Hello LEGO fans, collectors and resellers…

Many of you may already know who I am, but for those of you that may have just learned about Brickpicker, my name is Ed Maciorowski and I would like to ask you for a few moments of your time. Over the past five years, my brother Jeff and I have operated the BrickPicker site at no cost to members and fans. All we ever asked from members was to click on affiliate links to help pay for the site expenses, which cost members little or no out of pocket money. Many of you have gained valuable information and insight from our data and forum community that enabled you to make money from LEGO collecting and reselling. Often, people would ask how can we help the BrickPicker site and its creators and we would say thanks for the offer, but no thanks, we felt uncomfortable taking donations. Well, we have a way for all of you to help out not only me, but over 150 children and their families.

Let me introduce you to the St. Paul School of Burlington, NJ…

My son, Max, is a member of the Kindergarten class in St. Paul School. He has attended the school since September and adores it. My wife, Jane, and I also adore the school. It is everything a school should be. It’s a school where everyone knows your name and there is a sense of pride and respect not found in many other larger schools. I cannot explain it, but there is an ambience of goodness in the building. Sounds corny I know, but as a person who has the word “evil” in his email address, I can tell you that I know when something deserves special recognition as a “good” thing. But it’s not only me who recognizes a great school. St. Paul School was voted the “Best Private School” in Burlington County, NJ and won numerous other awards. St. Paul School’s graduates constantly excel in high schools throughout Central NJ, with a large portion of graduates appearing on the National Honor Society and finishing top in their classes as Valedictorians and Salutatorians. To find out more about the St. Paul School, you can check out their website…

So here is the situation. St. Paul School is a Catholic school and as many people know, Catholic schools always have a hard time paying the bills to remain open. While St. Paul School and other Catholic schools welcome all religions and people, they are not funded by state or federal tax dollars and must adhere to many policies of the Catholic church and their Dioceses. Unfortunately, due to the weak economy and other forces outside of their control, enrollment in Catholic schools is down, putting more and more pressure on the school’s and local church’s budgets to remain open. This is an ongoing battle and fundraising has become an annual ritual in every Catholic school in the nation and most likely, the world. Everyone has to do their part to help out and Jeff and I are doing ours. Here is our plan…

Jeff and I are going to personally RAFFLE OFF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS OF RARE AND RETIRED LEGO SETS! These sets are from our personal collections and they include the:

• 10188 Death Star
• 10228 Haunted House
• Sealed Case of 64 Series 10 Collectible Minifigures (MR.GOLD might be in there!)
• 10224 Town Hall
• 10225 Ultimate Collector Series R2-D2
• MORE SETS HAVE BEEN ADDED!!!

That is well over $2000.00 in LEGO sets. All are retired and appreciating in value as we speak. I will personally ship them to anywhere in the world at my cost and in a proper shipping container. There will be one winner for each set and you must buy tickets for each raffle separately. One person can win all the sets if they enter all five raffles. There are discounted tickets available and the raffle will be run on the www.rallyup.com website, which is a very reputable and trustworthy fundraising site. They will automatically pick the winners at 11:59 PM on January 31, 2016 and will notify the winners. I will then ship out the winning LEGO sets to their new owners. The raffle and link to share can be found below:

                                           https://rallyup.com/stpaul-2016

Each ticket costs $10.00 and enables you to enter one LEGO set raffle of your choice. $50.00 will cover all five iconic LEGO sets. ALL OF THE PROCEEDS (besides the commission to www.rallyup.com) goes to St. Paul School and to its corresponding church, The Parish of Saint Katharine Drexel, which helps the school operate. Tickets can be paid with any major credit card and the site is secure. Unfortunately, PayPal does not get involved with “raffles,” so PayPal can only be used for direct donations. I know that is a minor inconvenience, but if their is an issue, contact Jeff or I and we can see what we can do about transferring money to our PayPal account and paying for your raffle tickets. If we get a great response from people, we might add a few major sets or collectible and rare items to the raffle contest.

On a personal note, I just have to say that I feel awkward asking people to help and for money, but the St. Paul School kids, faculty and community are worth it. They need to raise $200,000 by the end of January in order to keep the doors open and I am pulling all of my strings to help get them to that goal. I need your help. Period. If you value quality education and teaching children morals and respect, then supporting a school like St. Paul is paramount to the future well being of this planet. To the BrickPicker community...Show the LEGO world that we are more than just a bunch of Quick Flipping Low Lifes….that we care and have a heart, even though we buy all of Little Timmy’s LEGO sets up to resell. LOL. Honestly, this is important to Jeff and I and I want to be proud of our community that we have built over the past 5+ years. If you want to repay us for all of the efforts we have made over the past five years, buy a ticket...or two...or five. My son and 150+ other kids and families, faculty and friends of the St. Paul School will thank you…

CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE FUNDRAISER

PLEASE HELP AND SHARE THIS BLOG POST ON FACEBOOK, TWITTER AND
OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA OUTLETS!!

 

If you are interested in just making a donation and want to use Paypal, you can.  Just click the purchase link on the right side bar.  On the next page you will see a checkbox that will allow you to just make a donation.  Check that box and you will then see options for payment.  Paypal is not available for buying raffle tickets, it is against their terms.

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is there a way to support st paul through amazon smile?

 

And why isn't there a sea cow up in the raffle?

On 19/1/2016 at 9:25 PM, gregpj said:

 

Ed's going to have to read the threads about safely packing and shipping sets.

 

 

On 19/1/2016 at 9:29 PM, Ed Mack said:

Sorry, what is OS? I said I would ship anywhere.

Yea, I meant overseas. Somehow I missed that info, but thx. 

I have bought a couple of tickets. Hope it helps.

also made my gamble for the cause

Ed,

Sorry if you have discussed before, but I assume there are other fundraising efforts outside of this one?  How close is the school toward the $200,000?  

