As someone that's a little more interested in building than investing, I decided to take the Craigslist plunge a couple weeks back and finally saw a listing I was compelled to buy, a kid selling a 25 pound tub of assorted pieces for 100 bucks. The transaction was a good experience (rare for CL), apparently there was another buyer but they backed out. The seller was a kid who had been collecting probably since the early 2000's judging by the pieces, looked to be about 14 or so, and was trying to get money to get himself a Nintendo 3DS, so it felt like I was helping him out. As far as the pieces themselves, it wasn't too bad. They were clean for the most part, there was only a few random mega bloks mixed in, and there was a good amount of minifigures. For whatever reason though, he had taken apart nearly every minifigure, I had to fish out tons of hands, arms, and heads, and try to make sense of it all. It took 4 hours but I probably made about 30-40 minifigures out of all the loose pieces. Problem is I don't know if I put them back together correctly. I think in many cases I was "Frankensteining" it. The other bad thing is that for whatever reason, he decided to "color" a bunch of the clone minifigures from star wars with black ink/marker. But alas, kids will be kids. The 25 pound thing was no joke. I felt like it actually weighed more than that. There's a ton of stuff here, but it's going to be pretty difficult to figure out what sets alot of this is from. I can tell there's some early Star Wars pieces, some Indiana Jones, bionicle, and technic. It's kind of overwhelming, though. I found a number of pieces that look like they may be a part of the "OG" millenium falcon from the early Star Wars. There's a little from that Quest of the Pharoahs theme here as well, as I've been able to identify one of those sets. There's a general grievous minifig but it's in that older style as well, so maybe that will help me figure out what set is loose in here by what he came with. There's some pirate stuff. This could take forever, lol. Would you guys mind if I posted some pics of the more unique pieces and some of you could possibly help me ID the sets they are from? I'm sure that would help out alot.

Feel free to post some pictures! I have done this a couple times while sorting through random lots and the members here are very knowledgeable about many of the Lego sets. I will try to help you out as much as possible. I know many other members will too. I am sure we all know very well the process of sorting through lots trying to make sense of things!

no instruction manuels included? post all the pics you want. we love pics!

Yes, using the unique pieces as your guide will help greatly in figuring out what sets you may have. Bricklink is great for this as well. If you know what the pieces are called, you can find that particular piece and color and it will give you the sets that it was in. I think Rebrickable does this as well, but I have never used it myself. Feel free to post pictures as I'm sure many of us can help you out figuring your sets out. It's too bad about the minifigures. I have found that a Magic Eraser will get some of that stuff off, but on Clones and other white figures, it will never be perfect, and the eraser can take off some of the printing.

What I sometimes do if it is a fairly unusual piece, is see if there is a part no. anywhere on the brick/plate and then type it into the parts inventory reference catalogue on Bricklink site. Shows you which sets the piece is in, and fingers crossed it comes up with a small list.

Think me and Huskers must have been typing at the same time lol

Good advice, I'll look for the numbers and try that out. In the meantime I'll see if I can snap some photos. Thanks.

It sucks brick about the clones, I hate it when kids do that!

My five year old likes to take apart the mini figures... I have seen him remove hands, but that is rarer. At his age, I think it's the thrill of creating something quickly. He likes to build small things out of Lego (anywhere from 10-20 pieces) as his attention span isn't quite there yet. Though I saw him assemble a small fire truck cover to cover with just a bit of help. It drives me nuts to see Dark Vader's head on Yoda's body though! Lucky for me, he knows which ones he is allowed to mangle and which are off limits.

Well I took the advice you guys have given me and have identified a few sets so far. This kid had quite a few sets from the Power Miners theme. I constructed a 98% complete (a couple minor parts missing) Thunder Driller #8960, and from what I can tell so far, I have the majority of the pieces needed to construct #8958 Granite Grinder and #8956 Stone Chopper. I've also identified alot of pieces to set #7307 from Pharoah's Quest and set #8056 and 8057 from Atlantis. The Star Wars pieces are going to be tougher. There's a ton of white pieces but it seems like there aren't as many unique pieces there so the sets may be more incomplete. Also, the other sets seem to have most of the minifigures there with them, but I think this little dude cherrypicked the good star wars figs out of the bin when he sold it to me, because there are a bunch of clones but not many named characters.