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From: Melissa Thake
Subject: Lego collectionMessage Body:
Hi there, I was given your name to see if you would be interested in purchasing my uuncles extensive lego collection. The last tally was over 74k pieces. He was very popular in the legos world. His name was ed jones. Please let me know your thoughts. Any inside into this would be greatly appreciated!from a quick google, it seems he was lugnet member #34. Also, his set inventory adds up to just over 70k.
some things from his profile:
I hope I never… have to go to Pittsburgh again.
this is probably him too – http://www.oocities.org/edboxer/lego.html
I emailed her back asking if she had an idea of what she wanted to do with the collection and if it was all in Pittsburgh.
Hi Josh actually I am located in youngstown. I wanted to sell the collection to people who would understand the value in what they were getting. He belonged to lugnet which is no longer active. His creations were featured in lego magazine. It was suggested by one of his friends who is also big into the lego world to reach out to you since you were a local group. She said her group buys collections all the time! I’m open to suggestions. If it’s easier to talk by phone please feel free to call me 3307875883.
I have a list of the collections that he has. None of them are in the boxes but we do have most of the boxes! They are currently in a climate controlled storage unit. Thank you in advnace.I remember that Ed’s creations (especially his Castle) were some of the first large scale Lego MOCs that I saw back in the late 90’s. It sounds like he has passed away. I would expect that a 74,000 piece collection would be worth at least $5,000 – $7,000. I would be interested in finding out what all is available.
Pittsburgh diss, improper capitalization, and improper pluralization of “legos” aside, I’d at least be curious for more information. She seems to have at least some interest in “finding a good home” for the bricks, rather than just selling to the highest bidder. Not that we should lowball, or anything. But… worth further investigation, I’d think.
Youngstown ain’t far. @iamrjthompson is up there all the time, and I go up semi-regularly for work. Could maybe even arrange to pick up the collection in several smaller batches without having to make extra trips / rent a big truck or anything… just spitballing; those logistics can wait, but just sayin’ it’s potentially realistic to not have to spend a ton on shipping or anything.
if anyone wants to take lead and email her to find out more and get pics, let me know.
…anyone…?
>> Presuming the MOC’s are still intact, there is only one place for them to go. Honestly, she should contact Dan Brown at the Toy Brick Museum. Sets? meh
Yeah, it’s not clear to me what she has in mind here. Is she hoping that somebody will buy the entire collection straight out? Is she hoping that we’ll keep his MOC’s intact and put them on display? Are the sets that weren’t used for MOC’s intact?
The value of the collection is difficult to gauge without seeing it. On one hand, if there’s a lot of minifigs, parts, or sets that are long out of print, the value goes up. And if the parts have been kept in clean and are in like-new condition, it goes up more. But if they’re old and beat-up, then it becomes a lot more complicated.
Is she hoping that somebody will buy the entire collection straight out?
Buying the sets sounds less like a hobby and more like a task for someone who does bricklink as a full time job.
I talked with Melissa this afternoon and got a little more information. Some information is duplicated from what was listed previously.
Melissa’s uncle was an avid builder. Unfortunately, he recently passed. The collection was moved from his home to a climate controlled storage unit in Youngstown. She mentioned a box was lost in the move. Apparently the parts are sorted by type as the boxes had labels such as “Animals” and “Trees”. It sounds like there are also flattened set boxes as well. Currently there’s not a complete inventory of the entire collection, but the LUGNET profile Josh linked is correct and has a list of sets. Melissa had talked with a few people she described as being in the Lego community and threw a number of $12,000 out (this seems to be based on the LUGNET inventory).
It doesn’t sound like any MOCs are still together, though I didn’t ask about them directly.
I told her we’d discuss a bit and get back to her. I suggested a good starting point would be compiling an accurate inventory of what’s actually there.
Now that my official report is out of the way, here are my personal thoughts:
Sounds like a large amount of semi-sorted, old brick. It would be particularly difficult to reconstruct sets for the set collectors (and perhaps even impossible given the missing box). I’m guessing the estimate she got was assuming Bricklink set resale prices. In my opinion that’s not really valid in this case if the parts are not divided as such.
It’s a lot of older castle and space stuff. In principal I’m interested, but I’m not currently looking to sink substantial cash into expanding my collection.
If anyone is interested in going in as a group I might join, but this is at least a LUGBulk-esque investment cash-wise (though delivery would be quicker!).
Sorting random pieces to recreate sets is an extremely time-consuming process. Unless you are unemployed / retired, I would caution people against it.
The LUG should offer to be curator of one of the castle MOC’s, if she needs a home for them. The LUG will keep it intact and take it to shows. I think that is something that she would want for her uncle’s creations.
<< The LUG should offer to be curator of one of the castle MOC’s, if she needs a home for them. The LUG will keep it intact and take it to shows. I think that is something that she would want for her uncle’s creations.
First you need confirmation that they’re still intact.
That’s a nice idea, but it means you’d need to make sure you have a volunteer willing to store it, transport it to and from events, and do any set-up and tear-down that may be needed. It may turn out that you have plenty of volunteers, but it’s also possible that you’ll have zero. (I know I have my hands full with my own MOC’s, so something like that doesn’t interest me.)
Sorting random pieces to recreate sets is an extremely time-consuming process. Unless you are unemployed / retired, I would caution people against it.
See: Ping-Pong table in Josh’s basement. 😉
I’m in a similar state of mind as yinz: in theory, this could be a really cool way to acquire a lot of brick and/or help keep an AFOL’s legacy alive. In practice, it’s likely a lot of money to invest and possibly a lot of effort to sort / manage / store / etc. So, I’m open to discussions but not interested enough to dive in and take point…
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