July Cup

july_cup_selection

Yesterday was hot, so my son and I took a pilgrimage to the Lego store to participate in the monthly model build for kids. I say pilgrimage, since it takes three buses and about an hour and a half to get there from our house, but we’re used to the bus and so the trip can actually be a bit of a fun adventure.  As it turned out, all of our connections were quick and the air-conditioned buses were much better than the 98 degree heat outside.

The model build turned out to be a bust. The store calendar made it sound like we could just come on down and participate, but instead we were told that we needed to call in advance and reserve a time slot. They had openings, but we were going to have to wait for an hour. Kind of lame. I let the boy pick out an inexpensive set as a consolation prize, and I turned my attention to the Pick-A-Brick wall.

On the back of the July calendar, there had been a little blurb teasing that cool new elements were going to be in the wall soon. I noticed immediately that there were bins marked with the ‘Friends’ branding, full of brightly colored bricks. I took pictures of each bin so that I could update wallofbricks.com later and then set out to fill up the large cup that I brought from home.

Even with all the cool stuff, there weren’t any elements that I needed for any of my current projects, so I just went about taking handfuls of things that caught my eye. As usual, I tended toward the smallest elements, as they give the most value. I stuffed that cup to the brim and paid so that we could make a hasty retreat from the packed store.

july_cup_contents

At home, I sorted and counted. It came out to 1908 pieces. They give a discount for reusing the cup, so my price per piece was under a penny (0.8¢). Not bad at all. Out of curiosity, I looked up some average prices on bricklink.com and figured that I could have paid over $90 if I’d gotten the same parts there.

Now I just need to get busy using some of these parts.