Blog And News Articles

Stone wars is reporting that LEGO is retiring it’s road baseplates permanently in favor of a brick-built alternative. Maybe time to invest in some base plates or stock up if you have a city.

Happy to see this write up about LEGO trying to go green, but what on earth would my childhood look like without ASB plastic? https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/31/business/energy-environment/lego-plastic-denmark-environment-toys.html?action=click&module=In Other News&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage

The Avenjet Space Mission is yet another Super Heroes set, where some random vehicle is thrown in to give the LEGO Group something to hang a bunch of minifigures on. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad set, just that it may not be something that fans really care nothing about. I really badly wanted some of the minifigures with this set, so I went ahead and got it. I figured there would be some out there who wondered if this set was worth getting. Let's review. REVIEW: SET DETAILS Set #: 76049 Name: Avenjet Space Mission Theme: Marvel Super Heroes Parts: 523 Price: $59.99 BOX CONTENTS Some people may wind up picking up a set that is open box …

The Brickpicker Brick Index was updated recently. This index gives an indication of the movement in value of each set based upon the previous 6 months of sales data from Ebay. You can review the sets by theme if you like, but @Jeff Mack has accumulated the top 20 performers for the last 6 months on the landing page. I'd like to take a look at the data and see what it tells us. First, let's take a look at the data that is presented. Each set is ranked by what percentage of value it has increased in the past 6 months. There's a handy graph of that period of time showing a whole dollar value on the Y Axis and months expressed numerically on the X. A cursory overvie…

At 7:28 AM EST, member 8lackmagic from the United Kingdom registered on our site and became our 50,000th activated member!!!! Brickpicker is also celebrating it's 4th year in existence which is exciting in itself. To know that we have been able to register 50,000 members in those four years is an accomplishment that I didn't think would honestly ever happened if you asked me a few years back. It's been amazing to see all the things that have happened over these past four years... 50k members, a book that has been published and just released with a second one in the works and we finally released our marketplace Brick Classifieds that offers ZERO selling fees and…

As much as I enjoy LEGO's super hero offerings, sometimes they put out characters that I just don't really care about. It's not that I don't like Doctor Strange, I just really never cared about him at all. When I first saw this set, I was struck with how interesting it looked. It's kind of like the Big Bang Theory set, but more interesting. You know, because of a giant Cthulu monster popping out of the wall. This set is exclusive to Target and to LEGO Shop at home, or LEGOLAND shops. This is the only set made for the forthcoming Doctor Strange film. It's much like last year's Ant-Man set in that regard. REVIEW: SET DETAILS Set #: 76060 Name: Doctor…

Hello, I'd like to tell you about an idea that I had. I'd like to make June 25th Give a Sick Kid a Brick (Break) Day. This would be a day where we can give to a little served cause. It might not even cost you a dime. I don't know how many of you have had a sick kid. My child's been to the emergency room more times than I can remember and admitted to the hospital for observation 3 times. The children's hospital is just as dreary, just as stark and joyless as an adult hospital. Somehow it seems worse because the child doesn't have the same acceptance as an adult in the same position. What an adult endures, a child fights. Shots, procedures, nurses, doctors and speciali…

Today we are announcing the winners of the Brickpicker Minifigure Book Photo Contest. Now that we have two books out there in the wild I can say that it is not easy. Ed has a few months of sleepless nights and or nightmares and I become a stalker looking to get permission to use photos in books or I pretend I am a photographer and take a few thousand photos hoping one is good enough. With that being said, I have to say that the first book was super exciting mostly because it was our first book but the second book was a lot more fun. For one thing, we knew what to expect overall, but it was a lot more fun because we got to deal with and see what type of photos the publ…

https://www.boston25news.com/news/local/lego-moving-north-american-headquarters-boston/BHZ2Z6TQOBAWDOXENSBOG7ATUU/ Does this mean anything? Just bad news for Enfield, CT I suppose.

Last year during the Force Awakens Force Friday push, @Fcbarcelona101 wrote about the new LEGO offerings. I wanted to take a quick look at the new offerings for the new Star Wars prequel Rogue One: A Star Wars story. Oh yeah, that's right, it is a prequel. I know that a lot of people don't want to hear that word associated with Star Wars, but it is what it is. The first thing I would like to discuss are the Constractions or constructible action figures. There are 3 of them for the Rogue One release. As far as it goes, I'm not convinced of the long term viability of these The first series has started to disappear from shelves, but I don't think it's due to dema…

For me, one of the LEGO sets that I most want in my collection, but am least likely to get is the 10123 Cloud City. In Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, a lot of the action takes place in Bespin's Cloud City. Strangely LEGO has been reticent to release sets that correspond to this location. (Maybe we'll talk about the similar lack of Dagobah sets sometime later.) When LEGO announced the Carbon Freezing Chamber 75137, many thought that it would replace this set. In the minds and hearts of many, 75137 is just a pale comparison to a small part of 10123 Cloud City. LEGO Star Wars fans groaned, and owners of the original rejoiced. Cloud City is 698 pieces and …

I shared the story once it broke a few months ago but the long/form version is truly out of this world and the scandal it created is huge. The article really shows how crazy and frightening it can be when a major corporation goes after someone. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/26/technology/ebay-cockroaches-stalking-scandal.html

This is packaging excellence. Even though the product is still essentially petroleum based, its good to see changes in the packaging, making it 100% recyclable. https://brickset.com/article/53790/plastic-bags-inside-sets-to-be-replaced-with-paper-ones

