Brick Update

I picked up some more Indiana Jones minifigs for a MOC I am working on. There were some nice military outfits on some of the minifigs in the lineup.

Working on my first MOC in a looooong time. Need lots of dark tan bricks, so I grabbed some from BrickLink in four separate orders:

There were some nice LEGO finds at a local yard sale today. The online ad clearly showed some LEGO boxes, so I got there early. An older woman was already there waiting for them, but once we were allowed in, most of the sets were above her price range. I picked up:

• Winter Toy Shop 10199 (looks complete, in sealed bags, but open box.) $15
• Winter Bakery 10216 (looks complete, it has been built, and put back into baggies.) $15
• Pharoah’s Quest Scorpion Pyramid 7327 (brand new, sealed box) $40
• World Racers Desert of Destruction 8864 (open box, most of the baggies were still sealed, looks complete) $20
• Pharoah’s Quest Rise of the Sphinx 7326 (this was the “mistake” of the lot. The box was open, and I didn’t check inside before I bought it. It had both manuals, but only two sealed baggies.) $15
• 2 Ninjago Ninja Outpost Training sets 2516 (both sealed boxes) $1 each
• Harry Potter Freeing Dobby 4736 (the set was opened and built, mostly complete, but missing Dobby) $2
• A mixed box of pieces and minifies in the LEGO Master Builder Academy 20200box. Included Bossk and other minifigs from new sets, including Alien Quest and Pirates of the Caribbean. Didn’t seem to have much of the Master Builder set left though. $5

All told, I spent $114, which is crazy expensive for a yard sale. But… these were sets I wanted, and it was a huge savings over buying them at the LEGO Store. The older woman bought a box of unopened baggies of LEGOS that had come from sets. I didn’t realize it until later, but a couple of those bags belonged to the Rise of the Sphinx set. She spent probably $10 total, $1 per bag.

Here is the seller writing them up at the sale:

And here are all the sets once I got home:

My local LEGO Store was packed with people grabbing the newest summer 2011 LEGO sets, primarily Star Wars, Pirates of the Caribbean and Harry Potter. Amazing how much the licensed sets make up much of the store. With Marvel and DC super hero sets coming out next year, this certainly will build even more interest.

The line was consistently long during my visit:

This is what greets you when you enter the store:

For some reason, I am still surprised to see this on the shelf. I expect this to be the last year for this set, but who knows.

The monthly mini model builds. Sadly, not open to those over 14, these are fun little sets:

The new LEGO Master Builder Academy set was tucked in towards to the back of the store:

Always fun to discover sets like this that I would never really buy, but look cool none-the-less:

Big stacks of new sets in the middle of the store. The Ewok Attack set seemed to be popular. A good price point, and new Ewoks!

One of the little displays in the store:

I was going through some LEGO I purchased at a yard sale last year, and realized there was a pretty good amount of sand red bricks in there. Evidently, LEGO stopped making this color because it was some how too expensive. Anyhow, nice to find these:

I stopped by a LEGO Store last night that I hadn’t been to before, and got my first glimpse of the new LEGO Star Wars and Harry Potter sets. Was hoping for some good finds on the pick-a-brick wall, but didn’t see anything I needed. Okay, here’s a tour:

Pick-a-brick wall:

A view of the store. They actually had a few sale items. A dented box Maersk ship was 10% off.

A Maersk ship – funny to see this just sitting out like that.

The I LUG NY display box:

New Harry Potter sets. Very cool to see all the purple bricks in The Knight Bus set 4866:

The new section of Hogwart’s Castle:

And all the Star Wars sets arrived. Here’s the Sith Infiltrator #7961:

The new Hoth Echo Base set #7879. The reviews I have seen of this have not been very positive:

Anakin & Sebulba’s Podracers set #7962:

Geonosian Starfigher set #7959:

And finally, the Millennium Falcon set #7965:

I took a short trip down to Delaware, and couldn’t resist seeking out the local LEGO Store. To my pleasant surprise, they had 2×2 dark tan tiles on the wall, so I stocked up. I also added some plants and other assorted pieces. Here is the sealed cup:

Contents of the cup:

Sorting them out:

The total count. This ended up being about 2 cents per piece. Important to note that Delaware has no sales tax.

A photo of the LEGO Store, nothing too unusual here:

The Space Shuttle set on the shelves:

I haven’t paid to much attention to the Pirates of the Caribbean stuff yet, but this ship is pretty impressive:

I thought this was a strange set:

Some of the cooler sets out right now:

So. Many. Scorpions.

This store had dark red in stock too, the 2×4 bricks as well as 1×2:

Not sure why, but I was trying to think of a reason to buy a bunch of these:

I was pleasantly surprised to find not just dark red bricks, but dark red 1 x 2 bricks on the LEGO Pick-a-Brick wall today. There weren’t many, left, and I bought pretty much all they had left, which worked out to be a single large cup full.

This is the first pick-a-brick cup I ever bought, so I was curious about some of the techniques I have read about for stacking the bricks to fit the most in the cup. You will see the start of my failed attempt below. it was hard to get perfect, and I ended up knocking the cup part-way through, which undid all of the careful work. In the end, I just built a solid core for part of it, and dumped the rest of the bricks in.

I chatted with some of the LEGO Store employees while I did this, they were curious as to what I was doing, and were really pleasant. (as usual)

People have reported fitting 600+ 1×2 bricks in a large cup. I ended up with 520 1×2 bricks and 15 other bricks too. Not too bad, it worked out to less than 4 cents per brick. For such a rare color, this is a great deal.

Approaching the LEGO Store:

Here are the red 1×2 bricks when I first saw them:

The start of my attempt to stack them the way I saw it done on Flickr, which should yield around 600 bricks per cup.

In the end, this was my cup, filled to the brim:

Here is the haul:

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the pick-a-brick wall were some interesting colors and shapes:

14 more LEGO Stormtroopers just arrived in the mail, I just had to share that:

I finally finished building the LEGO Green Grocer set 10185. It took nearly 20 days off and on of building. (update #1 and update #2)

But of course, just as I finish the building, the stormtroopers move in: