Lego created an entire animated short dedicated to the history of Lego, and yet they won't step in to preserve this essential part of Lego's history.
That's because the decision came 99% from a Lego manager: no-one that have ever bought or sold lego pieces could ever think it was a good idea...
Man, this is really frustrating. I've been parting together older sets from my collection and I'm always careful to select era accurate parts. This change will make this almost impossible.
I just found out the the website Rebrickable tracks mold variants for sets so at least this information will still exist. I still feel like this change will result in more difficulty for the aftermarket on Bricklink though with used/retired sets.
You're more patient than me. Most of my orders on Bricklink end up with missing multiple pieces or straight up wrong colors/pieces when ordering "100% complete" sets, even with sellers with 100% positive feedback.
I can't imagine trying to get the era accurate molds when most sellers can't even compare the inventory of a set on BL vs what they have.
Everytime I receive a set from Bricklink, I dread building it because odds are there will be missing/wrong pieces. And I always have to contact the seller for compensation or resolution. Most of the time they don't have the missing pieces, so they just send a refund equal to the value of the missing pieces, so I'm still losing because I'll have to order and pay for shipping again from another seller, and risk AGAIN to get the wrong pieces.
So, my "wanted list" of missing pieces is ever growing on Bricklink.
Luckily I did that same thing during my college winter breaks over the last few years. My brother and I had a lot of stuff from the early 2000s. Knowing that this change is coming makes me very happy I rebuilt everything when I did
I'm on the opposite end. I only want the newest variants of molds in my MOCs and now that will be harder to ensure.
@@bluebrickmaxI’m the same way, when it comes to MOCs I want the most recent parts, but for sets I prefer the originals.
So many places are just unaware of the importance of archiving in terms of history. It's especially ignored in more modern fields like videogames or toy manufacturing. Once something is completed, things get thrown away or forgotten.
Indeed! The whole reason LEGO is such a well documented toy is because of the fans, not the company itself. I wish they could at least try to meet us halfway though... ☹
To a company, it was a means to an end - it was how they made money.
To a fan, it was their life - it was how they made memories.
We know why it happens this way. A different set of priorities.
Here's a message Bricklink recently sent out to the sellers on their platform:
drive.google.com/file/d/11DutLU07VIe_9V4L46QNtaPMb6Nbjt1B/view?usp=drive_link
Describing these mould variations as "unimportant and cumbersome" and recommending that sellers do not continue to make these distinctions in their inventories is... certainly not the direction I want to see Bricklink go. 💀
If you haven't done so already and wish to let the admin know your thoughts on the matter, the Help Desk link is right here: www.bricklink.com/v3/help/contact.page
They wrote "RELATIVELY unimportant and cumbersome FROM VIEWPOINT OF BRICKLINK MARKET". From my expirience, when I wanted some recolored model, I had sometimes problem with finding piece in color just because this variants. I think most poeple dont care about minor differences.
Does it mean that this information should be scarted? NO! What I like to see is make subtypes - if I want brick with specific subtype, I can, but If I dont care, which is most time I finding for piece in color, I like to choose undetermined and find all.
I'm always happy to see the links that say "This part is similar to [link to the variant], @@emmetbrickhacker5029.
If they already have a list of parts that are going to have their info merged, they know where to add those links.
If they want to help sellers, they could just add an "undetermined type" category for parts with mould variations. Then sellers who don't want to distinguish between variation, can list it that way, and we keep the catalog as detailed as possible
I sent in my remarks on the situation. Thanks for informing us on this issue!
@@rc-fannl7364this actually already exists for a lot of them which makes the changes more bizarre
Always wanted a classic dragon with the flame that sticks in their mouth with the extra tiny pegs to finally fill that childhood dream, so i nabbed one off of bricklink and they gave me a new flame piece that doesn't work with it when it wasn't listed as that one. This updates going to make that way easier to overlook :7
As someone working in heritage conservation that is terrifying... Adapting an archive to fit into the market in a way that is purely detrimental to history records
"The 2x4 Tyco and Mega Bloks will be merged with 2x4 Lego bricks as they are the same thing"
Hahaha, love this!! I think I'd be able to tell the Mega Bloks apart, but those Tyco's are tricky! 😉
They can merge the Tyco and Mega Bloks, under the category "knock-off Lego". Just leave Lego to it's own category.
I mean, why not?? They're functionally identical so no one would care if they were grouped together, right? RIGHT???
@@AndrewNineTen maybe they should change their name to buildingtoyconnection, and Lego isn't allowed to use their name anymore. maybe just call everything a block.
why even use words? just grunt at people until they understand, no need for these "databases."
this makes me sad. I use bl every day, can't imagine such a massive, unique, community-built library is just like, "eh, this isn't a real problem, and the solution is already deployed, but let's eliminate history and data and information because ________"
I work for a bricklink store and this will actually lead to making more work for listing things and making the distinction in the comments, I’ll also seen a lot of sellers that are upset about this
You mean that sellers recognizes that mixing old, more valuable, parts with newer parts is not so smart? Truly shocking concept, right?
You are absolutely right, it is a bad change. I think that as a seller. However, the groove/non groove tiles are a bad example. As I have been told, they just remove the "with groove" part. meaning a tile is either:
a) a tile
b) a tile without groove.
