Transitioning: Five Years After the Color Change

[rogue27]

I still throw all of the new colors into a bucket and just leave them there. I figure someday I'll need to use them, but I currently still use old grays for anything I build. However, specialized parts like minifig accessories do get mixed into my main collection.

With regards to buying habits after the color change, I usually just buy small army-builder sets or big sets that look great. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to build any of the large sets so the boxes are just stacked up in a corner. MMV, Green Grocer, Fire Brigade... I think I'll use the new grays when I try building things to connect with Green Grocer and keep the old grays for castle stuff.

I have a decent amount of old gray pieces as I was at a peak spending point when the change happened. I also have a few sealed sets with old gray that I can open if I need more parts. Blacksmith Shop, Black Falcon's Fortress, Forestmen's Hideout, Majisto's Workshop, and plenty of Dark Forest stuff.

The worst experience in the past few years for me was buying a large LEGO collection that contained old and new grays. Lots of eye strain trying to properly sort the light gray parts. The difficulty of doing that has taught me to never mix them, and I never will. Ask me again in 20 years and my answer will be the same.

[domboy]

Pardon my ignorance, but when did the color change happen, exactly?
KCS was one of the first new Legos I'd bought in over a decade, and I honestly didn't realize the gray wasn't the same... I figured my vintage castles were just getting old and the colors distorting and all... It wasn't until I got on this site and had to ask what "bley" was...

[stuifzand]

The new colours were used for the first time in 2004. First rumours started in the fall of 2003, when someone got an early StarWars set and thought there was something wrong. Then some people asked TLC about it and found out the colours were changed.

[Bruce N H]

As heretical as this sounds, several years ago I decided that I had a large enough collection. I pretty much recycle my bricks soon after I photograph something, so I don't need a constantly expanding collection. I mostly build (when I build) things like vigs, but I have enough to do something of about this size when I want to (that layout used pretty much all of my gray). So even if there had been no color change I wouldn't be buying a lot of sets for the sake of bricks. When I do buy a set it is either because it is really cool by itself, or because I want the figs or accessories (and mostly I Bricklink for those things). About the only time I've gone out of my way to buy bley is one time the local Pick-a-Brick wall had headlight bricks in light bley and 1x2 tiles in dark bley, so I got a cup full so I could have enough to do this brick wall technique on a vig (oh, for the record, that was not my MOC, just a good example of the technique).
So, the short answer is, I don't buy much anyway, I continue to build in old colors based on my pre-2004 collection. My only real complaint is that I would like to have about 20 each cheese wedges in old gray and old dark gray.

[kelderic]

With a very few exceptions (such as the medieval market) I no longer buy sets at all. I buy online mainly, just the pieces I need, and I still prefer the old colors. It's not that bad with the grey/bley, but for a long time I really didn't like the reddish-brown, and would just put them all together in a bin I didn't use. Recently though, I've been trying to expand my usage, and have found that having different shades is useful sometimes. I'll use old brown for wood and new, or reddish-brown, for dirt. With the recent addition of more dark brown pieces, it's quite fun now to see what I can do with intermingling.

Kelderic

[The_Hun]

I also came out of my dark ages around the time of the colour change, so it didn't affect me that much. All the old gray I have is in classic sets that I don't use for MOCing anyway, so I build with the new colours. In all honesty, I like the new grays better than the old ones - though they're rather "metal" and not "stone" colours in my view, so they fit machines better than castles.

On the other hand, I started collecting old brown pieces, as I'm planning a large forest layout and I really need the variation. I like reddish brown very much, though - and I also really hope that a greater variation of pieces will start coming out in the new dark brown colour, because that's beautiful, too.