Brickset members own 1 BILLION pieces

 

  • Brickset members own 1 BILLION pieces

    Posted by Huw, 14 Oct 2012 15:32. Filed under Brickset.

    Just six weeks since we, as a community, owned a combined total of $100,000,000 worth of LEGO (see this news article), we now own at least 1 BILLION pieces of LEGO between us!

    Given that it's shared between the 44,600 people that record their collections on the site, that's an average of 22,400 pieces each!

    If we assume that the average height of a piece is 10 mm (roughly the height of a brick) then if we were to stack them all on top of each other, it would reach a height of 10,000 km. If we assume that the average width of a piece is 15 mm (roughly the width of a 1 x 2 brick) and we were to lay them side by side, they'd reach 15,000 km which is more than the diameter of the Earth (12,000 km) and about 1/3rd of its circumference.

    According to Wikipedia, LEGO estimated (in 2008) that it has produced some 400 billion parts in total. Annual production averages approximately 36 billion per year, so the total made to 2012 is something like 600 billion. Our total then, is around 1/600th of the total ever made.


    46 comments, latest one posted 8 months ago. (Commenting has ended on this article)
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Comments

Posted by chrismajor2124 in United States, 14 Oct 2012 15:54

Ok that's just cool. I still have some Lego of my own to add to My Collection in the database anyways. :D

Posted by Isabella and Lego Liker in United States, 14 Oct 2012 15:58

I've got 52,351 for the database............. and more in 2013 and Christmas to come!

Posted by meccanotwitch in United Kingdom, 14 Oct 2012 16:13

Amazing figures and with all the superb sets that are to come in 2013 it should increase significantly.

Posted by CapnRex101 in United Kingdom, 14 Oct 2012 16:17

Another awesome milestone! Some nice mathematical facts there too. I am contributing 152,623 pieces to that total. Does anyone here own over 1,000,000 pieces? I doubt it, but you never know. I think I have some 20,000 loose parts as well from Bricklink orders as well.

Posted by Grahame in New Zealand, 14 Oct 2012 16:21

I thought I was doing well with my 467,398 pieces, but when you work it out as a percentage of the total owned by Brickset users who record their collections, it is only 0.05% :-(

Luckily there will be many more fantastic sets to buy throughout 2013 and beyond.

Posted by legomaniac in United States, 14 Oct 2012 16:25

I own 39,000 of those :D Plus I have a ton of parts and pieces for MOCs that arent sets.

Posted by roar15 in United States, 14 Oct 2012 16:26

Huw, I'm still interested in knowing what our minifig population is.

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 14 Oct 2012 16:46

You beat me, Grahame, just. My total is 453983.

Our minifig population is 6,190,000 in sets and 235,000 loose, making a total of 6,425,000.

Posted by meccanotwitch in United Kingdom, 14 Oct 2012 16:59

I am quite a way down with 359,017, but have about 25,000 in loose Bricklink parts. But its not bad since 2006!

Posted by lisqr in United States, 14 Oct 2012 17:00

^Huw, on the topic of minifig population, I think it might be a bit overestimated. I'm mainly by sets for pieces and often sell the minifigs. But there's no way for me to "subtract" my minifig collection. So my minifig collection is very inaccurate. Would it be possible for us to record "negative" loose minifig? I've always wanted to make that suggestions. Thanks.

Posted by Grahame in New Zealand, 14 Oct 2012 17:00

I do slightly better in the minfig statistics; my 4012 minifigs represent 0.06% of the recorded total :-)

Posted by lippidp in United States, 14 Oct 2012 17:11

I haven't taken the time to log mine into the db, either. In addition to odds and ends here or there I have every technic/expert builder, UCS, modular, creator homes (x3 each), and 9v train set.

Posted by Legolover9531 in United States, 14 Oct 2012 17:44

I'm gonna calculate the bricks in my collection after dinner.

Posted by MCLegoboy in United States, 14 Oct 2012 17:49

Mathematical!

Posted by Darth Nader in United States, 14 Oct 2012 18:14

Wow and I thought having 10,000 bricks was a lot.

Posted by roar15 in United States, 14 Oct 2012 18:35

Thanks Huw. If accurate, that would put us right between Jordan and Togo at #107 on the list. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

oh, and me and my son are at 164,848 pieces with 1,328 minifigs. Plus a couple thousand loose pieces and another 2-3 dozen loose minifigs.

Posted by lego613master in United States, 14 Oct 2012 19:49

I barely break 1,500! Who's the awesome guy that owned 1,000,000 pieces? I wanna be his friend!

