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@Hypolite Petovan I am looking to buy a bunch of Lego for my son for his birthday. Is there a good tool for looking at a general view of like, weight to volume, and is there a standard bulk-lego supplier?
@Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@silverwizard The answer to both of these questions is unfortunately No. the way LEGO is sold as bulk falls into these three loose categories but all come from personal ads (Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace, Nextdoor, Etsy, eBay, etc...):
  • A full LEGO bin sold as is. Price should depend on whether minifigures are present, and whether there are Star Wars sets, always in demand on the second-hand market. Bonus point for 1990s boat hull parts and train parts. My mainstay.
  • Unsorted LEGO sold in individual pound bags. Prices hover around US $10 per bag. I hate these, I can't reconstitute sets from them since they come from a big pile of unknown origins.
  • LEGO sorted by color sold in individual pound bags for around the same price. These usually come from a single collection, and I've tried my hand at buying the whole lot at a per-pound price discount, ended up with specific colors missing, now I ask if any bag has been sold already, if yes I pass.


And that's about it. There's money to be made sorting parts and selling them individually (especially minifigures), so that's what professional sellers do. Bulk selling is mostly done by particulars, I reckon.

Some professional sellers have sometimes thousands of a single element (specific part + color combination) for sale in their shop so I assume there's a way to obtain bulk parts from LEGO one way or another, but this isn't what you need.

Lastly, LEGO still produces basic sets with a bunch of parts in multiple colors (that I have a hard time reselling because they're either too common or specific to these sets, but that's another issue) and several mini-instructions that are perfect for tinkerers, much less so for narrators because of the general lack of details.

See https://www.lego.com/en-ca/themes/classic
@silverwizard
silverwizard
silverwizard  
@Hypolite Petovan that makes sense - $10/pound for sortedish lego seems good

There's a 30 pound bin locally for $250, and making that Canadian probably makes it worth it, despite the fact that it's not great

But good to know!

Thanks for the info!
@Hypolite Petovan
silverwizard
silverwizard  
@Hypolite Petovan So we found 30 lbs of Lego (the ad said "Might contain some Megabloks and Hot Wheel), and dithered on spending $250CAD on it until it went down to $190 CAD! And then they threw in a second box. So uh... I think our child is gonna enjoy.
@Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@silverwizard Nice, have fun! And when you're done with it, I'll gladly take these out of your hands!
@silverwizard
silverwizard
silverwizard  
@Hypolite Petovan Lol - you think lego is something that is ever "Done"
@Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@silverwizard So far I've purchased 23 bins from people who were done with LEGO, so I know it can happen!
@silverwizard
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@silverwizard That's because we do radically different things with them. I just can't do unstructured LEGO play, so matching the contents against a finite set catalog, comparing inventories, buying the missing parts, logging the rest in my collection for sale, and selling sets and parts is my jam.

And in the end, processing bins into nothingness (almost) is terribly satisfying.
@silverwizard
silverwizard
silverwizard  
@Hypolite Petovan I get that, and I understand. Definitely very different use case
@Hypolite Petovan
Andreas vom Zwenkauer See
Andreas vom Zwenkauer See  
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Hi @silverwizard and @Hypolite Petovan
if you want to please your son, it doesn't have to say "Lego" on it. Here in Europe, many no longer accept the price policy and quality of Lego. There are more and more suitable alternatives, some of which are of better quality.
Here you see 1kg clamping blocks:
https://steingemachtes.de/Steine-Konvolute

@Hypolite Petovan what do you say to this offer:
https://www.flix-brix.de/einzelteile/kiloware.html
@Hypolite Petovan @silverwizard
silverwizard
silverwizard  
@Andreas vom Zwenkauer See @Hypolite Petovan yeah, Megabloks is my local mainstay I own a bunch of, but Lego is definitely my catchall
@Hypolite Petovan @Andreas vom Zwenkauer See
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@Andreas vom Zwenkauer See @silverwizard I've seen these German LEGO-compatible offers before but in the US, I've only found Mega Blocks and various Chinese knock-offs like LePin in the bins I've sorted which set my quality expectations very low for non-LEGO parts.
@Andreas vom Zwenkauer See @silverwizard
Hypolite Petovan
Hypolite Petovan  
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@Andreas vom Zwenkauer See I have a hard time taking these sets with a very low price per part seriously, in part because they're standing on the shoulders of the elephant in the room. For example, I sold today a couple of LEGO sets that were released in 1993, so 30 years ago, and not only the parts I found for these sets in the bin I sorted were in great condition (albeit a little dirty), I was able to replace most missing parts seamlessly with much newer parts. These for me are proofs of an ongoing quality commitment dating back at least 30 years that none of the newer LEGO-compatible brick ventures, however well-intentioned, can ever claim to match.

One of the reasons the LEGO second-hand market has always been very strong is the normalization LEGO introduced in the 70s (!). As a result, LEGO parts always have been a known quantity, and you can build a business based on trading genuine LEGO parts because of this ongoing trust in the product itself. Is LEGO overcharging for new sets? With such an incredible engineering legacy for what was considered like mere children toys until very recently, they damn well can, and I'm absolutely not ready to quit this field because of outlandish price-per-part claims.

Let's talk about the BlueBrixx second-hand market in 30 years, shall we? 😄
@Andreas vom Zwenkauer See
Andreas vom Zwenkauer See
Andreas vom Zwenkauer See  
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Let's talk about the BlueBrixx second-hand market in 30 years, shall we?

Yes !

;-)
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