Hey gang,

 

Been reading the website for about a year now, but this is my first post.

 

Has anyone tried buying all the pieces for a Green Grocer Modular 10185 or other ModularBuilding through the missing pieces feature of the Lego LEGO Shop at Home website? A good friend of mine has used LEGO Shop at Home to buy all his pieces to build over 20 Custom Modular builidings, but he's never tried to to buy all the pieces for an entire production set. I looked today, and you can buy all but 12 of the pieces for the Green Grocer set from LEGO Shop at Home. I figure I'd use brick link to pick up the remaining few pieces. This set would be for my own personal collection, not for resale purposes. Here are a few key questions I have:

 

1) Will buying all the individual pieces new from Lego likely exceed the cost of purchasing a used set on Ebay or Bricklink?

2) If I am going to buy the set in individual parts, do you recommend Lego or BL as the source? Is there a third option?

2) Will Lego flag my account or ban me for trying to do something like this? 

3) Can I purchase all the pieces in one large order or should I break them up into several smaller orders?

 

Thanks for any advice, past experiences, or words of wisdom.

 

Here are some pics of my bricklink builds to date.  My MF pics were taken to highlight the subs I used to keep the cost reasonable. 

I still have to finish the third floor on my second caf

Is there anything you don't get banned for? Lol

 

Not buying Lego?

Thanks

 

For the caf

 

For the caf

Jharrison,

You would think that we could get together and upload high quality scans of the instructions for the common BLinked models.

I successfully put together a UCS MF 1-2 years ago and a caf

This has been a great discussion. The thread posted over at Eurobricks was extremely informative as was the article on substitutions for building a Cafe Corner. Thanks everyone for the comments so far. Here's the next question. As discussed at length, the sand green bricks are the budget breaker right now. They aren't available from Lego. The 1x8 bricks have a reasonable work around. What about the 1x2 bricks with groove for the facade? You need 57 I belive.

Currently on BL they are going for $1.88 to get them in quantity. That totals $107.

My choices are:

1. Switch to sand blue, dark gray, red, white, or light blue-gray if I want to retain the same 1x2 groove brick on the front. The other colors are just as expensive.

2. Stick with the sand green color motif, but swap the grooved brick for a plain 1x2. Perhaps down the road the grooved bricks will come back in production and I can restore them.

3. Try another 1x2 brick like the log or mortar look, although they don't come in sand green currently either.

Thoughts?

I started putting together parts for a CC yesterday. I had 25-30% of the parts to begin with, and I've put in one big BL order for most of the other parts.

I'm hoping to avoid making any subs as I'll most likely sell it on at some stage. It's hurts paying so much for some parts, but I think the economics of it makes sense if you're looking to sell it.

This has been a great discussion. The thread posted over at Eurobricks was extremely informative as was the article on substitutions for building a Cafe Corner. Thanks everyone for the comments so far. Here's the next question. As discussed at length, the sand green bricks are the budget breaker right now. They aren't available from Lego. The 1x8 bricks have a reasonable work around. What about the 1x2 bricks with groove for the facade? You need 57 I belive.

Currently on BL they are going for $1.88 to get them in quantity. That totals $107.

My choices are:

1. Switch to sand blue, dark gray, red, white, or light blue-gray if I want to retain the same 1x2 groove brick on the front. The other colors are just as expensive.

2. Stick with the sand green color motif, but swap the grooved brick for a plain 1x2. Perhaps down the road the grooved bricks will come back in production and I can restore them.

3. Try another 1x2 brick like the log or mortar look, although they don't come in sand green currently either.

Thoughts?

 

I feel that the groove bricks are important to the look of the facade, so personally I would not swap it out for another brick. I would suggest:

 

1. Switch to another color as you mentioned. Sand blue is cheap because of availability from Pet Shop, and looks good.

2. Keep sand green, but only use groove bricks where necessary. Some of the 57 bricks have the groove facing inward or facing another brick, so those can be swapped with a normal 1x2 brick without affecting the appearance. I can't recall how many it is, but you might be able to find it in that Eurobricks thread or by looking at a LDD model of the set.

If your only goal was to build a Green Grocer from the cheapest price per piece source possible...then a lot of sand green pieces could have been found on the cheap with HH 10228 before it sold out.

 

Blasphemy?  Maybe.  But the price per piece would have been very reasonable.

