August Cup

august_cupLast week I felt the siren call of the Lego store, so my son and I took the bus. It actually takes two or three buses to get there, so it takes a good chunk of our day. I’ve had the impending Shiptember on the mind a lot lately, which has been coloring my parts acquisition. Since it had been a couple of weeks since my last visit, I was hoping that something magical would have appeared in the bins.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any of the snot brackets that I was dreaming of. I did manage to get a number of useful elements. One of my recent builds used up a good chunk of my olive cheeses, so I started with a handful or two of those. Next, I laid in a good quantity of bright pink plates and tiles (I’m planning on a fair amount of pink color blocking on my Shiptember project). I also tossed in a handful of 1×2 reddish-brown plates. I don’t have a plan for them, but they should be useful in some kind of micro build.

august_cup_contents

I counted them when I got home. The total came in at 1579 elements. That places the price per piece at just over 1¢. Not a bad rate for pieces that I am sure to use in the near future.

I also updated the wallofbricks.com entry for my local store using pictures that I had taken of the bins. Our local Lego store has taken to devoting one bin to leftovers, a hodge-podge of elements, including some that were obviously from the play tables. I may need to keep an eye on that in the future, since the play tables often have quantities of interesting elements.

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I also picked up a bag of used bricks last week at my FLGS. Every time I go, the table has a different character, so I always enjoy digging about for treasures. This time, there weren’t as many small plates for me to grab. I’m always on the lookout for 1×1 and 1×2 plates to use for the micro scale builds that I’ve got in my head. Used plates should add some nice color variation, thus texture, to the builds.

august_bag_contents

Getting home, I sorted and counted. Only 202 elements this time, far short of my usual. That’s mostly due to the lack of small plates. The price per piece then comes out to just under 5¢, meaning that I paid more for these than I did for the new bricks. Luckily there were some interesting bits for a variety of projects.

Of course, all this just leads to more sorting. Keep building!