A vague thread for random lego musings.

[Jargo]

I just can't stop buying Lego. even when i'm out of cash I find myself making a purchase or ten on ebay. though being honest, that avenue is fast closing down as more and more people quit using the site and ebay make it harder and harder to find anything with their ridiculous search options multi-menu.

anyhoo. I mainly buy lots of single colour parts or special parts. usually with a build plan in mind. but i always get distracted by ebay shops and all the other items in a sellers lego section. I always end up buying loads of parts i didn't think i wanted until i spotted the items for sale. for example, i was looking for city ambulances and fire trucks and ended up getting a load of mini figs and other city vehicles too. i intended to spend about £40 and ended up spending £140. that's about $80 and $280.

i'm not whining at all. what I've bought is great. means my lego city streets will look a lot fuller and i've almost got a complete set of emergency services. (someone is buying me the 7945 fire station soon) and I'm waiting to see if LEGO can come up with a decent hospital set. the last one was absolutely dire. and someone should tell LEGO that using red on medical stuff is supposed to be bad luck. the red represents blood and death. which is why it's normally green or blue that's used in hospitals. red is usually reserved for the fire service.

be that as it may, and getting back to my train of thought, I only noticed my weird spending habit yesterday. and no matter how much Lego i buy there's always tons more i want. i could spend thousands on the stuff and still not be satisfied. though that wouldn't be hard, spending thousands i mean, any sort of lego is pricey. old new or fake. I'm just glad some people don't behave like arses (and mark up goods stupidly high) so there are still some bargains to be found.

I like bargains. a little too much.....

[Jargo]

managed to find the two vehicles from the cargo train deluxe set on ebay. bits still in the bags and all virgin fresh lego. I was balking at the thought of buying the set to get the vehicles but now i have them. so i bought two of the red roadster and one of the blue flatback truck. Woo! got the yellow car and black motorbike from the recent gas filling station set. same dealio, all virgin fresh. I'm after the cargo container truck from the city harbour set and the blue car from the creator town house next.

wish lego would do some vehicles in green or dark orange or whatever. be nice to get some variety on the roads. too many white and red vehicles.

Also picked up other city stuff:
Cement mixer truck
mail van x2
street cleaner truck
fire engine (not sure if I bought 1 or 2 of these. got lost with the amount of emails firing at me from ebay.)
ambulance x2
doctor's car
green trial bike x2 (batman - banes hideout)
grey trial bike (indiana jones)
purple motorbike (batman)
cargo truck & forklift
bunch of minifigs of varying profession.
load of dark orange roof slopes

[DarthQuack]

I always like the woodsmen or whatever they were back in the late 80s early 90s, I remember getting them and the Wolfpack....Ice Planet was cool too, IMO :P

I still wouldn't mind having one of the monorail sets one of these days.

[Jargo]

I thought about putting a monorail into my city, but decided to go for buses instead. seen some cool stuff done by other folks thast have inspired me. think i want to do them in bright red and pale lemon yellow. partly because red window frames are easy to come by but partly because it's the colours of the buses where i grew up.

I might try and get an overhead railway in. I want a railway but can't figure out how best to do it so it doesn't wind all over the place. overhead provides some interesting height and texture though. downside is trying to design the support structure. brick arches or steel girders?

see, i'm not the sort of person who can just shove a building here and there and be satisfied. when i say i'm building a city i mean a city. buildings with four walls and none of the shortcuts taken that Lego make when they put together a set.

ok i'm not actually building anything right now, just collecting together all the parts and pieces i need. the emergency and support services will go in first, then the banks and businesses, then the entertainment/retail industries, then parks and gardens and finally residential. If there's room i'll shove in a river and port and an airport. and somewhere in among it will be a filthy polluting factory with an outlet of waste that runs into the river which will explain why my river will have no fish.

i'm really liking the orange ship in the coastguard range at the moment. much better colour for a boat than the blue in the city 'dock' harbour set. loving the look of the minifig trial bike from the coastguard theme, in orange. orange rocks, it really does.

[LusiferSam]

Hi, I'm LusiferSam and I'm a Lego manic. I don't remember a time when I didn't have or like legos. I played with Duplos for years and had a time of Basic sets and a Space set. But then I was given the Battering Ram for my birthday in 1988. That was the tripping point. Since that time my collection has grown from under 10 sets to about 6% of the total number of known sets. I've out grown the space I have to display them years ago. I only have a fraction of my sets out. A good size of the them are stored away in zip lock bags.

