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Lego price per part over the years

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Re: Lego price per part over the years

#71

Post by mercutio2 »

robinson-wall wrote: post #22
jacurtis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also always questioned this. I have purchased about 60 sets in the past 4 years. I have a friend who has purchased well over 100 (he runs a Lego YouTube channel - he spends > $6,000 a year on Lego by his estimation). I have never had a missing piece. There have been two times when I thought I was missing a piece and then found it stuck in a bag or hidden under another piece. I've never had to write to Lego to ge…

Perhaps set size is a contributing factor? I've bought two sets over the last few years, and both of them have had a piece missing. One was 1969 pieces (no prizes for guessing which set that is!) and the other 1222 pieces. Both occasions the pieces weren't structurally important, and were small decorative elements.

I have opened and built hundreds of lego sets over the years, and the only missing pieces I’ve ever had were in the Saturn V set. I think they had a QC issue on that set specifically.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#72

Post by pcthrowaway »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #48
jacurtis wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've also always questioned this. I have purchased about 60 sets in the past 4 years. I have a friend who has purchased well over 100 (he runs a Lego YouTube channel - he spends > $6,000 a year on Lego by his estimation). I have never had a missing piece. There have been two times when I thought I was missing a piece and then found it stuck in a bag or hidden under another piece. I've never had to write to Lego to ge…

I bet it's more likely that a given Lego set that is missing pieces was produced, packaged, shipped, and sold, nearby other piece-missing sets. In other words, I would not expect the distribution of Lego sets that are missing pieces to be evenly or randomly distributed.

Yes I was thinking the same thing. Certain factories may have worse quality control, and those sets end up in different regions from sets that come from better production facilities

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#73

Post by prawn »

bombcar wrote: post #61
hermitcrab wrote: post #26

Top tip. Buy used Lego cheap from ebay (or similar) and stick it in the dishwasher in a string bag. Try to avoid Lego from a smoker's house or that has been heavily gnawed. And keep the dishwasher heat low, unless you want Salvador Dali Lego.

Hotter tip - if you live near a Goodwill auction site, you can pickup "in store" and so you can bid for their bulk Lego without shipping.

In case you never read this at the time - he's talked about it on HN a few times:

Sorting 2 Metric Tons of Lego https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#74

Post by pubby »

As a kid I did the math on all the lego sets, and came to the conclusion that the 500 piece bucket was the best bargain, beating out the 1000 piece bucket by a decent amount. Most other sets were an awful value in comparison.

As an adult, I realized buying new was idiotic when I could just buy used. I ended up buying a former lego employee's collection for $60, selling the monorail it contained for $1000, and keeping the massive washing-machine sized rest for myself. Too bad deals like that come once in a lifetime!

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#76

Post by dsr_ »

samstave wrote: post #69
ryukoposting wrote: post #47

I made a script last year that scraped LEGO pricing data from their website. Besides finding out that the Bugatti Bolide Technic set is a pretty good deal as a parts bag, I found that there's only a weak correlation between set size and PPP. The Dots sets throw a wrench in things, of course, and large Technic sets often have expensive electronic and pneumatic parts that must be considered. My conclusion was that PPP…

Epic! thank you! I loved going to Valley Faire Mall in San Jose and scooping parts by the pound. I didnt see any of the lego store by-the-pound model. An interesting method for sus-ing up what parts they had would be looking into the shipments to-from lego entities in NL and USA - sea shipping bills of lading can be found on import yeti (now obviously unless someone has digitized historic bills of lading, etc (and we…

Part existence probability changes every couple of months, probably not enough time for you to be able to make good estimates.

LEGO tends to get hoarded, resold or donated, not thrown away. I believe I have more than 99% of all the LEGO I or my parents ever bought, going back to 1976 or 7.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#77

Post by lupire »

donkeyboy wrote: post #54
elzbardico wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? As long as people don't burn the bricks....

Plastic is made from upstream oil and gas companies. Kind of hard to be net-zero in that sector

Why? It's effectively a recycling progrsm for waste.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#78

Post by lupire »

chomp wrote: post #15
yalok wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

exactly, that's been my concern as well - more and more parts now are very specialized and hard to reuse in other projects. Makes me sad for the kids - this limits creativity...

There’s actually less specialized parts these days, that’s what put Lego in trouble in the 90s, I think what GP commenter was referring to is a ton of the studs and cylinders and 1x1 diagonal parts that Lego includes, that are “fluff”. These parts are extremely cheap to produce, so you may have data that looks like price per part is flat, but in reality that’s because more of your sets are now from cheaper detailing…

It's quite dishonest to advertise "# of pieces". They should advertise "$ of studs".

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#79

Post by samstave »

bleepblop wrote: post #33
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many stickers are in the kit? And honestly it's too damn high. I know I'm going against the grain here, but I love stickers. Many of the sets my kids got were "sticker infested" but as they only re-bricked it, we just did not put the stickers on some of them and got just more fun out of it. > Within the past 10 years I have had at least 7 kits missing pieces. And the frequency keeps growing I never had it. Also…

I am fully aware of the customer service side of lego. That's why I still use their stuff. But I suppose that is where our agreement will lie. Knowing what they are capable of and where they are now is noticeable.

LEGO needs to pull a KIA.

First, they need the LLM instructions AI thingy to look at your pieces and instantly come up with inspiration. Gamify that.

But they need to pull a KIA in that they hired the young designers away from GM and gave them some room.

There needs to be a revolution in LEGO with the following:

A device which is communally owned - at a Library or an Elementary School.

Throw in plastic bottles and plastic waste.

It molds LEGO bricks.

And you can program different sets.

And kids can create sets and have the device spit out the bricks for that set they designed.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#80

Post by samstave »

dsr_ wrote: post #76
samstave wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Epic! thank you! I loved going to Valley Faire Mall in San Jose and scooping parts by the pound. I didnt see any of the lego store by-the-pound model. An interesting method for sus-ing up what parts they had would be looking into the shipments to-from lego entities in NL and USA - sea shipping bills of lading can be found on import yeti (now obviously unless someone has digitized historic bills of lading, etc (and we…

Part existence probability changes every couple of months, probably not enough time for you to be able to make good estimates. LEGO tends to get hoarded, resold or donated, not thrown away. I believe I have more than 99% of all the LEGO I or my parents ever bought, going back to 1976 or 7.

I have lost all mine sadly.

And I had so much given to me. But my life took me in a path that separated me from all my Lego. :-(

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