Ah!! That's what I wasn't understanding there! Thanks for your insight and the correction - I knew I was missing something. 🙂
Oh! Simplifying names so that the modern/current part doesn’t have any descriptive modifiers is fine! So long as those details are still available (like in comparison photos).
…except that it makes it harder to get started as a newb. If you look up a part and see “…with 7 teeth”, you immediately have your attention drawn to the fact that there might be variants with different numbers of teeth - why else would you call that detail out? But if all you see is “brick 1x2 click hinge, 1 finger vertical”, it might not occur to you that there are other variants of that part. At a minimum, it can be a mild form of gatekeeping.
There was somebody in the Rebrickable forum a few months back advocating for essentially this sort of change to how parts are named. They were a fairly new adult user, and had gotten very frustrated because they spent a lot of time building something in Stud.io, accidentally using vintage/rare parts, and when they finally figured it out, having to go back and change all their part inventories so they could actually buy the parts. They specifically called out that they had been using “tile” insert of “tile with groove”, because they had no idea that the ‘with groove’ was the current default.
Not exactly a parallel, but I think the basic point carries over to others new to the online Lego world and trying to figure Bricklink out. So I understand TLG wanting to make Bricklink less impenetrable - I just don’t think this is a good way to do that.
I can't stress enought how much Bricklink is THE LEGO ROSETTA STONE. A couple of years ago I found a random bag of toys at the flea market, identified some "weird" lego bricks in the bunch, old man sold it to me for $4. Turns out the bag included a whole bunch of parts to build the original Forestmen River Fortress and a few LEGO Space bricks from at least 1985! How did I found this out? Just by looking up the parts on bricklink, back when I had no idea what the forestmen even where, or when I found myself frowning at weird rockets I had never seen before. Sad to see them disregarding all the hard work that has went into the archive in favour of the market aspect of the website. Anyways, message sent to bricklink! Thanks for voicing this problem and keep up the good work!
Lego archeology is so much fun
A quick thing about the ratchet joints: The ones with less teeth don't have less range of motion, it's just that two of the teeth were replaced with equally functional "bumps." Both variants have the same range of motion and lock in the same positions.
Oh! Good to know - thanks for the correction on that! 🙂
Correct, my understanding is that it was to reduce the number of moving parts in the mold and reduce friction, functionality remained the same.
Fully agree with you. Bricklink is a database of lego. Sent them a message too.
Thank you for doing so! I hope we can make an impact here!
When I saw that there are over 170,000 pages in the Bricklink catalogue, I knew that migrating this information elsewhere to a different site while preserving the functionality would be completely untenable. We have to try to save Bricklink itself, not rebuild elsewhere. ❤
on one hand, It's nice to eliminate these tiny changes between essentially identical bricks where finding colours can be awkward, much easier for building my own models. On the other hand the option should still be there to differentiate, especially in the interest of preserving the history of these sets or more minute functions of the bricks.
i love your homestuck x dungeon meshi pfp do you have the source for it? id love to see the full pic
you may or may not have run into this yourself, but with the tight tolerances, the difference between a tile with a lip or no lip can make all the difference in something fitting or not. i work with moc builders who's models can easily run into the 2k+ parts and sometimes just that little variation can mean the difference between something working or an entire section redesign not only for the model but the instructions as well....
I'd love it if all the newer trans-clear parts specifically-all the awful MABS stuff that scratches if you look at it the wrong way-were completely separated out as it's own colour variant. It scratches horribly, is cloudy and has a purplish tint off-axis, and it fluoresces under blacklight, which the old PC trans-clear parts did not. But alas, it's too late. If I'm buying some transparent 1x2s or window panes, I just have to cross my fingers that I get the older superior parts.
Exactly! I want *more* separation/filtering options between different moulds and colours, not less!
I just assumed those would be given their own new category, as they are visibly different even in photos. New Lego clear is NOT the same color.
Aaaaaaaaa THIS SUCKS!!! I check these sorts of tiny details all the time to make sure the sets I sell are 100% correct and I expect that bricklink sellers should do the same. But we need a proper inventory to do so! This update makes the Bricklink inventories straight-up inaccurate. Full-stop. Not okay. Get your shit together, LEGO.
What a terrible decision. Thanks for bringing this to our attention -- I had no idea this was coming. I have submitted feedback... let's just hope the people in charge listen.
Thank you for doing so! ❤️
There's already an 'indeterminate type' option if sellers didn't want to sort variations of individual parts, so I'm not sure what the benefit of this change is. Making a website or service worse for everyone to address a problem with an existing solution seems to be a common trend on the internet these days.
I've only ever bought from Bricklink once but I visit the site at least once every few days to learn where a specific part comes from, if a specific set contains parts I'm looking for or what colour options I have if I want to use a certain piece. The main change I would actually want to see on Bricklink is a better way to search for printed parts.
Indeed! There are myriad ways to improve the user experience on Bricklink to say the least, haha. 😅
Agreed. A mobile, simplified interface would be great too.
