Buy Used Parts, Build Used Sets, Here's What I'm Looking For

[justafrog]

I have bought some bulk lots of used Lego for our eBay and Bricklink business. I'm not thrilled with how well (they don't) sell on eBay for the price I want, and I would rather keep our Bricklink store 99% or better new parts.

 

I have noticed when buying bulk lots from the sources I'm using that I end up with a lot of what look to me like mostly-complete or perhaps even complete sets.

 

What I would like to do, pending further research and cups of coffee, is to clean and sort these incoming Lego, make a nice big friendly spreadsheet of all the parts I glean from these bulk lots, and enter all those parts into a special dazzling Lego database of happiness which will spit me out a list of sets I can make or almost-make (I'd like something that would say, "You lack 18 parts to make a Set Number 000 WhooHooMobile!) with the parts I have.

 

I have glanced at Rebrickable and Peeron and both seem at that first glance to be interested in me telling them what SETS I have so they can tell me what other stuff I can build from those sets. I don't want to start from "I have this set" I want to start from "I have these 8,000 random parts, what can I build?"

 

Provided that makes any sense and anyone has any advice, I welcome input. Thanks!

[gwilkx]

You can upload bricklink XML files into rebrickable. There's a section for "my parts", you can have multiple parts inventories, then go to the Build screen, leave everything blank except the checkbox for " include my parts", and you're there. A list of sets you can build or almost build. You can then export a list of the parts you'd need to complete a certain set, and upload it directly to a bricklink wanted list.

[justafrog]

Oh cool, thank you! And I think I can set up separate "storerooms" on BL so my used set parts don't get offered up for sale at all, I can just store the data there?

[justafrog]

Just an update that I'm super happy with Rebrickable so far. Because I don't intend to offer any of these parts in my Bricklink store, I ended up just loading them directly into Rebrickable (making backup copies in case the site goes kablooey sometime so I don't lose the data). I just started the project today and did a test "what can I build" with my used parts inventory thus far, and was very pleased to see a whole lot of Lego kits come up (only partially complete, of course, still have lots of parts to upload from my two bulk lot purchases).

 

I don't know if this will be useful to any of the rest of y'all who buy bulk lots and then reassemble or make kits from them, but I thought I'd throw my experiences out there JUST in case I'm not the last one on earth to figure this out.