BrickLink it! Um what does that mean? Well I'll tell you!

If you have been registered on BrickPicker for a while now and have been cruising though the site, you have probably seen some references to a site called “BrickLink”. You may also hear the phrase “BrickLink it”. This is referring to a site called BrickLink.com that sells everything Lego you could eve think of. For those of you who haven't visited the site or haven't explored all of it benefits, I wanted to make a quick blog about the things that you should look to BrickLink for and what benefits the site has.

There are thousands of sites out there and none of them are the best at everything (except maybe the upcoming classifieds?!?). The site itself is a listing website. Think of it like Ebay Stores. Everything is a Buy It Now listing and each seller has a store of other items they are selling along with the one you are looking at.

Like other websites, BrickLink sells new and used Lego sets. They carry pretty much every Lego set ever made (obviously carry is referring to the sellers, but its hard to find a set with no listings). On top of that, they have a “parts” and a “minifigs” section where you can buy every Lego part and minifig ever created at very good prices. On top of this, they also sell the original instruction booklets and boxes for the sets as well as stickers and other inserts.

To begin to buy, visit the main page www.bricklink.com. You will have to create an account to begin using the site, so click the link on the side that says “registration”. Registration is very simple; all you will need to have to do is your email address and your name, etc. Once registered they will send you an email confirming your account and you can log in!

Once there, you can click on the “Buy” section and choose between sets, parts, minifigs, boxes, instructions, etc.

Another cool section here that a lot of other places don't have is the “custom items” section. Here they allow people to list their custom items they have created out of Lego or involving Lego. An example is a Star Wars Hoth themed Chess-Set. This is one of the only sites with something of this nature!

Once you decide what you want to look for, you can click on that section inside of the “buy” tab, like “sets”, and you get a listing of themes or you can search for a certain item. Once you have narrowed down the item you want to look for, you can browse through all of the items matching your search. Items are automatically listed in order of best price, lowest to highest so that you see the best deals first.

Each listing shows the price and condition of the item as well as whether it is complete or not. BrickLink includes sellers from all over the world, so you will be able to browse foreign listings as well by price. You can sort these at the top, along with by used and new, and by the listings completeness.

BrickLink listings show the price just for the set itself; shipping is an extra price added on that the buyer pays. The bad thing is you must look for it rather than it being listed right on the page like at Ebay. To do this, click on the seller's name to go to their store. At the top of their store, you should see something called a “Splash Page”. If you click here, 99% of the time the seller will list what their shipping prices are for standard items. You can also click a button to message the seller and inquire how much shipping would be to your zip code.

Another great BrickLink feature is the “Wanted List”. If you go to the home page by clicking “Home” at the top, you will see a middle section in the website dashboard called “Wanted List”. If you click this, you can choose sets by theme and create wanted lists for them. They aren't all on the same list like Ebay's watch list: Instead you can sort them anyway you like. You can also filter the listings by price, by country the seller is from, and by used/new, complete/incomplete. This feature also allows you options to set up email alerts. You can set price minimums so that if a new listing is set up that is lower than your watching price, you will immediately be emailed. I have these set up on about 20 sets, and every few weeks I get a set off BrickLink for a pretty good price.

BrickLink sellers also have the ability to create savings for you two ways: By having deals/sales and by offering bulk pricing. If you look for items in the “buying” section, you will commonly see discounted prices shown by the original price with a line through it. This means the seller is having a sale. This is another way the benefit of the wanted list comes into play. If you are watching an item and a seller decides to discount it under your price minimum, you will get an email.

The bulk pricing is really great for investors. A set you want multiples of may be a little overpriced if you buy one, but if you buy 4, the seller might give you a $10 break per set. This can sweeten some deals for anyone looking to big time invest in a certain set. Some sellers also offer bulk pricing if oyu buy multiple items from their store.

If you have ever heard of someone saying they want to “Rebrick a set”, BrickLink is really the place to do that. You can click on the widget on the front page dashboard called “Wanted List” and then inside here click “Part out a set”. Once you click this, you can choose the set and tell BrickLink if you are looking for all of it, part of it, minifigures, etc. Once you are done, this imports all the set data into your wanted list. Once there, you can browse and see all the best listings for these items and try to use several sellers to get all the parts you need to put the set together.

The real BrickLink advantages

Why use BrickLink? Well, first of all, its another Lego site to waste all your time on. But more importantly, it carries more than about every site out there variety wise. Though Ebay has a very big customer and seller base, there are more consistent listings for every item on BrickLink, especially if you are shopping for individual parts or parting out a set.

The Wanted list is really nice – about the only thing that compares to it is CamelCamelCamel which is a site that watches Amazon.com for price drops. The emails are really nice and they send you the exact listing so you can quickly go there and checkout.

The custom Lego listings are another really great part that no one else really has. If you are into special projects, you can browse these listings and find something you really like or just get ideas on what to do next. There are thousands of listings here where as there are only a limited number on Ebay.

So try BrickLink out! Make sure once you are there you visit the BrickLink help tab on the front page. They have everything you need to know about the site there – in much more detail than I can in a blog!

Note: All of the information here are my own opinions and are pulled from my experiences. You may or may not have success with these methods.