Best Way To Buy Lego Bricks
First off, as you mentioned, Ebay is not the greatest place on the net to get bricks. As you seem to be aware of, it is difficult to get individual bricks from these individual sellers. Having to pay separate shipping from various buyers plus the unreasonable prices can really add up.
best way to buy lego bricks
Then there's LEGO Shop. Here, you can buy LEGO bricks directly from the LEGO company. You can individually purchase bricks from Pick-A-Brick, or buy their currently advertised sets. The downside to this is that they obviously do not carry discontinued sets, the selection in Pick-A-Brick is limited, and the prices are unsatisfyingly high, making the bucks add up quickly. Shipping times can be pretty quick and cheap, that is, if they're not currently having any difficulties with their warehouse. If they are, then orders can be delayed by a large amount of time, which has happened to me twice. I once placed an order there which took nearly two months to arrive.
Then, there's Bricklink. You seem to be aware of this website. I like it very much. It is, in many people's opinions, the best source from which to acquire LEGO bricks. The prices are cheap, it carries almost every piece and set ever released, (even discontinued ones) the tools for finding bricks are useful, and most of the people there are pretty nice. The interface is quite useful, you just have to be familiar with it. Once you get used to it, I'm sure it won't seem so "clunky" to you. For detailed help, enter the chat room. The people there are very nice, and will be happy to you point you in the right direction.Shipping times vary depending on which area you buy from. Buying from within your country might generate shipping the speed of TLG on their best days. Bricklink, however, is much less likely to have technical difficulties as each order is just an individual seller sending something off to the post office, and has therefore generally been more reliable in my experience.
If you contact your closest LEGO store, they can sell you a 'case' of bricks for about $70, which will give you, I'm told, about 650 2x4 bricks, which is about $0.11 per brick. These are bricks that usually go into the pick-a-brick wall. You might be able to buy case by just walking into the store, but expect the manager to have to order the bricks, with a 4 week lead time.
Bricklink really is the best place to get bricks you are looking for. It works really well once you get the hang of it. It also makes it pretty easy to find pieces you are looking for... if you know what it's called or how to describe it.
Brickowl.com is another Bricklink-style site with an updated interface and easier shopping experience that you should check out. The interface is well designed and they have a feature built-in that allows you to find the best combo of stores for the parts in your wishlist, then add them all to your cart at once. It even gives you a total + shipping!
Ask your Walmart manager if they are part of the Lego Xmas sale. You cannot get these bricks cheaper than this! Next best is Kijiji sales or Bricklink sales. Sometimes schools and firms sell off inventory on Bricklink, but these sales rarely last a couple of days as well. I purchased many hundreds of large technic pieces from a lady in NY city who was clearing out inventory of a school, for $80 including postage. The postage cost $50. She would have sold me NXT robots for $125 but I like VEX instead...
In each official lego store there is a wall with shelves of lego bricks. You can fill a small or large cup there. Now matter how you fill the cup, it's a fixed price per cup. Obviously the selection will be limited, but if you happen to have use for the provided bricks, it's often the most cost-effective way to get bricks.
To buy Lego in really big quantities, shop on the UK Lego Education website. You can buy huge clasroom packs upto about Â5000, now thats a lot of Lego, comes on a palette full of about 30 large plastic storage boxes of Lego (smaller amounts are also available). The good thing about the storage boxes that Lego supply is they have small holes in so the bricks can be washed in the box, and left to drain
Bricklink.com is a marketplace for buying and selling LEGO. You can buy sets (current or retired), minifigures, and individual bricks of all types and colors. The way it works is very similar to eBay, except that there is no bidding. Sellers post their items for sale, and you can sign up for a user name and start purchasing.
Hi! I checked this out as per your suggestion, and started a purchase from one seller for a lot of basic bricks at pennies a piece. The seller has a good rating and is in the US but my shipping charges were like $90 for 300 pieces. Have you had this happen to you? Is there a good way to pinpoint which sellers have fair shipping rates?
