I've bought about 150+lbs of bulk LEGO over the last couple of years. Some lots more organized than others. So I have grabbed a few buckets and started to sort to sell or keep. I'm finishing up a Toy Story 3 7597 Western Train Chase to get rid of. Missing most of the figures. It'll be 98% complete with a few pieces missing or substituted.

Next up I have this. Most  likely a keeper.
 
Batman 7888. Missing book 1. The Icecream Truck is somewhere. I remember seeing most of it with the stickers applied. I think I have the minifigures. This was from the very 1st bulk lot I got on EBay and last big one. I had no idea the value of 7888 at the time. I probably paid too much, $500 shipped for 73lbs with lots of minifigures (over 100) and about 10lbs of instructions. It was a mom who was unloading her sons Lego. Definitely wasn't picked through. Lots of Technic, SW, Agents, City and Indiana Jones. She even sent me free another 8lbs in a box months later which has mostly pieces from 7682 Shanghai Chase and 7628 Peril in Peru.

 

Anyways, I'd like to hear what LEGO you all are piecing together from your bulk..

Starting to put some sets in order.

I have a couple other small Christmas sets too.

Balloons anyone?

My best find yet... Was advertised as Lego Lot Grey 2 lbs.  Got it for $26 incl shipping.  Take a look at the pic, can you figure out which set?  There is only one and it was missing 13 pieces.  Five digit number ends in 178.  I had a battery pack and motor laying around and it all works great.

Prior to that was a lot of 25 lbs which had a UCS Yoda in it (missing about 18 pieces).  It had about 2 lbs of mega blocks in that lot but I'll take the Yoda any day.

This wasn't from bulk but I'm finally starting to go through it to verify it's all there and then build it. I bought it with a Rogue Shadow for $300 years ago.The applied stickers are toast and may be a pain to remove. I have a repop replacement set. The bricks are in great shape so far except for some  yellowing.  Instructions are fair to good I'd say...

Put the 10019 on hold for now.

Picked up a local small lot that mostly contains mid to small sets that were started but abandoned part way through the build.  Started going through some small stuff.

Just picked up 71 lbs of bulk. Counted over 350 minifigs, a bunch of old dinos, and a stack of manuals .Found zombie bride and groom, deadpool, adult Asoka Tano, Jabba, rancor, old Bossk...

Gentlemen was asking $750 and i talked him down to $400.  After I saw some of the figs and sets in there I gave him $500.

Sounds like a very nice buy overall, and it was a nice honorable gesture to go back up in price when you saw the value in the bin.

350 Minifigs is a pretty significant amount in a bulk buy, that's impressive!    At a lowly $1.50 each you'll have covered your cost and then some, and I'm sure you'll do better than that.

Nice, hope to see some new posts in the thread. Winter is coming and I'll have time to go through some of my never ending bulk

A bit of a shameless cross-post with the 'what did you buy today?' thread, but here is something that will be keeping me busy. Everything boxed here, plus lots of smaller sets without boxes, is mostly mixed together. A couple seem to have been separated, like the Black Pearl, but it's mostly a jumble. I actually have another bulk lot with a few old pirate sets (like Black Seas Barracuda) that I haven't even started on yet, but I could not refuse this for £100.

Just finished this 9493 from a lot I purchased awhile back. It was started then left halfway through bag 3. Still had bags 4&5 unopened. So it's basically near mint built once. I didn't apply the rest of the stickers. Will leave those for the person that buys it.

Edited April 8, 20196 yr by MarleyMoose

Does anyone have any "must check" list when inspecting bulk/used Legos?

For me; Checking for K'nex and Megablocks pieces are obvious along with yellowing, staining, and smell...a good sign is usually the dusty exposed side of a large plate (comes right off w/ a swifter duster btw)...probably sat on a shelf for years and untouched.  

How does one readily spot asian knock-offs mixed in? 

If I get a whiff of cigarette smoke it's a deal breaker for me these days. No matter what I see. In my experience there's too much labor involved getting it out(which it never is 100%). 

I have never come across cigarette smoke, but I once turned down a decent-but-not-great deal due to it looking like a dog had rolled around in the bin of parts and shed half of its body weight into the bin (wasn't visible in the online pictures, somehow). Some of the parts also seemed caked in dirt/dust, so maybe someone else found some treasures, but it wasn't worth it to me. 

When dealing with dirt or cigarette smoke there is a pretty simple and straight forward method.

1. Disassemble all sets.
2. Place bricks in garment bags. Dollar Tree sells them in packs of three for $1.
3. Let soak in warm soapy water. My wife loves Myers dish soap. I recommend it.
4. Remove bags from sink and put into a salad spinner. Spin the bag to remove most of the water.
5. Let bags air dry outside. Bricks should be clean and smell like new. Rubber parts like tires might take a longer soak.