Posted by shaase in Canada, 14 Oct 2012 20:40

Huw I like the Minfig population; you should put a population counter on the home page...I guess the next milestone would be 7.5 (or 10 Million).

Grahame and Huw those are some rather giant Lego collections; I thought my house was getting full and I'm only at about 1/4 of yours' collections.

Posted by gonzalo_prestia in Argentina, 14 Oct 2012 20:53

57.181 pieces and about 770 minifigs here. I thought they were not so many. No wonder I have almost no room left to keep any more lego.

Posted by PaulTR in United States, 14 Oct 2012 21:57

I've got around 25,000+ pieces of which 15,000 are in built sets. Pretty pathetic, really, but hey, I collect other stuff too :P

Posted by dougts in United States, 14 Oct 2012 22:19

I'd be willing to bet our actual total may be double. How many members don't bother to enter their collections into Brickset at all? Or like me, update sporadically and incompletely. Who's to know

As for myself, Brickset calculates my piece count at about 107,000. I'm quite confident i own at least double that, through un-entered sets, and more strikingly, PAB and bulk buy.

Posted by 123Mr.Brick in United States, 14 Oct 2012 22:25

@chrismajor2124:
Dude, you're right. That's just AWESOME. Yay, LEGO lovers!

Posted by King J in United States, 14 Oct 2012 22:45

I'm not normally a fan of huge amounts of math, but that is just awesome! That's enough for 1/7 of the world to each have one :).

Posted by HuoYang in Indonesia, 15 Oct 2012 01:56

Hi i have a sad news, the statistical numbers might be wrong since some people like myself might label sets as owned while infact not owning them.

The reason because i don't have the feature to cross out sets that i do not want, while the feature to tag a set as wanted is cool but i need to slowly work my way up from older series crossing out sets that i already own and also those that i am actually not interested in.

the prochedure is quite fun for me what i did was browse the set from the oldest by year and then look at the infos even the instructions, if for some reason i like part of the set than ill start hunting for parts to create just that part. Then if i like the mini fig ill do the same too. After i am done with the set than i move to the next one labeling the set as owned while intact not owning them.

If you can add another tag to identify sets that we don't want than it will be really helpful , at least for me anyways. Thx

Posted by Mickitat in Germany, 15 Oct 2012 03:17

I have only unopened boxes in the database. Every box I open, I delete from the database. A very rough estimate of loose pieces is about 200kg. I have no idea how many this are.
@HuoYang - cases like this do not really undermine the numbers. These little errors even out with examples like mine (and I am very, very, very slow to add new sets, too).

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 15 Oct 2012 03:55

^^ i don't have the feature to cross out sets that i do not want

Why do you say that? Is the feature not visible to you?

Posted by icey in Denmark, 15 Oct 2012 05:10

Around 10% of my sets are not included in the piece-count. Is that due to them being too old or new, or what?

Posted by legomoe74 in United States, 15 Oct 2012 05:27

I own 1254 sets (942 different). Brickset has piece counts for 924 of the sets I own. I own 304635 pieces and 3134 minifigs. I have one question. Dose the piece count for those 924 sets include my duplicate sets.
Wow looking at this I feel kind of ward. That is a lot of LEGO and a lot of money. Not to mention my Transformers Masterpiece collection. goingtoneedasecendjob

Posted by yodalego in United Kingdom, 15 Oct 2012 06:09

i feel quite inadequate with my stats compared to some of you guys!

You own 456 sets (342 different)
We have piece counts for 341 of the sets you own. Using that data we have calculated that you own 190246 pieces!
We have retail prices for 266 of the sets you own. Using that data we have calculated that their total retail value is £15667.
You own 1434 minifigs:

i am pretty sure with the next wave of UCS and hobbit sets i can get that 200,000 piece count soon....

out of interest, how do you guys store your lego sets? most of my sets not being built by myself and my boys are just in the loft in the lego delivery boxes or more recently i have put some book shelves in there and had quite a lot stored on shelves then covered over with a sheet....

my wife says i need to increase and/or check the household insurance just to make sure it is covered and looking at the total from the 266 sets alone, i am inclined to agree :-)

Posted by Yooha in Europe, 15 Oct 2012 06:18

Approx. 6000 pieces from nearly 200 sets. Those are small sets it seems :)
(Half of them from CM)

Posted by PocasNuckie in Portugal, 15 Oct 2012 07:49

In sets I have around 54000 pieces which is already over the average. Unfortunately, that's totally underestimated considering I have over 60000 1x1 Plates on my Mosaics alone, and those are not counted in Brickset statistics. So yeah, I guess I am doing cool :)

Posted by Huw in United Kingdom, 15 Oct 2012 08:33

@legomoe74, yes it does

@icey, there are relatively few 'proper' sets without piece counts: http://www.brickset.com/search/advanced/run/?q=50 (just 204), but we don't record counts for 'gear' so that could be the reason for the high percentage. I guess I could really discount gear from the figure so it gives a more accurate percentage.

