Everything you wanted to know about buying at BrickLink but were afraid to ask

Oooh nice!

The wanted list functionality has always confused me. Hopefully this helps.

I enjoyed the "privacy" of BrickLink because although it is confusing for new people (I was), It rids the website of children and gives me a better chance of catching a good deal. As both a seller and a buyer, I want more people on BrickLink, but I have received many bogus orders from new BrickLinkers and it is very irritating. I have mixed feelings about this guide.

I joined BrickLink in January. Made my first purchase within a day. It's a bit confusing to figure out, but I found exactly what I was looking for, and received it (from a reputable seller), within a week.

Disappointed that Brickset has given BL a monopoly of coverage here, at the expense of BO. I sell on both so it doesn't particularly affect me as a seller, but I also buy on both and would appreciate it if BO's prices could be displayed alongside BL's. BO is also more 'new user' friendly so would help in that respect.

Don't worry Huw, I have no grievances with the fact you don't cover BrickOwl. You cover many different stores and websites and do an excellent job. Personally, I do not use the new BrickLink price function because I prefer the website itself for more clarification, but it is a nice thing to have. If people really are concerned about BrickOwl, then they can ask the people at BO to collaborate with Brickset.

In reference to Brick Owl, every time I've looked for something on that site it hasn't been available for sale.

They do lack much of what BrickLink has.

BrickOwl allow affiliates to set their own commission rate so surely you can make it comparable? I seem to remember you had a short-lived link with BO at one time. And yes, you've given BL a monopoly on the secondary market coverage here - Amazon, Argos and so on aren't really competitors to BL, especially so for those of us outside the UK. It just seems a bit silly to exclude a service that your users might find useful.

@biyitch, yes BrickOwl has fewer sellers than Bricklink but many of them only sell on BO, and these sellers often have parts/sets unavailable elsewhere. BO also offers instant check-out on most things so if you're in a hurry for something, they can be a great place to get it.

If you are so upset about it, then why don't you ask BO if they wish to collaborate with Brickset. Huw has said he is willing to collaborate with them.

Many thanks for this link Huw. I've used Bricklink for quite a while now, but I've never been sure that I was making the most of its functionality.

I've never even heard of BrickOwl until this comment thread......but I've been buying and selling on Bricklink since 2004. Bricklink can definitely be daunting for the first-timer, but once you snoop around a little and learn the sorting functions I think it's still the top site to get older sets.

It's the top site to get almost anything Lego in my opinion, unless it is a rare collectable.

BrickLink is still a bit of a mystery to me, but I manged to find the minifigure I needed to complete a set I'd picked up relatively cheaply. I was looking around on eBay for the minifigure and it was coming in at over £12, yet on Bricklink I got it for about £4 - what a bargain and was really happy to discover it.

Thinking I'll go back there to look for some of the missing parts for my old Bionicle sets.

Fair enough, but if you just don't want to then why say "if they come up with a comparable affiliate scheme I'd be happy to..." ? I suppose I just don't understand why you'll happily promote several Lego magazines, two different auction sites, multiple online retailers but only one secondary market site. Are BL that scared of BO that they're asking you not to deal with them? Besides, since when did everything have to be about $$$?

Thanks for posting this, I'll definitely check it out even though I've been on BL for over a decade. (always have to make sure I'm not missing any features!)

@aleydita In defense of Brickset, when it comes to complete secondary market places there is really only Brick Link. It was the first, with the most. It simply has too much of a critical mass at this point to justify dealing with Brick Owl until they prove they are going to stay the course. Brick Link used to be called Brick Bay, but were (unfairly in my opinion) forced to change their name under threat of legal action from eBay, EBAY! That is how old it is.

As of this comment BL has 347 Million parts across 9500 stores
Brick Owl has .1 Million parts across 1900 stores. (Please correct me if I'm reading it wrong, that is a possibility)

In my eyes BrickLink is the Lego equivalent of Hotmail and PayPal. It's been there since the beginning of time and isn't likely to be unseated. Brick Owl is not the Apple to BrickLink's Microsoft.

Personally I think that if/when Brick Owl starts to have a significant (subjective I know) user base and offering relative to Brick Link then it should get the same attention.

The Guide to Bricklink has a spelling or grammar error in about every other sentence. 'Thier' instead of 'their', 'to' where it should be 'too' and so on.

@nelsoma84 - "In my eyes BrickLink is the Lego equivalent of Hotmail and PayPal. It's been there since the beginning of time and isn't likely to be unseated." - Hotmail was unseated by Gmail in 2012... PayPal is only dominant in certain parts of the world because it was owned by Ebay and was forced on everyone, but regardless, it has several major competitors around the world. It's not even the dominant payment processor in every EU country.

Despite what many seem to think, BL is not the be all and end all of Lego secondary markets. Largest does not necessarily mean best. I'm not sure where you get the figures that BO only has 1m parts available, it may be true for all I know, but I do know that BO has been there for a few years now and has hundreds of active sellers presumably, based on what my own tiny store itself pays out, paying £100s or £1,000s in commission to affiliates every month.

