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Lego price per part over the years

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Re: Lego price per part over the years

#91

Post by CrazyStat »

samstave wrote: post #79
bleepblop wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

Strongly disagree on your mold idea. LEGO’s stringent quality control is one of the things that makes it great. My childhood legos are all at my parents house, and my kids love to play with them when we visit. They still work perfectly 30 years later.

That level of quality is impossible with your local library mold idea. It would inevitably churn out low quality bricks due to (1) bad inputs and (2) molds not being replaced regularly for wear and tear, which would be accelerated due to (1).

You can’t just throw whatever plastic trash you have into a machine and expect it to produce good or even useable bricks.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#92

Post by TylerE »

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.

One thing they do on the big sets is give you extras of the small stuff. Like if you need 10 of a 1x1 tile of a certain color, maybe they give you 11, or even 12.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#93

Post by TylerE »

sdenton4 wrote: post #90
samstave wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pl…

In grad school I knew a guy who was reeeeally into the idea of building benches out of reused plastic and cob. The basic design was plastic bottles stuffed with plastic bags acting as bricks, which are then cemented together with cob. Cleaning the bottles and bags was incredibly difficult, even at the scale needed for a single bench. Just a massive amount of effort... The difficulty was that any residual bacteria wou…

LEGO is mostly ABS so its mechanical properties are a LOT better than the cheap stuff used for bottles.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#94

Post by doubleg72 »

bleepblop wrote: post #9
bombcar wrote: post #4

> Many people quote that a set should be priced at around $0.10 per part to be worthwhile. Is this the average? This has been the average, and it's so "perfect" that it has to be that Lego has been aiming for it. They've accomplished this by having more and more detail (read: smaller pieces) in newer sets. They appear to have been forced (or trying) to jump to $0.20 per piece in some sets (e.g., https://www.lego.com/…

I have a new metric when it comes to lego kits these days. How many stickers are in the kit? And honestly it's too damn high. I have been pretty vocal to lego about this in the past and current times. If they can mass produce an uncountable amount of minifigs with detailed paint schemes; they can do the same for bricks in the set. I have a hard time believing it's nothing more than a cost cutting measure. And to add…

Every set I have bought for my kids comes with extra pieces. And we have bought enough over 100 sets over the past 5 or so years.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#95

Post by bleepblop »

mc32 wrote: post #50
bleepblop wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a new metric when it comes to lego kits these days. How many stickers are in the kit? And honestly it's too damn high. I have been pretty vocal to lego about this in the past and current times. If they can mass produce an uncountable amount of minifigs with detailed paint schemes; they can do the same for bricks in the set. I have a hard time believing it's nothing more than a cost cutting measure. And to add…

In my experience they tend to add extras for the smallest pieces and have never missed a piece.

I envy that you have never experienced missing "key" pieces.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#96

Post by londons_explore »

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.

> LEGO tends to get hoarded, resold or donated, not thrown away.

I doubt this. Outside Lego enthusiasts, most people see it as a children's toy which is probably disgustingly covered in saliva and in no fit state for anyone else to touch. It's one of the first things to go into the trash when more space is needed in the attic.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#98

Post by JKCalhoun »

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.

The Persistence of Playtime

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#99

Post by makeitdouble »

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.

Another tip: the quality difference between a Lego brand piece and its doppleganger from an AliExpress shop exists, but is usually negligible.

I never saw a piece that doesn't fit, and the difference was mostly color and durability, where the no-brand technic bricks would fail earlier than the Lego ones when (ab)used for mechanically straining purposes, like a coat hangers, cup holder etc.

The more interesting part: this opens up access to more original and specialized parts that Lego doesn't want or cares about, like a go pro mount for instance.

Re: Lego price per part over the years

#100

Post by dtgriscom »

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.

I'd love Salvador Dali Lego, as long as the pieces still clicked together.
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