In my experience, I have never seen a seller who charges unfairly for shipping. When you make a purchase, the sellers send an invoice with combined shipping. I would expect to pay $6-8 to ship that many bricks. You can try messaging the seller and ask what the shipping would be before proceeding. Most respond to messages within the same day. Another thing to try is to see if this seller has an information page - most do. That would explain the shipping rates, for example most will tell you what weight of bricks can ship for what price. I hope that helps!
You can also make a wishlist of all the pieces you need, and bricking will tell you which vendors you can get your pieces from (sometimes it will take more than one vendor to order everything on your wishlist). I find this takes less time, especially if you are ordering many bricks.
Decluttr is a website for selling and buying used tech and LEGOs, which they recycle. Dump your LEGOs in a sealed plastic bag, weigh them, put them in a box, and send to Decluttr for free. They pay $1 per pound (about 180 standard bricks are in a pound).
Hose down your bricks, let them air dry out of direct sunlight, and sort them by color, removing the minifigures and specialty pieces. No need to worry about complete sets, boxes, or directions. You can get about $5 per pound on eBay for clean sorted LEGOs.
These areas are where you will be spending the majority of your time at The LEGO House. There are so many bricks to build with and unique experiences to be had that you could spend hours to days here. I took my mom (not a regular LEGO builder) and we spent three hours playing. So, if you are a group that LOVES LEGO, you will want to allow for more time.
Eating at MINI CHEF is all about the experience. First, you order your meal with four LEGO bricks representing specific menu items. Then, you scan the order at your table. When your food is ready, you pick up your food from the counter from a conveyer belt that ends at two robots.
Jenessa, is there an option to tour or view the manufaturing or design areas? My son is now 18 and preparing to go to engineering school and would love to see how they are actually made and all the machines that make the bricks!
Is it possible to ship our purchases back the the United States directly from the LEGO House? Trying to figure out the best way to get them home without hurting them ? or paying a fortune for baggage.
This step will be the most tedious process of the whole project, However a Wanted List is a crucial step. It allows for fast and easy searches of stores and can enable some quick filtering. Additionally, there are LEGO fans out there who have made free software available that takes care of all the BrickLink searching for you in regards to best combination of prices and shipping fees. For more information on this check out the BrickLink forums.
As I mentioned above, there is some software available to make the BrickLink shopping experience more automatic, but I personally like shopping without the aid of a program that will do everything for me. Sure I might not be getting the very best price, but I can support some of my BrickLink favorite sellers. At any rate, I like to start any project by pulling up some of the rarest, most expensive parts I need to purchase. I do this by selecting those pieces individually and finding the cheapest prices on BrickLink for them.
You can get all the pieces you need by just building up a Wanted List on BrickLink and seeing which shops have the best prices and quantity. You can also get the instruction booklets on BrickLink, or just get the PDF version online.
A brief note on some of the program names you guys might want to look for. Brickstore or brickstock are programs that fans can use to make custom wanted lists. The program will even let you spit out an .xml file for mass upload and allow you to share your work with friends.
Brickwizard is a program that works off of Brickstore and it can help do all the leg work in trying to find the best prices on bricklink. The only downside is that it is not as flexible when and if you want to make substitutions.
A quick note on why bulk LEGO can be so much cheaper: blame entropy. It varies from one collection to another, but when a bin of used LEGO comes up for sale it most likely has an aggregate of undesired components. The inferior knockoff bricks or similar brands of toys can make up a considerable volume of the lot, which is usually acknowledged by the seller.
Very interesting and fascinating.But I stopped buying bulk lots as I got tiered of cleaning every piece with a toothbrush. Let's say that I also have enough standard bricks and plates.So when I buy second hand I like to grab and search in boxes to get specific parts.
Excellent analysis! I suppose having a history of sellers' names / locations / additional information would add value to the calculation to apply in a real-world buy, where the bulk lot is a basically blind purchase. Relying on user-rated stars is not always the best method; that can be fudged.
@Xiaolong said:"Very interesting and fascinating.But I stopped buying bulk lots as I got tiered of cleaning every piece with a toothbrush. Let's say that I also have enough standard bricks and plates.So when I buy second hand I like to grab and search in boxes to get specific parts."Yes. To buy used bricks is the last option - only when the item I want is not available in NEW/unused condition - you never know what has happened to the bricks in the past (use your imagination). 041b061a72