Just interested because I am in the education field. 

We are making progress. I feel good about it but we still have a long way to go. Another very generous family with a wonderful restaurant is having a dinner at the school and is giving 100% of the proceeds to the school. It's this Friday. Hopefully the snow holds off in NJ. A blizzard is coming.

The St. Paul PTA does a great job. They raised $290,000 last year to keep the school open. That was before we got there. But as you well know, with each passing year it's gets tougher to squeeze money from people. The school is over 100 years old and has a great history, but enrollment is down due to the economy. We not only have to raise money but enrollment as well. We pay $4300.00 a year for an elite school and that is cheap in my opinion. We were spending $8000.00 for an average franchise preschool. The Diocese forces the school to keep tuition low.

There are a lot of politics as you probably know and that really sucks because the kids and families get stressed out as well as the teachers. This should not be an issue with going to school. Sure, I could send my son to the average local public school system, where he would get lost in the shuffle and be another brick in the wall, but I would rather send him to a place where they know your name and let a kid excel.

With the help from our generous members, I am hoping to raise more money for the school than anyone ever has and help put a huge dent in the deficit. I am getting my packaging materials ready to ship out the sets to the winners. Of course, some of the mystery bundles are still up in the air. I am willing to work with the winners of those raffles to cater to their likes. Everything is negotiable, but people have to win it first to work a deal. Thanks for your question.

I'm not a power user yet (as I just haven't had the time), but I *just* found out about this. I'd seen the banner a few times but it just didn't catch my attention as it seemed like random publicity... Also not a fan of the vid used for the raising of the funds, but it's *definitely* something that everyone using this site should do. BP is a great site even for lite users.... I'd simply suggest to Ed that the banner be more attractive and focused on the raffle.. and Lego. Idk, different colors maybe?

 

I'm definitely in. Good luck!

- David

PS:... if anyone has a paypal debit card, that *does* work to make payments

I'm not a power user yet (as I just haven't had the time), but I *just* found out about this. I'd seen the banner a few times but it just didn't catch my attention as it seemed like random publicity... Also not a fan of the vid used for the raising of the funds, but it's *definitely* something that everyone using this site should do. BP is a great site even for lite users.... I'd simply suggest to Ed that the banner be more attractive and focused on the raffle.. and Lego. Idk, different colors maybe?

 

I'm definitely in. Good luck!

- David

We have several banners. One like my signature. We will make one more change in the last week to push it. The video was from last year when they raised $290,000, so who is to argue with success.? Bottom line is that I'm asking for your help and you can win some kick ass sets.

A 1500 piece 10697 Creative Box was just added to Bundle #5!!!  Blueriderbrick donated the set.  Thank you!

Finally got my donation in.  Sorry for the delay.  Been meaning to for a while now.  The badges all the donators had were a nice reminder (not that you haven't done an excellent job posting it everywhere).

28 minutes ago, Lawpepperdine said:

Finally got my donation in.  Sorry for the delay.  Been meaning to for a while now.  The badges all the donators had were a nice reminder (not that you haven't done an excellent job posting it everywhere).

Thank you for your generous donation.  

Very welcome.  You and your brother really do a great job with this site.  Glad to be a part of the site and your fundraiser.

Only my third post on these forums, and just wanted to commend you on your effort.  Just bought my tickets last night, which makes me supporter #426.  However much you raise, I think what you guys are doing is awesome!  I remember when we had to raise money for our school every year, my mother would go around and sell cookies to her colleagues at work so that we wouldn't have to do it ourselves in our neighborhood.  And she did this every year for 12 years!

Hopefully, everyone is procrastinating like me.  Best of luck!

10 minutes ago, meiamfan said:

Only my third post on these forums, and just wanted to commend you on your effort.  Just bought my tickets last night, which makes me supporter #426.  However much you raise, I think what you guys are doing is awesome!  I remember when we had to raise money for our school every year, my mother would go around and sell cookies to her colleagues at work so that we wouldn't have to do it ourselves in our neighborhood.  And she did this every year for 12 years!

Hopefully, everyone is procrastinating like me.  Best of luck!

Thanks...Knowing members on this site, there are quite a few procrastinators.  LOL

Here is an article about the school and fundraising efforts from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

21 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

Thanks...Knowing members on this site, there are quite a few procrastinators.  LOL

You need to advertise the raffle as "retiring soon"...

17 minutes ago, MathBuilder said:

You need to advertise the raffle as "retiring soon"...

Not a bad idea...We will come up something in a day or two to let people know time is running out to enter.  

Ed-  I'm not sure if you know about this or not but Amazon will donate  0.5% all all sales one accumulates with http://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/ch/about

I think that Target & Kroger may do this as well........

 

16 minutes ago, BrickU said:

Ed-  I'm not sure if you know about this or not but Amazon will donate  0.5% all all sales one accumulates with http://smile.amazon.com/gp/aw/ch/about

I think that Target & Kroger may do this as well........

 

Yes...They are registering right now for Amazon Smile.  It takes several months to be approved.  Target is ending their program.  They used to be part of it.  Thanks.

Still waiting for my badge 

Still waiting for my badge 

I think they update once a day. I will let Jeff know. Thanks.

Just picked up 3 tickets for the DS raffle and donated a little as well! I am so glad to have found this site @Ed Mack and @Jeff Mack. 

1 hour ago, midbenne said:

Just picked up 3 tickets for the DS raffle and donated a little as well! I am so glad to have found this site @Ed Mack and @Jeff Mack. 

I'm glad you found us...

Hey @Ed Mack has that "go to top" always been next to the quote? If I missed that, sorry for my request but if not, sheesh that was a fast and awesome fix. Either way all over here!