I’ve had to dial back my LEGO budget recently, which means that I’ve had to make my purchases count. This last weekend, I made a trip to my local LEGO store on the way to the monthly LUG meeting. With three empty Pick-A-Brick cups in my pack, I set out on my bike to see what treasures I could unearth.
For my first cup, I decided to start with 1×2 light stone gray bricks. To save space and make the most of the cup, I placed stacks of bricks around the edge and constructed a 6×6 core of interlaced bricks to go in the center. Once all of those were in place, I filled the remaining space with smaller stacks of bricks and assorted loose elements.
798 elements at about 2¢ each isn’t too bad, especially since the street value (based on BrickLink averages) of around $55.
It takes a long time to tightly pack a cup, but it can be worth it. Unpacked, the 1×2 bricks fill an entire cup. Packed together, I was able to fit another 300+ elements inside.
Next, I used a technique that I’d seen on the Internet. I made discs of 2×4 bricks that stacked inside the cup, increasing in size on the way up. Though I didn’t know the optimum shapes, I improvised and packed 100 2×4 light stone gray bricks. Around these I packed in more small elements.
For this cup I managed 383 elements at 4¢ each and a street value of $43.
I started the third cup with a core of 4×4 light stone gray plates, then I surrounded those with loose 2×2 plates and tiles. This wasn’t the most efficient of my cups, but I was getting tired by this point.
My last cup came out to 539 elements at 3¢ and a street value of $32.
Not a bad haul for three cups. By clipping all those bricks together, I was able to conserve a lot of volume and get hundreds of extra elements. I did spend about an hour in the back of the LEGO store, arranging my elements. The hour was worth it though, since I get about $130 worth of elements for less than $50.
Now that I have over 1500 new elements, it is time to get back to the building.