After The Force Awakens was released, I looked at the available first wave sets and felt something was missing. To me, the Luggabeast conspicuously absent. Sure, Unkar Plutt was missing, but I wasn't really missing him. When I heard that this set was coming, I got excited. When I saw the preliminary images, I cried out as loud as any other about how bright the blue was. Upon further research, I saw that the blue was right. The Luggabeast shown in the film had a lot of bright blue, but most of it was heavily scratched and marred. It's hard to have the mottled look in LEGO, so they simplified it by going blue. I think it's time now to review and see how well LEGO accomplish…

When I first got into LEGO as an AFOL I was looking at all of the Star Wars sets that I had missed and how much they cost. It became necessary to figure out a way to get the sets cheaper or make more money. I knew that some people must be making money buying bulk lots and taking out the stuff they wanted and selling the rest. That seemed like 2 birds with one stone. I looked at the bulk lots on Ebay, realizing that most of what I would get from these guys were common pieces. So I started looking at bigger lots, somewhat intimidated by their cost. I figured, however, if an Ebayer was getting $10 for a pound maybe I could make some money just throwing stuff in a box, easy m…

Below is a screenshot of Black Friday deal that Toys R Us is offering this year. Nothing wrong with getting 30% off any set. I personally like the Ultra Agents theme. The 70173: Ultra Agents Ocean HQ is a really slick looking boat and if you can grab that for $70, not a bad considering it is sold out right now on LEGO S@H. View full blog article

Good news for some, bad news for some and irrelevant news to others! Must be a BigBlueDogBricks post by yours truly, Veegs! "The True North Strong and (Almost?) Free - Loonie Slide to 59!" That phrase plays on the words to our National Anthem O Canada, and is possibly amusing to some? First, a link to the article - although most major Canadian papers had this or a variation on it today: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/macquarie-loonie-forecast-1.3401644 As the article states, the loonie (Canadian $1 dollar coin, for those unaware) is forecasted to continue its slide against the U.S. Greenback, perhaps to an (shudder) all time low. Grim things for some in the Cana…

I've built both the A-Wing and Darth Vader's TIE Fighter before. Neither build had previously done a lot to excite me. I remember building 7150 TIE Fighter and Y-Wing back in 1999. That particular build colored my perception of Star Wars LEGO for the next decade and change. I also built 8017 Darth Vader's TIE Fighter which was miles better and 75003 A-Wing Starfighter. None of them really excited me enough to keep. I wish I had held onto them in order to compare and contrast, but that's the breaks. I didn't really need another Darth Vader or another Sabine Wren without her helmet. It feels overpriced. The original retail for 75003 was $24.99 and 8017 was $29.99. But their…

According to a story by Andrew Paul, Contributing Writer to Comicbookresources.com, the next wave of DC Mighty Micros will be released January 2017, and include three new superhero/villain pairs: Batman vs. Killer Moth Superman vs. Bizarro Wonder Woman vs. Doomsday For more on this, check out the Comicbookresources.com story here. Thoughts on the new pairings? Please feel free to share in the comments section below. View full blog article

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/mar/30/french-police-on-trail-of-international-gang-of-lego-looters French police say they are building a case against an international gang of toy thieves specialising in stealing Lego – and they have warned specialist shops and even parents to be aware of a global trade in the bricks. The alert comes after officers arrested three people – a woman and two men – in the process of stealing boxes of Lego from a toy shop in Yvelines, outside Paris, last June. Under questioning, the suspects, all from Poland, reportedly admitted they were part of a team specialising in stealing Lego sought by collectors. …

It happens to the best of us..... You haven't built a LEGO set in a week or two. It's a slow day, you're bored, and you've got some spare time on your hands. You glance lovingly at your secret stash of LEGO sets and notice the pristine Pet Shops 10218s sitting on the shelf. They're mocking you - daring you to break those beautiful seals. Grabbing a set off the shelf, you carefully open the package before dumping the glorious contents onto the kitchen table to get your fix. You say to yourself, "I'll build just one", and six months later, your office looks like this: Eventually, you've built one of each Creator Modular Building in your collect…

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-lego-china-copyright/toymaker-lego-wins-chinese-copyright-case-against-brick-imitators-idUSKBN1E1157?utm_source=applenews Don’t believe this has been posted elsewhere on these boards yet - but it looks like GREAT news, with possible longterm impacts on the knockoff market!

I couldn't really get behind the Mighty Micros sets. Something about the short legs and the goofy expressions didn't click with me. At least the Microfighters have normal sized minifigures. But I kept looking at those goofy expressions and I could sort of dig them. I like Captain America, and the idea of a Unique, goofy Captain America half appealed to me. I kept picking up Captain America Vs. Red Skull and putting it back because I didn't relish the thought of spending money on something soooo goofy and juvenile. Eventually I felt like I had to, just so I could give it a real shot and not let my prejudices take over. This review will take a look and see what I actually t…

Editor's Note: Here is another great article written by one of our members, Mos_Eisley. This article covers an issue that many collectors face and answers questions for those that are just starting their LEGO collections. Mos_Eisley received 500 BrickPoints for having this article published on the site. -Jeff So you’ve decided to enter the dark and alluring world of LEGO investing. Soon you’ll be scouring the internet every day for all the best deals, stopping at every Target and Walmart (maybe a Toys ‘R Us here and there if you’re feeling lucky) you pass in the hopes of finding some great clearance discounts, and explaining to your significant other that this is…