What 36,000 Pieces Looks Like

jens · Post by **jens** » Sun Sep 10, 2006 10:07 pm

It's a nice collection. This are 36.000 bricks? I don't know how many bricks I own. Bevor moving into our new house I've weigth my collection. It's about 200 KG (400 lbs). But its not really sorted.
I don't want to have much diffrent bins and boxes, so I build my own from wooden plates. So it is possible to add new boxes while the collection is growing... And I have to add more boxes. The half of my collection is sortetd by color and shape, the other is waiting for more wooden boxes. I hope I can use the winter-evenings to build some. But count my bricks? In my dreams I will sometimes have a computersystem which administrate the bricks. Or I use peeron... but its a very hard work to add all the bricks to a list.

Anyway, here is a little shot of my Lego-cellar:

The wooden boxes can you see in the left of the picture, in the right I sort the bricks by color in Ziplocks. The rest is chaos.

regards,
jens

The Blue Knight · Post by **The Blue Knight** » Thu Sep 14, 2006 9:26 pm

Sometimes I'll see an MOC that says something like "9,123 pieces were used to create this." Or Dr. Carney will say "I use 234,354,687 old light gray 1x2's on the garderobe," and I think to myself: "Self, who the heck counts the bricks!!??" And yet, when I show my stuff the second question (the first is "how long did it take?") is "how many bricks did you use?"

I haven't the foggiest notion how many bricks I have, nor the inclination to count them! That would be a punishment for some terrorist, or theif, or person that leaves their turn signal on--real threats to society.

That said, your picture gives me a ballpark. I would hazard about 90-100,000 all told. When I moved in my house 4 years ago we weighed it and 648 pounds. That included some wood I use (1/8 inch plywood as a build-base as I am still a floor builder), and all the boxes, bins and whatnot that the bricks are stored in

J1A3L5 · Post by **J1A3L5** » Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:23 pm

The Blue Knight wrote:Sometimes I'll see an MOC that says something like "9,123 pieces were used to create this." Or Dr. Carney will say "I use 234,354,687 old light gray 1x2's on the garderobe," and I think to myself: "Self, who the heck counts the bricks!!??" And yet, when I show my stuff the second question (the first is "how long did it take?") is "how many bricks did you use?"

I find that when I'm building I often end up needing extras of parts, and use that to gauge how many pieces I've used. For example, I know I've bought somewhere in the area of 1750 1x1 grey round bricks for a current model, and there are certain patterns within the model. Judging from that number, I can say that I know a specific portion contains about 7000 pieces, plus landscaping involving another 2000 pieces. Another portion probably is about 1000, when compared to the pieces I had to buy to make it. Finally, I'd always give a number for the other random details - In this case, I'd give another 1000.

Very rough numbers, but easily done to estimate 11,000 pieces so far. I expect closer to 12,500 when completed. As for time...it's been in progress for roughly 6 months.

Estimates are easily done, especially on castles. I suspect many people attach fancy numbers to the ends to make them more interesting.

-John L.

Kanduu · Post by **Kanduu** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:00 am

Bricksidge wrote:Regarding "bragging" this was not intended to be. Indeed, according to the statistics calculated on Classic-Space, the average 19-year-old AFOL should have 62,000 pieces, almost twice what I have!

Hmmm, as a 19-yr-old AFOL, I'm also somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 of that. Of course I don't really have space for more than I have...

Also, my continuity with the hobby has been stunted because I'm now at school, far from my collection... Alas, what can we do? (If anyone's missed me lately...that's also why I've been gone: too much work.)

Bricksidge · Post by **Bricksidge** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 4:16 am

Kanduu wrote:Also, my continuity with the hobby has been stunted because I'm now at school, far from my collection... Alas, what can we do? (If anyone's missed me lately...that's also why I've been gone: too much work.)

Yep, I returned to school for my Sophomore year on Friday. Alas, no LEGO for me until winter break.

I think Brickfest has a big impact on my buying habits. I buy more LEGO in order to build stuff for Fest, and then buy much more LEGO at Fest than I ever would if, say, I had just gone to the mall. I think its part 25% off, part mob-mentality.

Post by **Bruce N H** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 2:02 pm

Kaandu, Kevin, and others off to school,

Why not bring some bricks to school? I know you can't bring your whole collection, but even something as small as a couple of X-Pods could be fun and fit nicely in a dorm-room desk drawer. Or I remember a couple of years ago Jon Palmer was making bot-kits - essentially a small container with little greebly bits to make bots or other small spacey MOCs. You could put together a tupperware container with a few figs and accessories, some gray 1x2's, a couple of 8x16 baseplates, some random slopes and arches and doors (something like the inventory of the Siskind Blacksmith Shop), and you have a little castle kit that's easily portable and storable, even in a cramped dorm room.

Bruce