To me this change seems insane. These mold differences are NOT just details in a lot of cases. For example, if you are building a wall, or just a big surface, using a lot of jumper plates, it's ESSENTIAL whether they have a bottom groove or not, it's not a small thing, it's gonna be immediately visible. For a lot of these cases the difference is extremely visible if the part is exposed. If I pay the money I'd like to have control over what I'm buying. I'm shocked.
Absolutely! Small visible changes are still *visible changes* - it's important to have the distinction!
Not to mention new and old jumper plates have literally entirely different connections on the underside!
@@electromistressYou're absolutely right! If it was only about the looks it would be already bad, but it also involves pure connection functionality
I love build lego architecture buildings
And the bottom groove makes a lot of difference! Especially in a small scale like in lego architecture buildings!
@@electromistressI build certain models that require both multiple types of jumper plates, and it hadn’t even occurred to me yet that this change would ruin my ability to ensure that I can build those.
This is absolutely infuriating. There needs to be more differentiation, not less! The person who pushed the change through needs to be at the very least reassigned to a role that can’t hurt consumers.
Yeah, like differentiating between old white and the newest types of whites for instance.
bro the person who pushed this change should be reassigned to customer
I mean I highly doubt this was just pushed by one rouge employee without authorization, I'd be sceptical of the decision making process that led to this being approved, whoever's idea it was
@@Hexagonal_Goblin nobody said it was a “rogue employee”. What the heck are you talking about?
@@MatecaCorp maybe not rouge but why all the blame on the person who pushed it rather than the presumably dozens of people involved? We don’t even know if the person pushing the change to the live site agrees with the decision, they’re just a web programmer doing their job.
My local LUG in Los Angeles has been talking about this all day. You are not alone in the confusion and displeasure in these announcements!
Great to hear it’s being discussed! ❤️
I can see both sides of this. There’s been times where I’ve been building a moc and need to wishlist certain parts and have been annoyed by adding every variant of a part to my wishlist just incase a seller has one variant but not another. But there’s also been times where I’ve been parting together a set or wanting to know when a certain mold was introduced or which variant is the correct one for a used set I’ve bought.
I feel like the best case scenario would be some sort of toggle that you can use so the people who want to sell or search for the specific variations can and the people who just want the general part can sell or search for that. That way if a seller wants to just quickly catalog their parts they can and it will just let users know that they’re undetermined variants.
I like this idea, absolutely! It's got to be better than just *erasing* this data from the website. 💀
What’s next? Merging old and new grays?
Calamity! 💀
I really hope not, but I could definitely see them combining pearl light grey and flat silver since people already have a hard time differentiating them. But I would hate that because when I’m trying to piece together a build I want to know which silver I’m buying.
DONT GIVE THEM IDEAS
Imagine a world where Pearl Gold is listed as the same colour as Pearl Gold... 😮
Bro giving them ideas 😭
Imagine being TLG, inheriting a platform and community that cares so much about your product that they make a point of cataloging it down to the very minutiae of its design elements... and then choosing to discourage them from doing that.
I think the wet dream of many Lego managers is closing Bricklink alltogether and migrate the clients towards the Pick-a-brick. Every cent you spend on bricklink is a cent you don't spend buying new Lego 🙄
Its the era we live in. Genuine scholarship is disregarded as getting in the way.
@@Beregorn88People still buy new Lego on bricklink… from new Lego sets people bought from Lego… and presumably Lego gets a cut of the sales of used Lego. Lego gets profit either way, so integrating PAB would be a stupid decision. Bricklink users already know about PAB and use it when it makes more sense to, which it genuinely sometimes does.
@@Thinginator I never said that it wasn't stupid, just what the average management guy thinks...
Great video! Just sent my message to BL. My solution would be to combine the catalog entries of different variants into a single one for each part, but then add subcategories for each mold variant of that part that would then be optional for sellers and just be set to "any variant" for the buyers who don't care which variant they're getting. IMO this would solve both the problem of making it easier for sellers, but still making it possible to buy specific variants. This would also mean that the record of what variants are in what sets wouldn't be lost as long as they add that subcategory to the part inventory of sets
Thanks for bringing this change up!
Thanks for sending them a message on this! I like your ideas for a solution too!
Yes; we need a single part entry for each part, but with two drop-down menus: one for color, and one for mold variants!
A lot of the parts function differently and leave the finished product looking differently. There's a brick built figure from the first sand crawler that has an open stud green dome and that part is much more expensive than a closed green. But it changes the appearance. That's important when collecting. I use bricklink because it's for people who know what they're doing and care about it. That's what made it what it was.
Agreed. I use Bricklink because it is a marketplace for serious LEGO fans. Casual LEGO fans tend to use ebay.
I love browsing through Bricklink just to see which set used which pieces or where a specific piece was used. Especially for some unique moulds, its so nice to compare the sets it was used in. Its sad, that they are combining these pieces with small differences, because after this, some of mine could feel less special after this...
