As I continue to broaden my horizons, here's a set from yet another theme I've never touched before!
Thursday, February 5, 2015
LEGO Alpha Team Cruiser from 2001! set 6772
As I continue to broaden my horizons, here's a set from yet another theme I've never touched before!
LEGO Exo-Force Sentry from 2006! set 7711
I have a bunch of the bad-guy figures from this line, but this is the first full Exo-Force set I've had in my hands in complete form!
LEGO Technic mini Cherry Picker review! set 72031
The first of two official builds for this very tiny 2015 Technic set.
LEGO Classic Space rare "Super" Model from 1983! set 1593
This is a somewhat funky set to look at, but far stranger still is how it was sold & marketed. Worth Googling for a thing to make you go "huh."
LEGO Classic Space Spy-Bot from 1987! set 1498
"I am a robot" - Spy-Bot circa 1987. Pretty big to be a spy. Was this the bipedal equivalent of a Probe Droid from Star Wars?
Tuesday, February 3, 2015
LEGO vintage 4.5V Steam Cargo Train set from 1985! set 7722
Yes, this is that set. With the help of parts from my spares inventory (which thankfully included a very incomplete version of this very set) plus a few things robbed from MOCs, I got the thing mostly accurate & complete. The forklift seat is wrong, the wire is too long, and the battery box is missing two small buffers (the latter not mentioned in the video). Otherwise, I think it's right. Best of all, it runs!
LEGO Classic Town RV with Speedboat from 1986! set 6698
The piece count on this one is crazy for the age & size of the set! I definitely like what they put together with those little parts though.
LEGO Friends Bunny & Babies review! set 41087
Sometimes I have the instinct to view the small Friends animal sets as being just cheap filler material, but they nearly always end up surprising me with something better than expected. Darnit!
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Used LEGO sellers: An Important Wake-Up call!
Last week I received a sizable shipment of mostly old sets from Bricklink sellers and filmed the live openings of four packages:
Notice the big box had questionable packaging, and I noticed a few small pieces were rattling around in the bottom of the box. What I didn't realize until a few minutes after this video was that an entire side of the bottom of that box was completely open, allowing parts to freely spill out wherever the package happened to be at a given moment. Expecting the worst, I tried assembling the set. I was not able to start step 1 of the instructions -- six out of the first seven parts were missing.
Over the next couple of days I treated a bunch of sets from an earlier large haul from a different seller and began assembling them. Here the packaging was fine, yet the order was not. Set after set had part substitutions & outright absences. I've encountered issues like these in the past, and I usually am able to fill voids with spare parts on hand, but the problem has gotten progressively worse, and worse, and worse. It's widespread. I've had missing, blatantly wrong, or misrepresented parts from probably 1 out of every 3 Bricklink & eBay sellers from whom I've purchased used sets. I'm talking experienced sellers who've been doing it for years and have thousands of positive feedback ratings. Sellers from the US, Canada, Germany, The Netherlands, the UK, and Hong Kong. Sellers who have no excuse to include one extra 1x2 brick, but miss a seat, two plates, and an antenna, and substitute trans-neon greenish-yellow for trans-yellow and trans-red for trans-blue. Sellers who know better than to throw parts in a sandwich bag and then into an oversized box with just a couple used produce bags as "padding." Sellers who should always tape not only the top, but the bottom of a box filled with $200 worth of vintage collectibles.
An occasional mix-up is only human. This is not an occasional thing, at least not any more. This is rampant. I've held my tongue probably longer than I should have, but now it's time to get the discussion going out in the open. If you know any Bricklink/eBay used LEGO sellers, please share this with them. If you have experienced wrong or missing parts in an order, please talk to your sellers and make sure they know they messed up, and it's not okay.
LEGO Classic Town Fire Chief's Truck from 1988! set 6643
With the first LEGO release season of 2015 winding down, prepare for more classic reviews showing up from me!
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