LEGO holiday gift guide - 2014 edition

It's that time of year again, where I share some of my picks for the best of what LEGO has to offer this holiday season. It's been a big year for LEGO collectors. I am hard pressed to recall a time when there were this many different sets and themes available on the market. In fact, there are so many products to choose from that my nearest LEGO Store can't even stock them all!

As with the past two years, I'm going to break this down into price ranges. This is mainly to help those who wander onto the blog figure out what's the best they can get for the money they plan to spend. Also, this is by no means a comprehensive list of what's out there right now. These are just some of my picks based on sets I've built, seen built, or read reviews on. They are what I would recommend to friends or family who ask "what LEGO set would you buy for so-and-so?"

The LEGO Movie sets now available!

Builders around the world are getting their hands on the new movie tie-in sets that go with the upcoming "The LEGO Movie" release. The sets are obviously heavily inspired by the upcoming feature film and I wanted to take a few minutes to talk about them. If you have not seen the trailer yet, I highly recommend taking a peek.
It looks like an action packed film and I hope to go see it when it hits theaters later this year. Of course, what good is a movie without toys to go with it? Thankfully, it looks like LEGO went all out with the tie-in sets, all of which appear to be (obviously) based on scenes and vehicles from the movie.

Modular collection complete!

When I first came out of my dark ages, the modulars were not at the top of my list of sets to collect. The buildings were impressive and boast a great price per piece ratio, but I felt like I had missed several key sets already and I was not in the mood to track down the retired releases. It's amazing the impact a couple of sales can have on your way of thinking though, since after seeing discounts on the Fire Brigade and the Grand Emporium I quickly changed my mind and jumped into the fray. I could call that a mistake, but I prefer to think of it as one my better decisions as an AFOL.

I finished building the Town Hall in late November, capping off a process that started last spring to acquire the full line of modular buildings. Patience and obsessive deal hunting, along with a lot of luck, helped reach this goal. I wanted to take a few minutes to go over some of my favorite aspects of this great line from LEGO.

LEGO Hobbit sets now available

The second wave of Lord of the Rings LEGO sets is starting to show up in stores. They went on sale through LEGO.com earlier this week and now they are also up on Amazon.com. There are reports of them showing up in major retailers as well. I want to take a few minutes to go over the new additions to the line and offer some of my thoughts on them.

An Unexpected Gathering - I'm going to start off with the set that's probably going to be the best seller of this wave and the one that's probably the most anticipated. For $70 you get a 652 piece set that includes six minifigures. Not an amazing deal, but decent enough for a licensed set. It's of course based on Bag End and it does a fairly good job at capturing what a hobbit hole might look like in brick form. There are some impressive MOCs out there already, but I find it hard to imagine LEGO doing a better job than this with a retail-friendly release. It will probably be the first set from this wave that I pick up. I might even be tempted to not wait for a sale.

LEGO holiday gift giving guide for 2012

Christmas is one of my favorite holidays of the year. I love the music, the decorations, and the lights. I also love that everyone at least tries to be a little bit nicer. Of course, I also love the gifts. Especially being on the giving end over the past few years as our nieces and nephews grow, along with our own little one.

My interest in LEGO has spread through our extended family. The kids are discovering the hobby and even some of the adults have shown a desire to do a little building. As a result, I already have several sets to wrap this year and I'm sure they will be opened to great excitement in the coming weeks.

I thought it would be fun to sit down and go over some of what I see as the best gift-giving options for the little (or big) LEGO fan on your list. Several of these sets I have built and even reviewed here, while others are based on my impressions from looking over other reviews and the parts lists. I'm a little late for Black Friday, but there's still plenty of shopping days left before the holidays.

Restraining myself this season

The holiday shopping season is in full swing. Much like many other LEGO fans, I am on the hunt for deals and also trying to keep my spending under control. It was not as hard as I expected. There honestly have not been that many good sales out there the past couple of days and I managed to get out of the initial "Black Friday" period picking up only two sets.

Probably the best deal out of Friday was at Barnes and Noble. In-store they had a BOGO 50% deal going for "educational toys," which included LEGO. In addition, there was also a 30% off one item coupon that you could print out and stack with the in-store discount. I ended up picking up a copy of the City Garbage Truck and the Droid Escape for about $26. The store did not have much else that I have been looking for and I'm really trying to control myself this season.

LEGO Black Friday roundup

The phenomenon known as "Black Friday" in the US has always been a favorite time of year for me. It typically marks some of the deepest discounts on items I love to pick up, such as movies and video games. This is my first BF out of my dark ages and I'm hopeful for some of the deals that will be available.

I hate crowds and do most of my shopping online. I've been scouring the internet for the last few days and here are some of the deals that have caught my eye. Most of them are in stores, but I have a feeling at least a few retailers will replicate them online as well. This overview is not all inclusive as I'm mainly only interested in stores that have physical locations near me.

The eternal struggle with space - Part 2

In my original post on this topic, I was pondering different ways that I could create some additional display space in my media room (or Man Cave, as the wife calls it). It's been several weeks and I've managed to get some work done to help improve my situation, so I thought I would give you a little glimpse of how things are moving along.

As planned, I condensed our CD and DVD collection a little. I either boxed up stuff I want to keep or banished unwanted media to the cabinet where I store the books/CDs/DVDs I sell on half.com. Being a life long collector has taught me that I sometimes just need to let go of items. I have adjusted to this reality because when I sell an item it usually means I'm going to buy something else.

This shuffle of items helped free up enough space to get a few 18 inch shelves along one wall. As you can see, this space is largely populated with some of the newer sets I have picked up in the last few months. The shelves only have an eight inch depth, so nothing really big can go here. Still, I think it does a fairly good job of affording me some additional room for a regularly rotating cast of the sets that do not take up very much space.

A new experiment in selling

Selling stuff online has kind of been a hobby of mine for awhile. It helps that you can actually make some money while getting rid of some unwanted items around the house. For the longest time, my main focus was unloading Magic the Gathering cards I no longer needed in my collection. Most of those profits have of course gone to continuing my various hobbies, but they have helped to pay for other things our family needs.

For many years, ebay has been my primary outlet for sales. It's an easy interface to use and you can reach a very wide audience. The fees are a bit of a pain, but the potential customers you can reach is typically worth paying that little bit extra.

The eternal struggle with space - Part 1

Today I want to talk about something that I'm sure many LEGO fans struggle with: space for storing and displaying what you build. It's a topic I see come up on various message boards and it's one I'm already struggling with, even though I'm just about 10 months back in to the hobby of collecting and building sets.

I admit I have picked up quite a bit since coming out of my dark ages. It's something I'm sure most people have experienced after missing so many years of great sets. It's also something I need to seriously start thinking about more, as I have run out of space to display what I have built so far.

Sometimes you just get lucky

After months of watching craigslist like a hawk, and quite a few near misses on some good deals, I finally scored one of those finds that just makes you happy. I was a little shocked the other morning while doing my almost daily check to see a posting that had both Market Street and Cafe Corner listed, with instructions, for well under market price. Even better, when I emailed the seller, both were still available.

I opted to just pursue the Market Street since it was cheaper and I don't already have a copy. Granted, a CC without substitutions and instructions would be nice, but he still wanted around $500 for that set and I can't justify the expense for something I already have a version of that I'm quite happy with. Selling off my sourced copy might be hard because most of the rarest parts are substituted. The MS was not cheap either, but it was far less expensive than it would cost on ebay or Bricklink.