Of course, every single piece that's affected by this update makes everything meticulously annoying for collectors everywhere, but the one outline I'm scared for is the simplification for the torsos with ribs. This distinction, from what I've gathered, only applies to the reissued minifigs over the past 15 years. However, aside from the plastic ribs, there are clear differences to the older productions of these minifigs, what with torso printing and plastic quality. Newer figures are obviously less color faded than older ones, for example. This does apply to me, because very recently, I was buying and piecing together an updated blue classic space minifig, as I didn't want the older version. If the reissued figures are being lumped in with the older ones, it would hurt both the vintage market, and the market who is after the newly updated minifigs. It sucks, and I really hope that this update gets reversed.
by the way, it's awesome to hear you cite Ross Scott. I definitely see a correlation between his videos and your format, and it's cool to find out you're a fan of his ^^
This is a really good point! I wish I would have touched on it in the video!
Ross Scott is a favourite of mine. I was shocked with how much time has flown by since I started watching him years ago! ❤
What's particularly interesting is that just a few months ago, they split out the 2x4 'humpback' piece into whether it has a groove at the base (new style) or doesn't (old style) -- if I'm replacing the engine pods on my 6339 Shuttle Launch Pad (1995), the parts without a groove are the correct replacement, the ones with a groove are 2020+ vintage and the wrong piece -- bewaaare the groooove!
I already struggle with ocd, checking if the bricks are from the same mold even when it's completely unnoticeable on the outside of the brick... If I start getting noticeably different bricks in the lots, I will lose my mind.
The cross shaped hole is propably the worst, if you buy the wrong one your build just won’t work due to the axle arrangement!
I've been trying to collect a part of every color lego has ever manufactured, and this is gonna actually make that more difficult. Some pieces were only made in a certain rare color during certain years, so mixing them together removes a way to search for colors.
I feel like you could fairly easily implement a feature that would group these entries together (rather than merge them) so people could ignore the distinction if they want to when shopping or doing inventory but the more detailed info would still be available when relevant, say for stores or customers who do make the distinction or for archival information. Obviously it would take more effort to ship a new feature like this, but I feel like it would be worth it!
This is the content I am subscribed to see. Nobody else talks about stuff like this.
I didn't *want* to make this video, haha, but someone's gotta do it!
I've been a seller and common user of bricklink for several years now, and I found the catalog to be EXTREMELY useful. Especially with selling Bionicle or other retired sets, the inventory display is crucial to making sure you have the right parts. I really hope they hear our side of the issue, it would be a shame if a tool like this just got erased.
It makes so much more sense to have a "This is the correct part" but also a "Here is a comparable replacement"
Having just the "This is a part, but you may get a varient of it oh well"
Slugger is bearing that cross for all of us sinners
If I ordered jumper plates and recieved ones without the groove, Id be really dissapointed. Its things like this that make me violently against Lego switching to all digital instructions, I dont trust the resource in their hands.
And for me, I often specifically want the ones without the groove! It’s very frustrating to lose that choice. The grooveless ones are meant for old sets and to go alongside plates, and the grooved ones are meant for newer sets and to go alongside tiles
Calling out TH-cam, Discord, and Twitter for getting worse with an update at the end is so real lollll
I couldn't resist, haha 😅😭
Thank you Slugger for taking the time to make this video. I never would have been aware of this change unless you told us about it. This could wind up being a pretty big deal depending on how far BL is going to go with streamlining their inventory. I think it's important to let Brick Link know that the community doesn't just see them as a marketplace but also as the best source of information when it comes to set inventories.
-Jesse
I don't understand this. They already have undetermined type for some bricks. Why not use that for the sellers and buyers that don't care which version they sell/get. - That would be my solution ...
EDIT: Sent a message to support ... I hope it will help.
as other comments suggested, why not make a drop down menu for different versions like they have for colors ... This is another good idea.
Thanks for doing that!
It's my understanding that they aim to *remove* the "undetermined type" listings too... 💀
Slug, I’m gonna be honest, sometimes you really do need a specific part variant. Take my droid I designed, XR-44, in order to attach his backpack/jetpack, he needs a specific variation of 1x2 jumper plate, namely the 15573 variant. If I use any other variant, then his jet-back-pack won’t attach correctly due to his head being connected to his battle droid torso via a clip with bar element. Due to the width of that clip, other jumpers won’t work, as they’ll collide their bottom pin with said clip.
In other news, I might have a solution that will fit both parties equally. It’s simple, when viewing the parts list of a particular set, you see the mould variant listed, but upon clicking it, you get sent to the unified page for all parts of that type. On top of that, you would also have the option to request a particular variant from the seller if they want to enable that option at checkout. In said system, upon clicking for particular part variants, you would see a list of the parts on your receipt that have mould variants and can select which one you prefer, assuming the seller has that variant, which they can let you know after you order.
It’s not a great plan, but it’s a start.
Slugger thank you SO much for bringing this to our attention, I submitted a sternly worded yet respectful message to the help page linking them your video. Let's hope this doesn't go through!!
Another advantage of getting rid of parts variants information is that old sets that were until now locked to a limited, shrinking pool of retired mold variants can now be obtained with currently in production mold variants. One would expect this to have an impact on the price.
Yet I don't think that makes it up for what we're losing here, which is valuable information that have been recorded over decades by fans. Not only do I prefer to get my sets with the correct part variants, but I'm also fascinated by the history behind the variantion for each of these molds... And Bricklink was my main source of information on the topic.
