EDITORIAL: What Would You Say About a Set if LEGO Sent You it for Free?

I haven’t done this before so we’ll see how it goes… I’ve decided to write an editorial piece capturing an opinion that I’ve formed as of late after scouring the LEGO fan pages. Specifically, I’ve been following the recent release of the new UCS Imperial Star Destroyer Set (#75252-1). I had a blast building #75192-1: Millennium Falcon and news of the Imperial Star Destroyer set release caught my attention. Thankfully, the fan media has their set reviews ready to go soon after release. From the sites I look at, there were Imperial Star Destroyer reviews on Brickset.com, Eurobricks, and on YouTube, Beyond the Brick had a video review.

I’m trying to decide whether I want to save up my VIP points to buy a Star Destroyer set. The reviews have been helpful in pointing out things I wouldn’t even consider. They’ve highlighted the less than stellar minifigures included, the lack of internal designs unlike the Falcon, points where the design lacks detail, and the mere challenge of trying to display a model this large somewhere. They’ve also highlighted the positives like the cool “greebling,” the built in carrying handle, the intricacy of the various angles formed, and some of the many cool details. To be honest, I have not decided one way or another whether I want to take the plunge or not.

Onto the meat of the discussion… I am glad LEGO sends out free copies of the sets to various LEGO fan media influencers. It works out great for them to get reviews published right as a set releases for sale so the rest of the fan community can get an inside look at the set. It’s a smart move on LEGO’s part and they probably see more benefits by giving away a bunch of sets for free than they do by giving up sets. Also to be fair, all of the reviewers acknowledge that they have received a free copy. For example, Brickset says “This set was provided for review by The LEGO Group but the review is an expression of my own opinions.” But are we in the fan community getting true reviews? Many of the reviews have a comment about the set being expensive, but it seems like it’s worth it to buy. However, they didn’t actually buy it. How can they make an assessment like that? I almost feel like I need to wait and find someone who as actually spent their hard earned cash to buy this before I accept any decisions on price. Don’t get me wrong, I would love it if LEGO sent me free sets to review (hint, hint… if someone from LEGO is reading this…), but I don’t think I could make a fair assessment on the price LEGO picked for a set without actually paying for a set. Often times, that’s why my reviews are much later as I tend to wait for sets to go on sale before buying them.

I don’t mean to stir up discontent among the community. I think LEGO is doing a great thing by sending sets to the community to review. I appreciate and thank the fan media for taking the time to create videos, post professional quality photos, and assess sets from the prospective of a fan builder. My recommendation going forward is to continue with this process. I would also suggest that we as a fan look into finding ways to assess the price that are more objective. We have the somewhat meaningful price per brick. I have seen price per pound used as well. The Star Destroyer is also compared in price to the Falcon which I’m not sure is 100% accurate either. What else is there? Any ideas on how to make this process more transparent?

Thanks for hearing me out. Happy building!

Everything Really is Awesome!

And to continue with the reference, it really is cool to be a part of the team. In this case, I’m referring to the AFOL community. Since my business is shut down for a few years, I haven’t been able to post about helping others. Luckily, today I have a post from Brickset.com that covers it.

Some background… in late November 2018, some vandals broke into an Orange County, California elementary school. They specifically targeted the library where the librarian had a large number of LEGO sets displayed on the tops of the shelves. You can read about the incident here.

Well thanks to Brickset, we have the aftermath of that story. A group of AFOLs took time over their Christmas holiday periods to go to the school and put the collection back together. Not only did they give of their time and talent, but some even gave bricks from their own collections to replace broken parts. You can read the article on Brickset here about the Justice LUG.

It makes me proud to be a member of the AFOL community after reading stories like this. Great job gang!

Turning Your LEGO® Bricks Hobby into a Business

If you’re a nerdy AFOL like me, you probably think it would be great to get paid to build with LEGO bricks all day. Maybe you’re a great builder and could go work in Billund designing sets or at one of the theme parks. Or maybe you’re like me and your building skills are just average. As far as I know, the LEGO Group isn’t looking for mediocre to average builders. Maybe I could be a janitor at the LEGO House?

Besides working for the LEGO® Group, a number of fans have turned what they do as a fan into a full time business that pays their bills. I’ll bring up a few of them here and if you know of more, please let me know in the comments or email me at store@bricksforbricks.com.

Beyond the Brick: I posted about this YouTube channel here. My post has a link to an interview of them where they spend some time talking about how they turned traveling around the world to visit LEGO conventions, theme parks, and other events into a full time business that pays the bills. Pretty awesome if you ask me.

Brickset: If you haven’t been to brickset.com and you’re an AFOL, where have you been? Huw Millington decided in the late 1990s that there needed to be a database of all of the LEGO sets out there to include special edition sets and those sold in limited markets. It has since expanded to minifigures and individual pieces as well. Along the way he found that he could add advertising to his site and he used affiliate marketing (you buy LEGO from amazon.com and he gets a cut of the sale if you link through his site) as well. Once it started paying the mortgage, he quit his job and ran the site full time. There are a number of interviews with Huw online. I watched one from Beyond the Brick here. This one is a few years old and there are some newer ones so check around.

