Story of how you came to be here

[footsteps]

Hoo boy! Okay, here goes.

I had Lego as a child, but it was the basic stuff and I don't have too much of a memory of it.

Then when I was 25 I suddenly got a hankering for a Lego castle, which my parents duly got for me for Christmas: King's Castle.

I loved it, but for some reason I didn't follow up with more purchases of my own. I would look at the sets available and think: "That would be cool!" But I wouldn't actually buy. And it never occured to me that sets would be discontinued . So I missed out on most of the classics. My enduring regret is that I didn't purchase Forestmen's River Crossing,
BFF, and Knight's Stronghold when they first came out.

A few years later in 1991 I got engaged. I was also living with a family whose kids had a boat-load (and I mean a boat-load) of Lego. My passion for building was kick-started again. I made a Sopwith Camel sized bi-plane. My fiancee gave me an engagement gift: Forestmen's Crossing. And on my wedding day my groomsmen gave me Black Knight's Castle. I was on my way!

I continued to pick up a set here, a set there, but it wasn't until 1997 that I became aware of a web pressence for things Lego. The first site I became aware of was Jeff Crites' page, now archived here. WARNING TO YOUNGSTERS: This is a pre-html ASCII formatted page! Before viewing, you may want to have a parent nearby to offer grief counselling. As best I can figure, Jeff had left the hobby by the time I found this page, but if Google is of any use I think this is him today. Note: I'm making no political statement here, just sharing information. I don't know if he won.

Back to Lego. It was from Jeff's page that I learned of RTL (rec.toys.lego), a message board for Lego enthusiasts. I made my first trade there, sending a partial Space set to a fellow in CA for castle stuff. In retrospect I think I came out with the short end of the stick on that one, but I was a novice and I was pleased with what I got. On RTL I learned of some fellow named Todd Lehman who was running online Lego auctions. I took part in Auczilla VIII and IX, and some others. In those days that was about all there seemed to be.

Then this fellow Todd announced that he had created a new portal called LUGNet. For a while I 'double-dipped', lurking on LUGNet and posting on RTL. But eventually I went LUGNet-only. For the most part I hung out in .Castle, .BST, and .Auction. In the last one I learned of eBay, and I started using that to augment my collection. House rule where I live: outside of gifts, my Lego purchases are limited to what I can raise by selling Lego and other 'past-life' paraphenalia that I know longer need.

On .BST I learned of a new site for buying/selling bricks: BrickBay. I watched it grow (I'm not an 'early adapter'), and once prices came down I started buying. Today (after legal action threatened by eBay) you know this site as BrickLink.

I watched from the side-lines on LUGNet as a variety of attempts were made to make a separate on-line community for Lego Castle, including CastleWorld and Isle of Mist. When the announcement was made about the launch of Classic-Castle, I must admit that my first reaction was along the lines of "oh crud, now the community is going to be divided". I watched quietly as the new site developed (remember, I'm not an early adapter), and when I realized this was quite a viable endeavour, I took the plunge and signed up.

Again, I double-dipped for quite a while with LUGNet, but now I seldom go there, except for set references and tracking down old sites (for ObG).

And so here I am, content in my little corner of the web, chatting with all of you, building when I can, and most of all....

having fun.

Thanks for reading this far. I guess it's hard to stop once I get going!

Alan

[Longbowmen]

Well, i got here by Vladek's fault..... I bought a Vladek attack kit and wanted to know more about KK2. So i went to google and typed "Vladek". Well, that didn't gave me much sites so I typed "Lego Castle" and that's how i came here... Since you guys where so interesting I joined in... Annnnnndddddd.....

I'M VERRY HAPPY ABOUT IT!!!

It's still is Vladeks fault..

[Dragonlord Esq.]

When I was a kid (born in 1984) I had about 5 other kids in my neighborhood that all played Lego Castle. I had the 2nd biggest army, but by far the most organized. I was the guy that freaked out because the other kids put Crusader shields on Black Falcons and other such atrocities. When I left town at age 12 I had about 50 guys, but no castle. I played with a few other friends until about the time Fright Knights came out and then my Legos sat in a bin. Last year I moved out of my parent's place and I found out my roommate was obsessed with Lego Castle when he was a kid and still had his old army, too. So we set them up in the livingroom and spend all our extra money on all the sets we wanted when we were kids but never got. So naturally I needed instructions for some of the sets I bought on e-bay, so I found Brickshelf, then Lugnut, then Bricklink, and then here. Finally bought the Black Knight's Castle last night, too!

[TheOrk]

Gather round boys an girls I have a olde tale to telle one so olde you can'te even imagine

My brother showed me brickshelf. From there I went to Brickfrenzy.com. From here on I had an onion tied to my belt, cause that was the style of the time. It wasn't nice and normal coloured because of the colour change. If we did we had to pay with alot of constructiontoy peices. Which we called bricks as was the style at the time. Gimmie ten bricks for a block you'd say. Then I found Castle World, looked at a thing called mountian fortress which was linked to some page called Ikros. This story was different it published on the web, not paper which was the style of the time. Anythere was a link to here, as was the style of now.

