Brickonomics - Part buying optimization tool

Markuzzz

Hello all,

I created a tool to find the cheapest way to buy the parts in a wishlist via Brick Owl stores: brickonomics.net/multibuy
You can import a Brick Owl or Rebrickable wishlist and the tool will perform the rest of the magic:
- Get all the stores selling the pieces in your wishlist
- Try hundreds of thousands of combinations
- Optimize on item price + estimated shipping price
- Respect the minimum buy and minimum lot average contraints posed by stores
- Present the solution with add to cart buttons that fill up your Brick Owl carts

There is also a secondary tool to find sets with a good part-out ratio: brickonomics.net/partout-ratio
It uses sale history data from BrickLink to get the price of both sets and parts.

I would love to hear your feedback on both tools. Let me know if you have suggestions for improvement.

HeartlandBrix

I've used the multibuy feature before for some minifigures, and bookmarked it for future use. One thing that would be nice with this tool would be to include the number of pieces for each store. The dollar option you have now is especially useful if you're working within a budget. Quickly seeing [Store A] has 50 parts for $35 vs. [Store B] has 120 parts for $35 helps to maximize the parts I could get within that budget. Something simple like "$35.00/50" or "120/$35.00" would be enough, in my opinion.

Another thing that would be nice is if it would save the country setting between site visits.

Markuzzz

It sounds like you expect the tool to give partial solutions, that may overlap. Like: you can buy 75% of the parts at store A for $50 and 80% of the parts at store B for 60$. Similar to the tool offered by Rebrickable.

The tool actually works differently. It will find the cheapest combination of stores to get all the parts in the wishlist (if all the parts are available). If stores A and B are both selected and both have a certain part it will choose the cheapest store. It is similar to the Brick Owl magic tool and the BrickLink "buy all" tool.

Nevertheless I think it is a good idea to show how many parts are selected for a store.
Not saving the country between visits is a bug, it should do that. But apparently the feature that guesses the country based on IP address overwrites it at the beginning of each visit.

Markuzzz

@HeartlandBrix , I fixed the bug where the country setting is messed up at each visit. It should now remember the setting. I also implemented your suggestion to show how many parts are selected for a store. Thanks for helping to improve the site!

HeartlandBrix

Awesome, thank you!