As a fallback, there's Rebrickable that does also a fantastic (exhausting yet not exhaustive) job at recording part variant history with comparison pictures and graphs depicting distribution over the years... But, again, Rebrickable isn't exhaustive and losing a secondary source like Bricklink is still deplorable
Getting things like 2L axles without ridges, or bluish gray instead of gray is already a common occurrence in my experience. Most sellers are probably unaware versions exist... I imagine the people getting rid of their parts don't share our passion.
For what it's worth, I think this is only the tip of the iceberg. Many variations are unlisted and quite possibly unknown. I have two purple pakari (bionicle mask), but only one has added supports on the inside. I have two noble huna (another bionicle mask) and the ID/print position numbers on the back are in different locations! Who knows what other parts we haven't had the opportunity to compare.
Exactly! I want Bricklink to recognize those variants as well! 👍
I would recommending archiving the entire website prior to the February update. You won’t have ordering functionality, but the information will be stored safely for future use and knowledge.
Actually, we have rebrickable available, which is not owned by lego and has every information about the parts variations
But I still think it is a bad choice for bricklink...
"kinex bricks with pin holes in them will now be merged with the same size of lego brick, as they are functionally the same thing"
I agree, 49/50 times I use BrickLink, it’s as a catalog and not a store.
I haven’t used Bricklink a lot myself, but you raise a lot of interesting points. I wonder if there would a way to streamline the database on the seller end to ease their load, while maintaining accessibility of info on these piece variants in their general catalog.
Having worked at an archive that was in the process of digitization, I don't understand why they don't just archive the part sites with a little note that says that these won't be separated on the market due to differences being too minor.
The update page seen here means all of the little work required to point this out has already been done, just copy it over to the parts page, slap a little red banner on top that it's no longer getting updates and link to the part that is now treated as equal. I know there's a (very slight) cost involved in keeping that archived site running, but it's LEGO, it won't exactly cause their earnings to drop.
I feel like they should do something like the "new > used > any" choices for quality and make an option for you to choose specifically by variant or choose "any" if you don't care about variants. Make it then so sellers can list their inventory as "assorted" or "sorted - A variant", "sorted - B variant" etc. It may make it a little harder (and pricier) to guarantee the proper pieces since most sellers will take the easier "assorted" route, but at least the information and the option will both still be there. (They also should change the "new-used-any" options to be "new > used > damaged > any - good condition [which would be either new or used] > any - any condition [which would include the damaged pieces]", but I digress)
Yes! Lots of great ideas here. Better than just *erasing* the data from the website, I'd say!
I notified 3 Lego-comunities in Germany to have a look at your video and on this issue. Hopefully they will respond to Bricklink and raise some pressure. Keep up your good work.
Thank you for doing that! Cheers! ❤
They should address this, but I'm not sure leaving it as-is is working for everyone. The data preservation aspect is extremely important but it's a mess for buyers and sellers, especially because Lego sometimes updates molds every year or two, and they've done so for half a century now. Certain colours only exist in one mold variant so you need to go through multiple pages to find it, and frankly most people don't care or want to care about all that. Ease of use is important too. But deleting pages for that ease isn't the way to go.
Agreed! Bricklink is a cumbersome site at the best of times, but like you said, there's got to be a way to satisfy both camps. 🤔
Bricklink's catalogue architecture has always been the worst of both worlds. Instead of having dedicated pages for each variant, they need to allows each part to have a base entry with a drop-down selection of versions. This would be mandatory for catalogue entries, but optional for seller listings; and would be useful for all of buyers who could choose how picky they want to (not) be depending on their use-case.
Then we need a system to navigate printed and/or duel-molded parts...
I'm of two minds on this matter. One, I've only recently gotten back into Lego, and a lot of the part variations kinda muddy the waters when it comes to getting some things. I especially specifically want to collect (eventually) all the parts needed to build M:Tron sets, so your example of the Mega Core Magnetizer was helpful. But I don't know if I'd especially care that much to have the original element variations, especially if they're rarer pieces and I'd accidentally pay a lot more for them instead of functional equivalents. For the vent pieces you mention, I'd actually prefer from a rebuilding standpoint to have the variation with a lip to make for easier disassembly. I know there are a lot of other variations of parts, like clips, where I don't really care which variation I get. So something like this change where I can just get any variation would help me as a buyer.
But as you say, there's the catalog and preservationist side of things, and losing that information forever in the name of easier buying/selling would be a shame.
Some sort of happy medium where buyers could specify an exact variation if needed but default to "don't care / any variation"? Maybe sellers who want to keep variations separate for these discerning buyers can opt in, but have a pile of unspecified inventory if they don't?
I don't really feel qualified enough as a recent/casual user to think my voice matters. Especially not enough to try to deal with the 30-year-old looking interface of the BrickLink forums.
Thanks for weighing in! Indeed, a happy medium like the one you're suggesting seems to be the common consensus among the users of the site, (who knows if the admin share this thought).
And I don't blame you for not touching the Bricklink forums - I've been on the site for years and have only learned how that system works in the past two days, haha. It's a mess, even for old forum standards. 😅
The thing about differentiating the different kinds of trans neon orange would be so incredibly useful… I love ice planet and the newer parts of that color are nothing compared to the neon and beautifully vibrant colors of the original ones. I actually experienced it first hand when i went to a local lego store and i bought an antenna piece but after I got home and compared it to the one on my ice sat v it was extremely dull in comparison. The seemingly small differences really do matter so much.