 

If it is for a personal build just keep the pieces and put the HH back together in the future. 

Vermintt was kind enough to share his parts spread sheet for GG. Just to confirm our speculation, I did a cost comparison of price to obtain all the elements to assemble a complete GG 10185 to include all the extra pieces and minifigures. With the exception of substituting 50 sand green 1x6 bricks+1x2 brick for the 50 sand green 1x8 bricks in the inventory list, no other modifications were made. All parts priced as new. No price for instructions or box calculated. 

 

Lego Bricks and Pieces:

All but 18 lots available online today.

Total cost to obtain these items $475  

Shipping & Handling: $2.95

Additional cost to purchase remaining 18 lots from BL: $137

Shipping & Handling: estimate at $10

Total project cost estimate: $625

 

After reading several posts and PM on here and Eurobricks, it seems the average cost to obtain an entirely Brick Linked GG is in the $400-450 range depending on new vs. used, part swapping, and any previously owned pieces. This often doesn't include the price of mini figures. Some people did/did not include shipping cost in their overall project total which we all know can be highly variable. Based on today's prices and inventories on BL, I think you could put together an entire set utilizing 3-4 vendors and come in around $500 dollars including shipping.

 

Hope this was informative.

Edited October 14, 201411 yr by Deadfraggle

here is a "Red Grocer" that I just finished today. Actually, it is nearly finished..I'm just waiting for a few more pieces from bricklink! 

 

http://imgur.com/nuZH34i

Hi guys,

 

I am interested to build the GG and CC as well. However, being new to this, I would like to ask:

 

1) How do you find out what are all the elements needed to build the set? Where can i get this information?

2) How do you search for those parts (or elements) in BL with as few suppliers as possible ?

 

Thanks for any help to this newbie!

Hey gang,

 

Been reading the website for about a year now, but this is my first post.

 

Has anyone tried buying all the pieces for a Green Grocer Modular 10185 or other ModularBuilding through the missing pieces feature of the Lego LEGO Shop at Home website? A good friend of mine has used LEGO Shop at Home to buy all his pieces to build over 20 Custom Modular builidings, but he's never tried to to buy all the pieces for an entire production set. I looked today, and you can buy all but 12 of the pieces for the Green Grocer set from LEGO Shop at Home. I figure I'd use brick link to pick up the remaining few pieces. This set would be for my own personal collection, not for resale purposes. Here are a few key questions I have:

 

1) Will buying all the individual pieces new from Lego likely exceed the cost of purchasing a used set on Ebay or Bricklink?

2) If I am going to buy the set in individual parts, do you recommend Lego or BL as the source? Is there a third option?

2) Will Lego flag my account or ban me for trying to do something like this? 

3) Can I purchase all the pieces in one large order or should I break them up into several smaller orders?

 

Thanks for any advice, past experiences, or words of wisdom.

 

As someone who has pieced together Cafe Corner, Market Street, UCS Falcon, UCS SnowSpeeder, UCS X-wing, a few old Batman sets and some custom modulars, here are the only reasons you should try doing this.

 

You have a wide range of pieces to start with, or you have a store and can strategically buy sets to part out that help you with this mission

You have some OCD need to do it.

 

If you want a LEGIT copy of the set (meaning all the colours and details are right on the money, then buy the set complete from someone.

Think of it this way.

Why do people part out sets to sell?

 

Because the sum of all the parts is greater than the cost of the set as a whole

 

If a set was selling for $800, but it only cost $400 to build, everyone would be building sets and selling them for more money

If the set was so far under the value of the parts, then people would buy sets to break apart.

 

But asking most people, they feel it's only worth their time selling sets by parts if their value is 2:1 or better.

 

By the time you do all those orders, all that bookkeeping and all the shipping costs, you've exceeded what you would have bought it for.

 

 

But say you're ok making substitutions.

My advice is the same, buy the set, take out the substitutions you would have made and sell them instead.

 

Don't care about the instructions? Sell those.

If you don't already have all the information you are looking for, I have a little more.  This is only looking at Bricklink and not Lego Pick a Brick.

 

Brickficiency is a program that most people aren't aware of.  It is a tool that can import an xml wanted list from Bricklink and calculate the lowest number of stores your list is contained in as well as cost (before shipping of course).  I ran this on a parted out list for the 10185 Green Grocer including Minifigs and excluding instructions.  At first I ran the tool only looking for stores in the North America.  It got through 3 store combinations with no luck and 4 store combos will take HOURS to calculate.  I expanded the tool to look at stores in all countries, here is what it found in 10 or so minutes before stopping the calculation.