Castle is still one of my favorite themes and I have more Castle sets then any other theme. I've most of these sets. Currently my collecting (ie eBay) efforts are on finding this missing sets. Which are a total pain because they are small (under a 100 elements) and rare. Last year I picked up a key set 1917. With this set I have everything from 1984-1996. I'm currently looking for 6031. I want it MIB, but it's hard to find. There's one I'm not sure what I'm going to do about. The problem is nobody (including Lego) seems to know much about.

Pirate is the only theme that really can revel Castle for my favorite theme. I've got of the these (System, not the 4+ junk). When the theme ended in '97 there were only 8 sets I had to track down. Hard, but not to hard. Currently I'm buying more soldiers (mostly red, but few blue). I'm planning on building a large fort based on the Imperial Trading Post.

I have a few Town/City sets. I was never to into Town. Some Space sets, mostly Blacktron and M:Tron. A lot Star Wars (of course) sets. A good number Technic and Adventure sets. And the rest are just what I thought looked cool or were given.

[Jargo]

my collection is very mixed. some space, some adventurers, some castle, lots of town and city, a tiny amount of exoforce and bionicle, some technic and tons of stuff bought from ebay that's just basic building blocks.

i bought my first town set back in 1980. prior to that i'd been given lego only at xmas and birthdays and then it was always the small pocket money sets. the first set i bought was a motorbike with a third wheel and above is was a sort of parcel shelf affair. it was yellow and blue and came with a minifig but i've never managed to find the set number or a reference to it on lugnet or peeron etc.

I didn't start buying big sets until the late 80's. and owing to fundage problems I had to wait for the stores sales to get clearance stuff. then i got together with my partner and did the usual getting rid of childish things routine and I packed up all my lego in tubs and hid it away. it was only when i started coming here to SSG and reading lego threads that i realised how much I'd missed out on and really got into buying sets. I'm still on a limited budget of course, and my foray into star wars action figure collecting seriously cut into my lego budget, but now that's reversed and lego is my priority. interestingly star wars lego has never interested me. I find the sets really dull and bland. and all the movie tie in themes are overpriced so i avoid them and only buy loose parts from ebay if i like them.

I don't use bricklink because i don't trust the site. tell me a hundred good news tales about shopping there but it just doesn't suit me. and i've been lucky enough to find everything i want on ebay over time. I find that with lego having the patience of a mountain helps. when you're trying to amass a decent amount of a certain part.

it's also been a right downer not to have a lego shop anywhere near me. think the closest one is 100 miles away. if there had been one locally i would have been in debt to the tune of thousands by now. how anyone can resist the brick wall (wall of bricks?) is beyond me. pick and mix lego is the best idea since...... pick and mix candy.

incidentally, do any lego reps read these lego threads? is there a process for suggesting a particular brick to the Lego people? that would actually be a great tool for their website. design a brick. say stick a minimum brick amount on orders and you can only submit a design if you're going to buy it. but allow people to create a brick to suit their needs. like say a half circle finishing tile. or a 1x4 finishing tile with bevelled edges to match the vehicle roof/hood piece and finish the flattened end off. or a 2x2 tringular brick for doing small angled corners. useful for constructing buildings. that sort of thing.
or maybe lego could do it as a competition. I dunno. just seemed like a good idea. reduce the frustration of never having that one part you desperately need......

[Jargo]

I was mucking around with an image or two and recoloured as approximately as I can, four of the lego cars.

got me thinking how cool it would be to have a lego car showroom on their site where you can pick the colour of the car before you order it. and have some sticker sheets with stuff like wood panels and go faster stripes so you can further customise your car/vehicle. It'd be sweet for getting a fast swell on your city traffic. maybe not too many colours though.

here's my wee very rushed and not well done sample CLICK

[Slicker]

I'm definitely a town collector (and SW obviously). I always have been.

[Jargo]

Only thing holding me back at the moment is funds. luckily my secret special someone who is moving up to my area from London soon is also a Lego fan. he wants to combine lego collections, (least I think that's what he meant), so my city might grow faster than anticipated.
I'm trying to teach him how to build things that aren't just house interiors that use up all the baseplates. and how to build in minifig scale. And not to use up all the dark red bricks and smooth tiles....

wish Lego would open a shop nearer to me though. there's a new mall being built in Liverpool that would be the perfect location for them.

[Jargo]

damn, think I just got shafted on ebay. won the item then almost immediately the seller became an unregistered member. talk about take the money and run. only $24 but still crappy to lose anyway. grrrrrrr.