LEGO: if we don’t care we don’t think you should.
Yea It sucks and potentially ruins decades of work. Well - at least peeron hasn’t gone down yet
I concur--considering the way that molds change during prototyping, a catalogue like this helps ensure that no official parts are mischaracterized as prototypes in the future.
This is the complete opposite of what they should be doing.. Rather than getting rid of the identifier, they should be making the differentiation clearer! Anyone who's going out of their way to navigate bricklink for old sets is unlikely to be someone who _doesn't_ care about the accuracy of the pieces. 16:25 is exactly it. What I'd actually like to see is better pictures/description to help everyone identify the differences better. I'd go as far as suggesting using an additional system similar to hex code for specifying color, rather than relying on words/names.
Honestly, I think it's a shame battle droid torsos never got separated into their 3 mold variants. I guess that will definitely never happen now.
With the fact they’re at least telling us what parts are being folded in we should start making our own archives while we can as there is no guarantee that Bricklink will listen to our complaints. As someone who in practice doesn’t care about mold variants but loves knowing about them this is really frustrating.
A fellow Accursed Farms enjoyer! I understand now why you're so focused on preservation, and I agree. This would be bad for the Lego community to lose this history simply for the sake of convenience.
If it comes down to it though, I know that Rebrickable is a good alternative website with a lot of this information as well, but I don't know if it's had the same amount of exhaustive cataloguing as BrickLink. Either way, it's good to have redundancy.
I think the issue might be a little bigger than just history preservation. Some of the updated pieces are more convenient to use, stable etc than the old counter part. As such, anyone who wants to buy one of the pieces would have no option to go with the "better" piece.
Also, have you checked rebrickable? I've been using it as a database for a while, since it has more search options than bricklink making it a little easier to use. I don't think they are any major downsides to it.
I need to get into using rebrickable a bit more. I don't know where they source their data from though? Does it have the decades of refinement that Bricklink sports? 🤔
@@RRSlugger Have you heard about Peeron?
It is very old site, I used it a lot back in the days when bricklink still had that vintage layout...kkk
I just googled it and discovered it is still online.
Any database doing simplification to the point of completely removing information... that's a bad thing. I can understand that plenty of sellers probably aren't tracking these variants...but for those of us who like Bricklink for their accurate set inventories this is a big deal
Ngl, I’m not even mad that the parts are being eliminated for set accuracy reasons, I’m more mad that I won’t be able to find a greater variety of bricks for my original builds. For example, the grill with the groove on the bottom can only be attached atop the 1x2 flat brick with a stud in the middle in two places. But the one without it can be placed in hundreds of more positions because the groove isn’t in the way. mixing a variety of parts can give me more possible building potential while maintaining structural integrity. So removing this is going to be annoying for me to work around when I like having very specific parts.
This deserves an even bigger "OH NOOOOOOO!!!!!!" than when Planet Slizer exploded
Something I don't see anything when talking about is how it seems clear that Lego intends to replace trans-brown with the new trans-black. I noticed it while looking at 2024 sets, and building set 71716. After the Grey/Bley debacle, Lego said they wouldn't change any of their core colors again, but it seems like a slow phase-out bypasses that. Just like what happened to trans-neon-orange and trans-neon-green. Although those two were not as prominent as trans-brown.
You're not wrong! I have to admit my bias against trans-brown as a colour though - is was *everywhere* in the early 2000s. I'm kind of sick of it, haha. 😅
They haven't done the inventory on it yet, but I'm fairly certain that the windows on 21254 The Turtle Beach House are trans-neon green. Might be trans-lime (if that's a thing), but I thought I'd point that out.
@@RRSlugger Everywhere but BIONICLE. The Kanohi Kaukau came in trans-neon orange instead of trans brown.
@@SupersuMC According to the inventory they are "Trans-bright green", which was introduced in 2010 with Atlantis theme.
I agree with you; Bricklink is more valuable as a catalog than as a marketplace; combining the matte- and gloss-finish slopes is going to cause havoc.
Edit: It appears that not all of the changes are substantial (such as the hinge pieces with different numbers of teeth don't actually function differently). Still, visual differences, however small, can have an impact on people's MOCs. 😢
I hate this kind of changes because multiple times I tried to replace parts from used sets so the set is more authentic, this matters to me because sometimes ths variations in color and mold is subtle but once you see it you can't unsee it and it's frustrating not being able to know if the part you buy is the one you want.
You make a crucial point. Now, I think this decision is probably partly due to Bricklink trying to become more accessible to casual buyers. Bricklink can be intimidating if you're not a big LEGO nerd. In that sense, I understand it. But like you said, vintage fans now have no way to know wich part they need to complete certain sets. BL defended the decision by saying you can still put the specifics in the description, but that's missing the point of the catalog function.
P.S. By "no entries will be merged", they mean that there are currently no differing entries for that part, I think. So no-one's inventory will currently be impacted by it.