[Rubberchickenknight]

i've been a lego fan since i was a baby.about a year and a half ago, i decided to look at lego on the internet. first i started a t bricktales, then brikwars and brickshelf, until i finally got here

[TwoTonic Knight]

Lego --> Needed info on old sets --> rtl (rec.toys.lego, pre-Lugnet) --> Lugnet --> Lugnet.Castle (see Castle message number 15) --> Classic-Castle

[Bruce N H]

Ancient history - I first remember playing with LEGO at a neighbor's house when I was very young in the early 70's. As near as I can tell, my first sets were 110, Universal Building Set and 435, Tipper Truck. These would have been about when I was 8. Then a year later I was introduced to the brand new minifigs in 462, Rocket Launcher. From that it was all Classic Space for the next few years, until Scouts, band, and other activities put me into my dark ages.

Skip forward twenty years. Mid 90's I discovered the internet and got heavily into Usenet newsgroups. That led to rec.toys.lego, and probably from there I found the Lugnet Cool LEGO Site of the Week, or maybe I found CLSOTW independantly. I was blown away by all of the cool things that adults did with my childhood toy. I remember a site with working amusement park rides especially. I didn't get involved in Lugnet forums, though, because I was already heavily involved in various on-line forums on Tolkien, Lewis, Scouting, Babylon 5, etc. Then in 1998, Shell gas stations started offering these promo sets for a buck fifty with a tank of gas. I figured "what the heck" and picked up 2544, Technic Microbike and played with it at my desk at work for a week. I quickly bought the other promo sets, which included four castle sets. I thought it was so cool that minifigs now had facial hair. Not the smileys of my youth any more. Sometime over the next year I got my old bricks from my parents' basement. Miraculously they were still in a box and hadn't been grabbed by one of my sisters, who both had kids by that point. So I had a bunch of basic blocks and classic space sets, until in January of 01 it looks like I found E-bay, and soon I started buying lots of bulk LEGO, focusing on lots that included castle figs (I was really taken by the forestmen and wolfpack figs and wanted to get a bunch). I was building MOCs and my roommate suggested I make a website. That went live in October of 01. I finally joined Lugnet and FBTB, which I had started lurking around, primarily so I could promote my website and get feedback. I quickly became an obsessive poster on those sites, mostly staying in lugnet.castle and fbtb.LEGO and then in September 0f 03 CC.com was announced. It took me a whole day to register here (oh how I regret those wasted 24 hours ) and the rest, as they say, is history.

Oh, and I had an onion on my belt . . .

Bruce

[footsteps]

I remember a site with working amusement park rides especially.

Bruce, you may have ruined my whole weekend!! You've reminded me of an awesome site I came across many many years ago of a complete, minifig scale, traveling amusement park. And I mean complete. The fellow even had the tractor-trailer units that the rides were loaded on to for their trip to the next site. Does this sound like the site you remember? I've spent all morning trying to track it down and I've utterly failed. Ugh.

Alan

[JoshWedin]

I remember a site with working amusement park rides especially.

Bruce, you may have ruined my whole weekend!! You've reminded me of an awesome site I came across many many years ago of a complete, minifig scale, traveling amusement park. And I mean complete. The fellow even had the tractor-trailer units that the rides were loaded on to for their trip to the next site. Does this sound like the site you remember? I've spent all morning trying to track it down and I've utterly failed. Ugh.

Alan

Hey Alan,

Was this it? -> http://members.tripod.com/~legorides/

It was cool site of the week a long time ago (July 2001).

Josh

[castlebrickman]

i got here off of lugnet kinda.
i saw lugnet just got done with the classic space so i was looking around lugnet but i did not find any castle forums so i went to google and typed lego forum castle and thats how i got here.

[footsteps]

Hey Alan,
Was this it? -> http://members.tripod.com/~legorides/
Josh

Bingo!
That's it. Thanks Josh. You've redeemed my weekend. Now bookmarked!

Alan

[JoshWedin]

Hey Alan,
Was this it? -> http://members.tripod.com/~legorides/
Josh

Bingo!
That's it. Thanks Josh. You've redeemed my weekend. Now bookmarked!

Alan

Glad to be of service!

Take care,
Josh

[fcarcanague]

Wonderful MOCs, too bad it's hosted on Tripod. The pop-ups from there are terrible. More on topic... I found cc.com from Lugnet like most, signed up within the 1st month of the site being live (I'm #50something). The layout here is much better than Lugnet, easier to navigate and has more "Castle" specific than any other site I've found on the web.

Fred

[Umgarla]

Well... how did I end up here? Hmm, I think it was something like a year ago I found my old lego packed away. I began doing some random google searching on lego castle (I've always been a castle fan) and suddenly Jojo's Falckenstein popped up through some links. I'd been away from my lego for 7-8 years and I thought nobody built in lego!?! I was wrong...
So after browsing through several lego fan sites I stumbled upon this castle community!
At first I just looked at mocs and stuff. Then I decided to join... and no, I still don't regret it!

[Azaghal]

Like a few others, it seems, I came across this site after finding Bruce's LOTR project. Actually, it was around the time of CCC1, as he linked here from the entries page on his site.