Just like Johnny cash. But a batmobile.

One brick at a time. I mentioned before that I was gearing up to maybe do a Lego UCS batmobile one brick style because it retired and I hate resellers that jack prices on bullE36 M3 like inflation. 

What I didn't mention was, I actually ordered ever single piece, one at a time. A total of five orders from three different sellers (brickowl, toypro, and Lego themselves). No it was not cheaper than just buying one. But that's not the point. The point is 

this. I like this. This is the Lego UCS millennium falcon as built the same way I'm doing this batmobile. One brick at a time. His build was actually cheaper than the ucs, but I believe his was largely used Lego. I'm bougie and everything I bought was new oob when possible. I probably could have made it cheaper. But ..I didn't. 

Step one- the target. this. This kit was one I kept looking at, and never bought. And now it's gone forever. 

But then I remembered, because of the aluminum falcon guy- Lego is awesome. Any kit they have, the instructions are available online. One better- in the back of each book (at least the ucs ones) is an entire parts list broken down by color, part# and quantity. I didn't care about color, because whars the fun in that, only quantity and part. So I downloaded. And ordered. And ordered. And ordered. It took me roughly a week and an unspecified amount of $$$ to get everything on deck. And then, the wait. 

I mentioned before, I had five orders. I started at brickowl.com because they had the single largest selection of new I could find, prices seemed..reasonable (is anything reasonably priced when you're ordering 3000 of them?) And their site did a neat feature. It defaulted to the cheapest new version of any given part regardless of color. So half the time, I didn't know what color I ordered. They didn't have certain parts, so I went to another big site, toypro.com. Toypro got me MOST of the way there. For the rest, I went directly to Lego, because if it exists, you can order it from them. So things like, tires, some specialty stuff....Lego.com. That order got split into two-one coming from Illinois (where Lego is apparently) and directly from Denmark. Then, we waited. 

as you can see, brickowl#1 showed up. And that's not even all the parts, because I have three more orders waiting. I got my Lego us order at the same time, but it was very small so I didn't take pictures. Toypro should be here tomorrow....and probably next week. Brickowl cancelled my order of 1x12 plates, so I ordered from toypro because I was medium annoyed. 

And now for the fun part. Finding out what the hell I ordered. this is what happens when you don't know, or care what color you order. There are a few exceptions to that. I did order a bunch of 1x1 square plates in clear, and some of my window plates that were supposed to be black were ordered in clear also. The rest of the time, well....you see what happened. 

That leaves me with two things. I need to clean off what will be my work space, and find some sort of sort solution. Nearly 3000 pieces is entirely too many to sort one at a time. That will not be documented, because frankly I'm a disgusting person and you don't need to see that. The result is the goal. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Greatest. Adult swim bit. Ever. 

In reply to Mndsm :

Yup. And TIL that you can order bulk Lego. 

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Can you ever. 

Mndsm said:

In reply to David S. Wallens :

Greatest. Adult swim bit. Ever. 

Absolutely.  No matter how many times I watch that, I still laugh out loud.

"What the hell is an aluminum falcon?"

In reply to stuart in mn :

You should see the looks I get when I'm at star wars Disney and say that standing next to the millennium falcon ride. Never failed to amuse. 

two more bags to go. I gotta say at outset, I'm not impressed with toypro. I ordered 10% of the pieces I ordered from brickowl- and it's taken them an extra week to get them here. 

I was going through my parts lists this morning, and realized, I berkeleyed up. I forgot to order the damn windshield. Who does that? So back to brickowl-and the stupid thing was $10! I think it's because of relative rarity. 

Received notification that my last 4 parts have theoretically shipped. From Denmark. So.... we're getting closer. I think I'm going to start some simple sorting/etc in the next couple days. I'm tired of looking at a bunch of pieces. I wanna play with it. 

this is what a very expensive Lego manual looks like. It has a touch screen and is infinitely reloadable with other Lego manuals, which is a plus. 

this is either gonna look like a batmobile when I'm done, or I berkeleyed up real bad. 

Swmbo made a very good suggestion (as she often does. She's the organization to my chaos, which explains why she can wrangle a few hundred Disney cast members and I can't find my 15 pairs of sunglasses) that I should sort by bag prior to the build. I'm hoping to document the entire build in video form (likely to be stop motion if I can convince my phone to do it) and it will be a lot more concise if I'm not picking my ass sorting through this bucket for every piece. 

So, I learned two things yesterday. One- Lego manuals actually don't have parts lists by bag. So my initial plan is out. Nbd I kind of have a system worked out. 

Two - I am definitely the type of person that will pay $17 for two used Lego ghost minifigs (admittedly they glow in the dark also, which is important) to make a Thomas and Martha Wayne joke. I'll save you a seat when I get to hell. 

ladies and gentlemen, Thomas and Martha Wayne. 

In reply to Mndsm :

ladies and gentlemen, my last 6 pieces. It's go time. 

Stay away from SW. That part of LEGO universe is getting very expensive. Old and new but the old ones ie sets or minifigures are going for crazy money now. 

In reply to Sine_Qua_Non :

I'm not the hugest sw fan so that's not a big deal. I do really want the star destroyer because it's huge but that's also $800. 

Martha has her pearls. As an aside, you have no idea how hard it is to string tiny ass beads for a joke. 

I actually started today. Got right around 6 steps in when I discovered I shorted myself pieces already. Goddammit. 

So, it's been a few weeks. I apparently screwed up bad. I've had to make 7 orders and pilfer one other box set I have just to get to here- this thing is gonna be big. 

I also had an epiphany the other day. My parents, who BOTH passed on when I was a kid (though in separate incidents several years apart) are named Thomas and Martha. Am I Batman?