I lot of these part variations are things I haven't really noticed or cared about but I agree with you on keeping track of them from a historical perspective
The exception is the smooth slope bricks. I'm used to the rough texture and the smooth ones feel fake to me even though they're real Lego. Guess I'd better get started on buying replacements for the smooth slopes while I still can
As someone who pieces together older sets sometimes, or needs pieces for older sets, this is sad. I like the details, and now I need to look at a manual closely to see the mold variant for an order? If they don't do something, then somone(WE/US) needs to make a STRICTLY CATALOG website and take ALL the info we can off the website before it's gone forever...much love to you all for a good journey through bricklink! The times are changing a lot...aren't they? ✌🙏😭
I hear ya! 170,000+ pages is a *lot* though... 💀
Hey Slugger , I might think I might understand why this is happening now .
In germany ( and EU ) there is big legal strike going on between Building Brick Brands and Lego .
Because Lego is using tons of 'legal' bureaucratic tricks , to bring down Lego-of Brand companies and even small shop owners which sell them ( that happens to a lot of german speaking buildingbrick companies , sellers and even some TH-camrs) .
But in every category , may it be be use of a Logo/avatar , because it a stutts on it (happens to a YT channel promoting other brands) , selling Sets with non Lego minifigures , and selling sets with part where Lego put a design protection . The main topic and very complicated even . It has a lot to do with design but also funcunality , a huge portion of this has something to do or rather will be excused with the Lego System patent , that Lego don't any more since the 2000s . It is very complicated to explain that in detail , especially when I just understand any of this in german myself .
So I just heared in a german YT video about an ongoing case from 2016 , where the Lidl group (yes they make construction toys) fights again Lego about the design of the 3x4 plate we all know from the Minifig Series since 2010 .
In that one court case Lidl used Bricklink as a source of howlong a Lego piece in use , because after a time limit that design protection should be lost automatically ,
buy Lego tries to fight it , even when Lego is now using parts you find in other companies sets , like the 1x5 plate from Cobi (which ironically Lego has a design protection on it) or the "new" 73507 technic lift arm , which CADA had in use for years at this point .
So if other companies using Bricklink as an evidence piece (even tho the judge in this case argued that this source can be also inaccurate) it's seems to me that can be manipulate by Lego to benefit them or their own gain .
The newer the Brickvariation is on Bricklink , than nobody can say for sure how old that peice indeed is , which would help Lego a lot .
And I feel like that this is just the tip of the ice berg .
And again , that whole topic of design protection is catastrophically petty and so niche you will get a headache .
I mean , I would understand that I come across very sceptic and cynic , but for all the stuff happing within the EU and Lego in the legal system , I see this as a part of their legal defense strategy .
Ofcourse I can not prove if this is correct or not , so you can take that with a grain of salt .
Just sharing my feelings and thoughts on this .
Interesting! Certainly not something I have any knowledge in, but interesting to read about nonetheless!
They don't make 'em like they used to...
I'm not an active Bricklink user, I just browse and play "I want but can't afford" all the time, but I would agree that it's better to try and preserve the history of the hobby; especially if Lego themselves won't.
I've been a member of Bricklink since it was conceived. It is such a valuable resource, like you @RRSlugger I use it for all of the reasons you've mentioned.
I _do_ understand the change (although I disagree with it), maybe new users (and those who opt in) can get a 'simplified inventorys/parts' and it hides all the part a/b parts BUT it allows for the information to be preserved. I will really miss this information if they just throw it away... very sad.
Thanks for your insight! I only joined in 2021, but I wish I could have been there in its early years!
@@RRSlugger I included this suggestion in my customer support message, thanks for suggesting to contact them I wrote my comment prior to getting to that point in the video. Thanks for sharing this info too, and making more people aware of it.
I really hope these changes won't happen, or at least won't spread further. I do think a website often overlooked when it comes to lego databases it Rebrickable. Even though a big purpouse of the site is to share MOCs, the folks over there have been working a ton to make inventories as accurate as possible for sets. (they even have colors that bricklink doesn't list) But obviously bricklink was required to do all this, and nothing is close enough yet. I want to be able to buy parts with X shaped axle holes if that's what a set originally came with. What's gonne go next, the clip variants?Thanks for letting so many people know about this Slugger!
Indeed! If we can't stop it here, I think that's okay. Not great, but okay. Hopefully they'll know not to spread this consolidation further. But you're right to speculate - where *do* you draw the line then? 🤔
Admin says they won't add notes, it's up to seller to write the variant in the selling description. Now I wonder how many sellers will and if people buy those instead of mixed part versions. Cuz if people mostly buy the more expensive checked entries, people without checked entries will set a higher selling price because the average selling price went up... oh my god this is just to drive up lego's value even more
As a buyer, seller and collector I fully agree to all what you say!
This is a terrible change and a huge step into the wrong direction. Instead, they should give both, the buyers and sellers the option. A seller should have the option to list his/her parts specific or undetermined. Also, a buyer should have the option to say "I care" or "I don't care". If a buyer doesn't care, he/she should get all elements listed, the specific ones and the undetermined ones. If a buyer cares, he/she should have the option to get the proper part.
It's cold comfort, but I'm sure at least some of the work people have done to catalog will be preserved thanks to Internet Archive and the Wayback machine, but still, what a fundamental misunderstanding of their platfom
Thanks for making this video, because this situation is genuinely horrible, and spreading awareness about it and why it's bad is good, and arguably necessary, thing to do in such unacceptable situation.