Regardless, like I said, why does everything have to be about $$$? Can't it be about providing a service to users? It's the combination of everything that brings people to Brickset and that, ultimately, keeps people clicking on affiliate links. I use Hoth Bricks to click through to the Lego store now because Huw has taken the decision not to include a link to the Belgian Lego store simply because they don't pay commission. If and when that changes, it'll now be Hoth Bricks that gets that commission. Money makes the world go around I suppose.

@dutchlegofan50 You'll be pleased to know the six spelling mistakes (across the ~5000 words I wrote for the site) have now been fixed. I'm sorry if I ruined your experience of the site by making a few mistakes.

@rmlewisuk It is beyond the purpose of the news comments, but I checked just one other page and found 4 more errors... You can send me a PM if you like.

As a recent new user to both bricklink and brickowl - and speaking as a software developer- I find the user experience of brickowl far superior to bricklink. Navigating BL would fail some of the most basic tests of good design and it is really showing its age. I do appreciate that BL has a larger userbase and parts selection - and perhaps that its a bit cheaper- but it really needs an update.

Kudos to Rob for the guide though, BL should ask to link to it for the default user instructions.

Thanks Huw for the article, and thanks Rob for the guide. I have been using Bricklink for longer than I care to remember, and have spent more money on Bricklink than I wish to admit. There are a few potential hazards with Bricklink that I have discovered over the years, and I would be interested to know if BrickOwl has the same issues, or if anyone knows of a way to avoid them.

1) Parts displayed multiple times in one shop: some Bricklink stores display the same piece several times, at different prices. For example if I am looking for 10 yellow 2x4s, and a shop has it listed three times, using "Autofill cart min" will put 30 of them in my cart.

2) Parts are expensive in bulk: higher "minimum quantities" in the wanted list can dramatically push up costs. It appears to me that the price per unit is higher in stores that stock parts in large quantities, or which stock lots of different parts. I find that using the "Wanted by shop" feature inevitably shows me higher prices per piece than if I do the hunting myself. To get around this, I use the "Remarks" field to indicate the price I'm willing to pay.

3) On a related note, some parts are more expensive on Bricklink than they are at LEGO's own Pick-a-brick or Bricks-and-Pieces websites. Again, I use the remarks field.

4) Overseas shipping costs and customs duties can sour the buying experience. My current strategy is to change the settings to only show shops in my country. And on a related note, it's worth checking the seller's splash screen for minimum buys, other charges etc.

Has anyone else experienced similar hazards with Bricklink? What about BrickOwl or eBay? How do other people maintain their LEGO addiction without breaking the bank?

@princeofgonville

1. Yeah, this is a really annoying problem.
2. Some better tools based on pricing would be good.
3. This is something I check whenever I'm ordering — sellers might do this for a number of reasons, the biggest one being that some people will pay that price (and some people can't/won't order from Lego directly)
4. I do exactly the same — unless there's something I can't find in the UK, and then I'll look in other European countries.

To avoid breaking the bank, I tend to only order from Bricklink when I have a large-ish wanted list, to reduce shipping costs. For sets, I use a combination of HotUKDeals alerts for Lego and [site name redacted by admins] for Amazon — I never pay full price for a set unless the set is exclusive, or Lego are offering a good free gift, I don't order directly from Lego.

@princeofgonville
1) yep, annoying. I'm too much of a control freak to bother with autofill features, so I avoid using that feature. Takes a bit more time to manually check and fill the cart but I don't have to worry about over fills.

4) I do the same in Settings and stick to stores in my region (North America).

To avoid 'breaking the bank' I do my best to consolidate multiple orders even if that means paying a little more per part when one of the stores also has sufficient stock of the part I'm looking for. Unless I'm buying a significant amount of a part, the preferred price isn't always enough to outweigh the added S&H costs to get it cheaper by ordering from an additional store. Those S&H costs can really add up.

.

One big advantage BrickOwl has over Bricklink: retention of order history. Order details are retained online indefinitely on BrickOwl whereas they get purged after 6 months on Bricklink, so you need to remember to offload your BL orders if you want to keep the details. I end up saving the BL order webpage so I can have the images and links for the parts readily accessible digitally opposed to spreadsheet/csv or static printed copy.

I've noticed that in some cases pricing for the same part can be different between BL and BO for the same store with a presence on both sites.

Bricklink has been promising (threatening?) to overhaul its admittedly elderly interface for at least a year. One of these days they might actually do it, in which case an up-to-date guide might become vital to those of us who actually are used to Bricklink's quirks. I hope Robb is aware of and planning for this possibility!

As for BrickOwl, while I wish them well I must admit I've never used the site. It would be nice to be able to compare set prices on BrickOwl to those on Bricklink, though. In fact, it would be nice to be able to compare prices of everything between the two sites--a million pieces may not be much compared to over 300 million, but if one of them is the piece you need at a better price, it's good to know! And options for a direct comparison isn't likely to be in the works at either BrickOwl or Bricklink, so it's a clear opening for Brickset!

The big mystery about Bricklink is why, nearly 3 years after it was bought with promises of 'Bricklink 2.0', the interface is still the mess it's been for 15 years.

@sklamb They are testing a new interface for stores right now and yes, I'm ready to get it updated as soon as it's released.