Sent from my iPhone using Brickpicker Forum

One of the first bulk lots I bought was a bunch of modular buildings and my entire truck bed full of sets for $500 all smelled of smoke and had spilt soda on them. I washed them in vinegar took photos and listed what I did not want, took them apart and washed in vinegar again and had no more smell.

i washed the sets I kept and rebuilt them and have never had an issue. Works for dog hair also.

worst I ever had in a bulk lot was roach pop and bed bugs, that I left outside and a ironically it got stollen. I was going to throw them away but it is really funny the thief stole themselves bed bugs which will cost a lot to remove 

 

On 4/8/2019 at 9:57 PM, Salimr said:

One of the first bulk lots I bought was a bunch of modular buildings and my entire truck bed full of sets for $500 all smelled of smoke and had spilt soda on them. I washed them in vinegar took photos and listed what I did not want, took them apart and washed in vinegar again and had no more smell.

i washed the sets I kept and rebuilt them and have never had an issue. Works for dog hair also.

worst I ever had in a bulk lot was roach pop and bed bugs, that I left outside and a ironically it got stollen. I was going to throw them away but it is really funny the thief stole themselves bed bugs which will cost a lot to remove 

 

Does the vinegar smell come off the parts? I purchased a large lot of early Bionicle that had that "old people house" smell. I gave them a pre-soak in warm, soapy water and 2 turns in the washing machine in garment bags and outside, air dry and they still stink, so I'm looking for alternatives. I've cleaned a couple of other old toys with vinegar and they had a faint vinegar smell that stayed afterward. 

Try to keep on topic. Here's a thread for cleaning Lego questions.

 

 

Now lets post some of your builds from bulk.

Edited April 11, 20196 yr by MarleyMoose

Ooops, sorry about that. Thanks for the link to the cleaning thread. 

Rebuilding in progress. Some missing pieces. But I really enjoy it.
The minifigures are in excellent condition. Gold on logo is perfect.

Working on the Town Hall I got in a free lot. So far there's a few pieces I need to locate but nothing that'll stop the build. 

I decided to dig out another Town Hall I got in a bulk lot to finish as well. A few missing pieces here and there but all the minifigures are accounted for. 

With work started back up I haven't had much time for Lego. Here's an update on my progress on the 2 Town Halls I'm putting together. It seems the free one I was given is missing a bunch of pieces from the #3 bags. I have a number of Dark Orange pieces to find.

24 LB lot purchased around Christmas time $200 incl shipping, purchased with Ebay GCs (which I obtained for free).  So $0 invested for the lot.  

Each set required a few pieces to finish them off and there were no minifigures.  At least half of the sets had instructions in very good condition.  I found minifigures and finished the first list of sets.  I'm still debating what to do with 7662, which is an awesome set.  Most of the others I've already sold during the Coronavirus.  Even with Brick Linking the a few missing pieces and all the minifigures, I have still made a nice profit.

• 7656 – Gen. Grievous Starfighter
• 7662 – Trade Federation MTT
• 7674 – V-19 Torrent
• 7675 – AT-TE
• 7676 – Rep. Attack Gunship
• 7748 – Corp. Alliance Droid Tank
• 7869 – Battle for Geonosis
• 7915 – V-Wing
• 8017 – Darth Vader’s Tie Fighter
• 8018 – Armored Assault Tank (AAT)
• 8019 – Rep. Attack Shuttle
• 8039 – Venator-Class Rep. Attack Cruiser
• 8086 – Droid Tri-Fighter
• 8089 – Hoth Wampa Cave (minus speeder)

Parts but very incomplete (33% or less):

• 7657 – AT-ST
• 7658 – Y-Wing
• 7661 – Jedi Starfighter w/ Hyperdrive Booster Ring
• 7666 – Hoth Echo Base
• 7673 – Magna Guard Starfigter
• 8037 – Anakin’s Y-Wing
• 8128 – Cad Bane’s Speeder

I'm not sure if I'll worry about completing these or not.    Maybe if I find another large lot.

 

Edited June 27, 20205 yr by exracer327

Pulled this 7739 Coast Guard Patrol Boat from a bulk lot and it's now 100% complete ready to be sold.

I recently picked up a bulk bin of lego: mostly castle and pirates and was worried I was overpaying, but I wanted the pirate sets. It was missing a bunch of stuff, but fortunately a second bin was located and I bought that too.

This was a great find. They all ended up 98-100% complete and near mint (horse bardings have all clips, no scratches, minifigures in great shape, most flags don't have broken clips, the worst set was missing 10 parts at one part each). Mountain baseplates have no marks, except for the pirate one, and that's on the underside of the "cave" indentation. There's not really any dust anywhere so these have been packed up for a couple of decades.

Sets:
Pirates
6246 Crocodile Cage
6261 Raft Raiders
6262 King Kahuka's Throne
6266 Cannon Cove
6270 Forbidden Island
6274 Caribbean Clipper
6276 Eldorado's Fortress

Castle
1463 Treasure Cart
1491 Dual Defender
6034 Black Monarch's Ghost
6038 Wolfpack Renegades
6042 Dungeon Hunters
6048 Majistos Magical Workshop
6056 Dragon Wagon
6057 Sea Serpent
6075 Wolfpack Tower
6078 Royal Drawbridge
6081 King's Mountain Fortress
6086 Black Knight's Castle... Except it's missing the white feathers :-(

Aquanauts
1822 Sea Claw 7
6104 Aquacessories
6115 Shark Scout x2
6155 Deep Sea Predator
6175 Crystal Explorer Sub
6190 Sharks Crystal Cave
6195 Neptune Discovery Lab

Random
Few small blacktron/mtron sets
6975 UFO Alien avenger
6755 Sheriff's Lock Up
Few random creator, technic, sport, and city sets like coastal cutter.

All have instructions, a few have boxes in good condition, a few have destroyed boxes. Some polybags are still here too.

Overall, lots of fun ahead to finish building. I can probably sell the aqua sets and random stuff to get close to break even after buying parts on order. I get to keep the pirate and castle sets 98%+ complete for free and slowly order parts in the US once the pandemic slows down and the border opens.