And also thanks for bringing up Ross from Accused Farms after Louis Rossmann too, glad to see him being known by other TH-camrs 😃
THANK YOU for this. I just commented. It's very important for preservation and the hobby. If I order a set from the 80's, I want the variants of pieces (when possible) and don't want a modern reprint, head, etc.
I think even for people who don't care about what variant of a part they might get, I completely agree with your sentiment that Bricklink is not just a marketplace but an archive of the history of Lego parts, and it's such important knowledge that, as you said, is not really catalogued anywhere else. I really hope Bricklink doesn't move forward with this change. Yes it would make it easier for some sellers, but BL is so much bigger than that.
Been awhile since I've been on Bricklink but I feel like if it allowed sellers to list parts as an unchecked variant on piece X, while also allowing them to specify that part X is variant a b or c that could help out. That way the variants are still denoted for preservations sake within set catalogs, but if you have a seller listing loose bricks who doesn't want to check the details of each they could just describe it as having an unchecked variant? Obviously that may incentivize some sellers to mark all as generics, but there may still be some who'd pride themselves on specifity and it'd at least preserve the catalog. It'd be better then what we're getting at least
Agreed! Anything has got to be better than just removing decades of work. 💀
Well made video. While it’s not the end of the world to lose this information it is still annoying to know that information can just be lost on the whim of bricklink admin like this, and this doesn’t bode well for the future.
Thanks! Indeed, this isn't the hill to die on, but it is a worthy battle nonetheless. 👍
This is such an insane decision. What's next? Tan and Blue Cross Bars with Technic Pins are being counted as one entry?
I have always used Bricklink as an ultimate though incomplete source of LEGO databases, from bricks to figures, to paraphernalia and beyond. Since the 2019 purchase of Bricklink by LEGO/Kirkby, I have always been fearful of what changes can be made. As discussed last weekend with a LEGO Flagship Store employee, Bricklink as a huge outside resource for LEGO also affects the reputation of the toy company, even if each reseller is their own entity abiding by rules in order to use the site. However, my fear was that LEGO's policing of Bricklink, no matter how distant, also means they could affect categories and the range of items resold by independents. Makes sense to eliminate Custom items not produced by the company, but it's easy for them to shut down sales of displays, employee exclusives, or other official products and materials, no matter how old, that left their factory by any means. And as a result, losing some of the identity of the brand's subsidiaries as small as Forma to as large as Star Wars. (Insert gif of Marty from Back to the Future losing his hand fading away.)
Thank you for posting about this Slugger, and I look forward to as much LEGO Fandom preservation as possible, or at minimum, another reliable source of backup information if BrickLink purges its entries.
thanks for bringing this to my attention, seems quite important.
As it seems to be a hot topic: the "groove" info is incorrect. It’s only meaning that the added "with groove" behind the tile's name is erased, to tidy up the catalogue. So there will still be different entries for the versions with or without grooves! It’s just that instead of 'Tile 1x2 with groove' / 'Tile 1x2 without groove' it’ll be 'Tile 1x2' / 'Tile 1x2 without groove'. This is what’s meant with the "no items will be merged".
Thanks for the clarification there! I knew I was missing something. We'll just have to transpose the hypothetical scenarios in the video to any of the other mould variations being effected then! 😉
i think one of the most important things we can do rn before the change is to try to archive on the internet archive all the items that will be being changed rn. then when those are all grabbed and saved we can systematically go through the other parts of the pages and work on creating a seperate version of bricklink for more parts and pieces
170,000+ pages isn't going to be easy... 💀
Youre not wrong but on the positive side we could prioritize the ones that are currently going to be effected by the change then add the others as we go@@RRSlugger
Regarding the grooved tiles, this is something that got clarification early on - they are just being renamed and renumbered, not merged. 3069b will be 3069 "Tile 1 x 2", 3069a will keep its name as 3069old. This also only affects four parts: 3068, 3069, 3070, and 3062 (not sure exactly how that one is being handled, but it's in regards to its hollow stud).
Also during this thread, I realized a set in my collection has smooth slopes - one not noted on BL - that set being 7237. But obviously I can't add that information because of this change :/ Worse, I lost one of the slopes and the replacement one I got was not smooth, now it will be infinitely more difficult to find a proper smooth one.
Thanks for the clarification!
On your second point, that's exactly why I want to see a greater attention to detail and accuracy from the Bricklink team, rather than the "it can't be helped" mantra they've seemingly adopted. 😕
I have been searching for pieces on the site for a long time and yeah, it's a needed change and it was getting tiring trying to find the same piece across 15 small variations. BUT these changes should still be notified INSIDE the page of the piece itself (main piece code+variation piece codes being signaled, and sellers being able to sell both mixed and differentiated)
Absolutely! There are *myriad* ways to improve the user experience on Bricklink, but deleting this data from the website is not one of those ways.
Exactly! This would become lost info, it's very dangerous
From a database standpoint this is absolutely bizarre. What could possibly even be the motivation for such an unusual change??
I think it largely stems from the admin not realizing what their means to many of us. I think they likely view it as a marketplace only, when it's so much more than that.