In the previous blog/vlog posts, I talked about my sorting bulk LEGO status. I finished the last post with minifigures to identify and half-built sets to complete. I then decided to dismantle most of the half-builds because, apart from identifying the set number, they didn’t help much. They were not nearly as close to being complete. Minifigures seem to be a lot of hassle because most of them looked complete, but in reality, most of them had incorrect parts. I put them all in a box and will identify a couple every week just for fun. As of now, my BrickStore inventory looks like this:
This post is an opportunity for me to look back to my bulk LEGO journey and decide my future actions regarding buying more or not.
My LEGO Journey
Before getting into the bulk LEGO, here’s a quick history of my LEGO journey to explain what prompted me to buy bulk LEGO in the first place.
In June 2019, while ordering a bunch of stuff on Amazon, I bumped into this set:
A small play set, but I thoroughly enjoyed the build process, and some play features too.
After a few months of stagnation, paid a visit to London Leicester Square store and got my first adult set: Harley-Davidson Fat Boy (10269).
I think it looks gorgeous with backlighting. I enjoyed it so much that started ordering more sets.
In March 2020, I decided I should be building MOCs too! I eyed a mouse droid MOC on Rebrickable and started ordering parts from Bricklink.
They quickly added up and proved to be quite expensive. While investigating ways to obtain pieces on the cheap side, I came across bulk LEGO sales on eBay.
Between August and September 2020, I bought around 160 kg. of bulk LEGO. Little did I know that it would take me months of intensive labour to sort all of them!
Lessons Learned: Pros and Cons
Now that the sorting is over, I’ll look back and take you through my experiences with bulk LEGO. Let’s start with the positives.
Pros
Pro #1: Can be cheaper compared to the other alternatives
This is the reason that led me to buy LEGO in bulk in the first place. If you can find a good deal, you can save a lot of money if you are trying to build an inventory from the ground up.
Because it’s primarily random pieces, it’s not a great choice if you are after certain parts. All you see is a few photos on eBay, and you have to decide based on that. If you see what you’re looking for in the pictures, then go for it. Otherwise, it’s really just luck whether you will find what you’re looking for or not.
Pro #2: Adventure
I had not considered it would be so much fun digging into a tub full of LEGO! When you get a box of LEGO, you keep finding remnants of previously built sets, minifigures, and some vintage parts.
When you look them up on Bricklink, you find some are rare and valuable, which is always welcome.
Cons
Con #1: Time consuming
For me, the biggest issue was the amount of time I had to dedicate to sorting all the pieces. It starts out easy as you go through the large basic parts, such as bricks and plates. As the parts get smaller, the time you have to spend gets longer.
Colour identification can be an issue with some colours. Especially light grey vs light bluish-gray is a huge time waster. So much so that I gave up on that very early on and entered everything under light bluish-gray. This is acceptable in my case, as I’m not planning to sell this inventory at the moment, but if you are a Bricklink seller, you must be very accurate with your descriptions. So identifying the colours correctly can be very important.
Another time waster is identifying the part variations. For example, look at the 1×1 plate with clip variations:
Can you spot the differences? Now imagine you have this pile in front of you:
You now have to pick up every single piece and look closely to identify the variation. Imagine how much time it takes to do that for this pile. For some parts, I did spend some time identifying the variations if they were relatively easy to do so, and there weren’t too many of them. In this case, I simply entered them as the same item.
Another category is the stickered/printed items. Again you have to look them up one by one:
Con #2: Not all you buy is genuine LEGO
Unfortunately, some sellers don’t know the difference between LEGO and other brands. So you get pieces of a lot of Cobi, Playmobil and many others.
Con #3: Hard to find good bargains
I noticed recently that on eBay, most bulk LEGO lots seem to be sold by professional sellers. I keep seeing listings like this:
What’s wrong with this picture is that if they are advertising “+2 figures”, there are no minifigures in the lot! So they already processed it and pulled out the minifigures and other rare and valuable pieces.
I heard Facebook Marketplace could be a good place for bargains, but it’s also a bit of the wild west as there are also a lot of reports of scams going on.
Con #4: All random and not good for targeting builds
If you are building a MOC and hoping to build an inventory big enough by buying lots of random LEGO pieces upfront, you’re doing it wrong! That’s precisely what I did initially, without realizing there are thousands and thousands of different pieces. If you add the colour variations, you will get millions of combinations. So it’s not feasible to buy blindly so that at some point you have “enough LEGO”. There is no such thing as “enough LEGO”!
Con #5: Vintage LEGO is not as valuable as you think
While going through a bulk lot, I found this item:
This was released between 1966 – 1978, meaning it is at least 44 years old and only appeared in 11 sets.
I quickly checked the average price and was let down after seeing this:
It’s not even worth ยฃ1. This is a printed brick which is always more valuable than regular bricks. So don’t think vintage items are more valuable as they would be rarer.
Conclusion
Based on all this, here’s my conclusion:
- Only go for very good deals from reliable sellers. Imagine how much you will have to invest in sorting the lot too.
- Just because something came in the lot doesn’t mean you have to spend time categorizing it. The most efficient way to use your time is to pull out minifigures and other useful parts and sell the rest in bulk (This is probably what most people do these days, and that’s why it’s harder to find good lots).
If you are planning to buy bulk LEGO, I hope my experiences can be helpful to you before you embark upon it.