 

2 Store Combo - 1 Solution

Total - $1502.06 from 1 Portugal and 1 UK store

 

3 Store Combo - 3 Solutions

Match #1 - Total $884.47 from 1 NY, USA - 1 Portugal - 1 UK (Portugal and UK are the same as in the 2 store combo)

Match #2 - Total $1049.02

Match #3 - Total $1479.58

 

4 Store Combo - 2 Solutions

Match #1 - Total $847.03 from 1 NY, USA - 1 OR, USA - 1 Portugal - 1 UK (NY, Portugal and UK are the same as in the 3 store combo)

Match #2 - Total $881.01

 

There may be better combos if you let the tool run all day.  And as many have already mentioned if you substitute out some of the more expensive parts (1x8 Sand Green) with smaller parts it could cut the cost greatly.  That 1x8 in the Match #1 of 3 stores was running $3.55 each, x 50 = $177.50.  The 1x2 Sand Green w/ Groove is also a larger cost at $184.24.  There is nothing really to get around that part.  Those two parts are making up for 42% of your cost.

 

Seeing as you can get a used set starting around $650, finding all the exact parts isn't worth it.  (BL pricing)

 

 

Hope this info helps.

On October 11, 2014 at 2:43 PM, Deadfraggle said:

Hey gang,

 

Been reading the website for about a year now, but this is my first post.

 

Has anyone tried buying all the pieces for a Green Grocer Modular 10185 or other ModularBuilding through the missing pieces feature of the Lego LEGO Shop at Home website? A good friend of mine has used LEGO Shop at Home to buy all his pieces to build over 20 Custom Modular builidings, but he's never tried to to buy all the pieces for an entire production set. I looked today, and you can buy all but 12 of the pieces for the Green Grocer set from LEGO Shop at Home. I figure I'd use brick link to pick up the remaining few pieces. This set would be for my own personal collection, not for resale purposes. Here are a few key questions I have:

 

1) Will buying all the individual pieces new from Lego likely exceed the cost of purchasing a used set on Ebay or Bricklink?

2) If I am going to buy the set in individual parts, do you recommend Lego or BL as the source? Is there a third option?

2) Will Lego flag my account or ban me for trying to do something like this? 

3) Can I purchase all the pieces in one large order or should I break them up into several smaller orders?

 

Thanks for any advice, past experiences, or words of wisdom.

I have an answer on the second number two question.  I just finished doing exactly what you describe for the Cafe Corner set. Bought most pieces straight from LEGO in like 12 different orders, (because I was using recycling money I got from used cans and bottles to pay for it). 

Lego was very helpful, and the people answering my phone calls, or sending the emails all wanted to know what I was doing, and what I was building.  When they knew after I told them, they got really enthusiastic and thought it was a great idea.

Lego is definitely NOT going to ban you, or block your account. They totally loved the fact that I did this for the CC.  And I'm not the first one either.

I guess I answered your number three question already too.  

If you buy through Lego, your set will most likely be more expensive now than when originally on the market, but you will be sure it is complete ?  

If you can take the time to go through and cross reference piece by piece, more often than not, you'll find most of the parts at a lower price point from sellers on Bricklink. However, the fact that not all sellers are going to have all the parts required, means potentially many multiple orders from around the globe.... shipping costs could make up the difference in savings and make it moot. That said, you may be able to find a single seller with decent (cheaper than Shop at Home) prices on the majority of the parts. Then fill in the gaps with Bricks & Pieces / Pick a Brick. Depends how cost effective you want to be.... time is money for most people, and the time involved in cross referencing everything could take quite a while. 

Just my 2c.

 

Also, there is brickowl.com, another marketplace much like Bricklink.  

 

Edit: Oh boy. I've just replied to a 2014 thread. Good game. Lol. 

Edited September 14, 20169 yr by Zelgazra

13 minutes ago, Zelgazra said:

Edit: Oh boy. I've just replied to a 2014 thread. Good game. Lol. 

Don't worry.  I'm just laughing that this was @Deadfraggle's first post.

6 hours ago, Zelgazra said:

 

Edit: Oh boy. I've just replied to a 2014 thread. Good game. Lol. 

It's a g-g-g-ghost!