Brick 101: Another YouTube channel… this one is run by fan Dave Pickett. To be honest, I hadn’t heard of this channel until I stumbled upon a video he posted. Dave gave a talk at Bricks by the Bay 2018 about how he turned his love of LEGO and animation into a full time gig. You can watch the video here. He has videos where he explains how to build various creations, he reviews sets, and he does some animation work. He also does some work for non-LEGO toy companies… GASP!!!! (from the purists out there) The video is about 45 minutes long, but it’s interesting to see how he made it work.

The big recurring theme I saw from all 3 of these businesses I mentioned is that their success did not happen over night. It took all of them a few years to turn their hobby into a business. I’m not saying that there aren’t overnight successes out there, but something to keep in mind if you plan to be a full time brick fan starting tomorrow.

I only selected 3 to talk about here and I realize I’m missing a lot of people. I know there are folks that run BrickLink, EBay, BrickOwl, and other stores full time selling sets, pieces, minifigures, and other LEGO related items. I’m sure there are others out there too that Brick full time and don’t run stores. I will look to do an update to this post in the future with some others I find out there who went from hobby to business. In the meantime, happy building!

The (Not So) Secret Way to Buy Discount LEGO Sets (2018 Update)

Back in 2016, I wrote a post with some references for where you can find LEGO at a discount.  It's time for a update.

LEGO Shop @ Home: Buying from the source can sometimes be a good deal.  This however is not always the case.  For most of the year, they throw a lot of sets up for sale that they weren't able to sell.  There are a few key times however.  The Star Wars set sales during the May the Fourth sales and the Brick Friday Sales offer some great deals.  Often they throw a few other sales in there, but you need to pay attention to them.  If you get on their mailing list, you can get notices of when they are coming up.

BrickSet.com - Amazon.com deals in the US: Amazon has kept a good deal of discounts on sets.  If you pay attention, they have a great deal of some of the main lines (CITY, Friends, Star Wars, etc.) at a 20% discount.  As they approach Christmas time, they often increase sales to include discounts of 30% or more.  It's definitely worth it to check this site out before buying a LEGO set to see if there's a discount.  BrickSet used to have a Walmart sales site, but that one has since been shut down.  

BrickPicker.com: As mentioned last time, BrickPicker is more of a resource for those who collect, invest, and sell on the secondary market.  It focuses on LEGO sets that have long since retired and where people are willing to pay big money for some of the rarer sets.  They do show some current discounts on Amazon in various countries and if you follow the forums, you can see what deals people are finding at some of the big brand stores.

Walmart and Target: Both of these retailers have either pushed all of the fan sites to take down their sales searches or people took them down on their own.  I'm not sure what happened, but I have yet to find an easy way to find the LEGO deals at these stores.  Has anyone found something useful out there?  If so, please let me know.

Ebates.com - Okay so this is not a way to save money buying LEGO in a direct way.  However, there are a few ways you can take advantage of it.  For those of you not familiar, Ebates is a website where you sign up, go to the website before you shop, and then Ebates and you get a cut of the total sale when you are done.  If you sign up, you get spam emails every day.  The good news is, you can use it to buy LEGO.  LEGO Shop @ Home is currently (as of 30 March 2018) offering 2.5% cash back.  You place an order, they hold onto 2.5% of the sale, and then they return it to you in quarterly payments.  You can receive a check or link it to your PayPal account.  Before Christmas time 2017, Ebates had a 7.5% cash back deal on LEGO Shop @ Home.  Combine that with Double VIP points and it was a pretty good deal!  Also, you can share their site with friends and get a $25 referral payment.  The link I placed is just to the site and not an attempt to get the $25 referral payment out of you.  Amazon.com and Walmart are linked to Ebates too, but often they are linked to specific categories of products.  I have yet to see them give cash back for toys.

One final note is not related to discounts, but finding those hard to find sets.  Right now, it has been a challenge to buy the Millennium Falcon (#75192).  There are a number of websites out there that help you track inventory.  I have been watching zoolert.com.  You can set it up to track a product and get notifications on availability and pricing.  For the Falcon, it shows availability (or lack thereof) at Walmart, Target, Toys R Us (for a bit longer), Lego, Amazon.com, and EBay.  It does not show BrickLink.com or other LEGO secondary market sites.  If there is a set out there that you are looking for (maybe the Falcon), it may be worth it to use a site like this one.

What else am I missing?  Feel free to comment on any sites I'm not aware of or you can email me here.  

I'm not an affiliate to any of these sites and I am not paid to endorse any of them.  If you want to support Bricks for Bricks, please check out my BrickLink store.