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Hello, intro + purchase strategies feedback
Hi all, my main interest is building my own designs. I find LEGOs a great creative toy even for adults and a good pastime. However, it could easily become an expensive pastime. I'm new to the various part sites and decided to try BrickOwl first for purchasing (BrickLink interface is too painful).
I'm primarily like architectural style designs or replicas, tend toward the smaller blocks and smaller color range (white, tan, royal blue, pale blues & greens, grays, and botanical pieces - greens and browns, less blocky). This means I don't often need a lot of odd shapes but I do need a lot of shapes that let me be clever in building (like SNOT pieces, wedges, grills, angles) and sometimes rare pieces.
I have a few questions for feedback. Some of these are probably answered often, I'm not sure:
- Are the stores here basically the same that would be found via BrickLink?
- Is there a way to hide stores that only support PayPal as payment? (I hate PayPal, prefer direct CC)
- I figured out right away that it was hard to keep track of what was being split up between stores for purchasing if I didn't break down my wish lists into categories/themes. I sis notice that this site's back-end keeps track of shopping carts per store but it's hard to easily figure out which stores have which parts available without clicking on every cart (and doubly annoying to not know they are PayPal only without going to their store home or stepping through the purchase steps.
- Since what I'm here mostly for is rarer parts or certain parts I can get more cost effective in bulk, during checkout from wish lists each store only ends up having a small set of my overall needs. This seems like it may get frustrating really quickly and very costly in terms of shipping. Although I don't mind spending money for what I need, it's not an issue for me, it seems silly to have about 1/2 the costs buying parts (which are already more expensive when bought this way) to be shipping.
- Most basic parts for the colors I need can be gotten directly from LEGO and at a reasonable cost - but the delay in shipping (upwards of 3 weeks) is tough. I've not ordered directly from LEGO yet as I'm not sure if my large orders would incur some kind of customs fees. although shipping is free for orders over $35.
- I figured that before taxes & if shipping was a reasonable portion of my parts purchases - comparing to if I purchased from one big store instead of many, my per part costs on purchase so far has averaged $0.38/piece for the rare stuff. Not sure if that is good or bad, when buying sets is more like 0.10 to 0.12 per pieces - but sets contain a lot of pieces I don't care about.
- I've purchased 2 of the Architecture Studio sets and a few architecture building sets - those appeal to me and the parts are most cost-effective that way but there's many parts that don't come with those sets (or low count in those sets) that I find very useful - various kind of SNOT pieces, roof variations, curved & bow pieces, etc. Should I just mostly buy lots of architecture sets & supplement here with various needed pieces & added colors or can a buying strategy work to buy architecture-oriented pieces at better prices here?
My collection of pieces is currently around 12,000 or 14,000. I don't mind spending about $100/week over a few weeks or months to build up a collection of about 30,000 or so.
Thanks.
I'm primarily like architectural style designs or replicas, tend toward the smaller blocks and smaller color range (white, tan, royal blue, pale blues & greens, grays, and botanical pieces - greens and browns, less blocky). This means I don't often need a lot of odd shapes but I do need a lot of shapes that let me be clever in building (like SNOT pieces, wedges, grills, angles) and sometimes rare pieces.
I have a few questions for feedback. Some of these are probably answered often, I'm not sure:
- Are the stores here basically the same that would be found via BrickLink?
- Is there a way to hide stores that only support PayPal as payment? (I hate PayPal, prefer direct CC)
- I figured out right away that it was hard to keep track of what was being split up between stores for purchasing if I didn't break down my wish lists into categories/themes. I sis notice that this site's back-end keeps track of shopping carts per store but it's hard to easily figure out which stores have which parts available without clicking on every cart (and doubly annoying to not know they are PayPal only without going to their store home or stepping through the purchase steps.
- Since what I'm here mostly for is rarer parts or certain parts I can get more cost effective in bulk, during checkout from wish lists each store only ends up having a small set of my overall needs. This seems like it may get frustrating really quickly and very costly in terms of shipping. Although I don't mind spending money for what I need, it's not an issue for me, it seems silly to have about 1/2 the costs buying parts (which are already more expensive when bought this way) to be shipping.
- Most basic parts for the colors I need can be gotten directly from LEGO and at a reasonable cost - but the delay in shipping (upwards of 3 weeks) is tough. I've not ordered directly from LEGO yet as I'm not sure if my large orders would incur some kind of customs fees. although shipping is free for orders over $35.
- I figured that before taxes & if shipping was a reasonable portion of my parts purchases - comparing to if I purchased from one big store instead of many, my per part costs on purchase so far has averaged $0.38/piece for the rare stuff. Not sure if that is good or bad, when buying sets is more like 0.10 to 0.12 per pieces - but sets contain a lot of pieces I don't care about.
- I've purchased 2 of the Architecture Studio sets and a few architecture building sets - those appeal to me and the parts are most cost-effective that way but there's many parts that don't come with those sets (or low count in those sets) that I find very useful - various kind of SNOT pieces, roof variations, curved & bow pieces, etc. Should I just mostly buy lots of architecture sets & supplement here with various needed pieces & added colors or can a buying strategy work to buy architecture-oriented pieces at better prices here?
My collection of pieces is currently around 12,000 or 14,000. I don't mind spending about $100/week over a few weeks or months to build up a collection of about 30,000 or so.
Thanks.
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Comments
But it's still worth checking... Looking at Architecture Studio (set 21050), it seems getting all the parts should cost around $140 (plus shipping) while the whole set sells for $160 (plus taxes, but free shipping). Eh, close enough.
Happy building!
"Not that I am aware of... but note that you can pay by credit card from the Paypal payment page, without creating a Paypal account if you don't want to. And I believe many sellers only accept Paypal (myself included, oops)."
Actually, the links here lead to payment via PayPal login - it's not a link which allows payment without going through a PayPal account/login.
"Lego's PAB can be a good option for some parts. I'm sure you already noticed that the selection is limited and their prices are generally higher."
Yes, they only have about 1,400 distinct parts to choose from through their site and the pick-a-brick at LEGO stores tend to be mostly non-interesting pieces. I do like like all the white and sand green 1x2 plates I can gather from there & a lot of green plates & large green bricks but the variety is small.
It looks like I will be doing a combination of buys from LEGO directly, some in-store pick-a-brick (where I've optimized my bin-stuffing strategies), sets that have a decent ratio of architecture-style bricks, yard sales or "LEGOs by the pound" classifieds and rare pieces here - and it looks like some pieces I can get in bulk here cheaper than all other options. For example if I'm looking for a common brick that I need by the hundreds that isn't sold directly by LEGO.