I've just created a query that shows the sets you own without a piece count: http://www.brickset.com/search/advanced/run/?q=244. I will link to it on the My Sets page, I think.

Posted by Si_Dorking_Surrey in United Kingdom, 15 Oct 2012 09:06

We have more minifigs between us (6 425 000) than there are people in Denmark (5,587,085) :o)

Posted by Frederick B. in Norway, 15 Oct 2012 09:44

I own ca 46000 of it:D

Posted by MorkMan in United States, 15 Oct 2012 18:45

@huw Is there a way to add loose pieces (i.e. from the PAB wall or bulk buys) to make my collection record more complete? I'm sure I'm not the only one that has counted/will count them up to catalog them.

Posted by shootvolio in United States, 15 Oct 2012 22:52

I know my piece count is inaccurate. I like having all my minifigs counted so I own 1 copy of http://www.brickset.com/detail/?set=1476-1 . It is listed without a minifig count so I had to say I also own 1477-1, 1478-1, 1479-1, 1480-1, and 1481-1. Now it looks like I own 158 more pieces than I should. The same problem exists with set 6569-1. Could minifig counts for Bonus/Value Packs be added so I could remove duplicate part counts when I have the "Related Set"?

Another set I own but it is not in the data base: 1562 Basic set. It is listed in the ebay results section of 1562-1 and 1562-2. So I guess this one would be 1562-3. Here is the Peeron inventory of the Crest/Pepsi Promo set: http://www.peeron.com/inv/sets/1562-2

Posted by tsi in Germany, 16 Oct 2012 07:54

@Huw: Did you attended the different meaning of "Billion" in the US/UK and danmark? I can't believe that brickset-users own around 1/600th of the total ever made LEGO-production. In Germany for example a billion means 1.000.000.000.000.

Posted by icey in Denmark, 16 Oct 2012 13:15

@Huw: Thanks alot! Are you interested in brickcount and minifig's for the "no piece counts" ? I can send the info for those I have.

Posted by Teflon70 in United Kingdom, 16 Oct 2012 16:56

Thanks for posting these wonderful stats - now my wife knows how much lego I own and how much I paid for it. I'm off to be buried in my lego coffin!!!!!!!

Posted by Teflon70 in United Kingdom, 16 Oct 2012 17:03

Not really, but it was a close call.

Honest.

Posted by BuilderBrothers in United States, 16 Oct 2012 19:52

On to the next billion!

Posted by HuoYang in Indonesia, 17 Oct 2012 00:07

@Huw: i only see an option to mark set that i want but not option to mark set that i don't want. since new items may be added later to the database it can be troublesome approach to mark things you want while another new item that also might be what you want are added to the database and you missed it completely. And determining things you don't want one step at a time is easier and more doable than trying to determine what you want from the whole database.

Posted by HuoYang in Indonesia, 17 Oct 2012 00:10

With the above feature then it would be great if we can than display only items that we have not mark as unwanted so that eventually the list only shows things you haven't looked at and consider wanting or not.

Posted by atkinsar in United Kingdom, 17 Oct 2012 10:09

@HuoYang - I cannot understand what you are to trying to achieve, but it sounds like a lot of work. I think you're saying that instead of just marking those sets that you want, you go through every set and mark it as owned to indicate that you've looked at it and decided that you don't want it, is that right? If so, how do you distinguish between those sets that you really own, and those that you've flagged as owned but don't actually want? Why not just periodically review what's new in the database and mark them as wanted?

Posted by The Lego Train Station in United Kingdom, 17 Oct 2012 16:35

Well I have 3803 peices, 53 sets and £408 worth, so, am I a fail?

Posted by roar15 in United States, 17 Oct 2012 18:17

@HuoYang - I kinda see how you want to add an extra filter to your sorting options...... but maybe the closest you'll get to not looking thru "everything" is to browse by year and then use the themes categories on the side of the screen to narrow it down to an even smaller selection to look thru.... That's kinda how I do it as all the new sets are showing up for the current year or the year to come.

Commenting has ended on this article.