Thanks for the look back at this real gem of a set! I'm surprised to hear it was so expensive back then ... heck, it would be dramatically overpriced if produced today at $25. For the "volume of stuff" a ship that size would be a $15-$20 set, tops. Brickset lists the original RRP of 928 as $32 and of 924 as $10, so I wonder where your parents bought this to pay $25!!! (Not that I doubt your report for a moment; I just don't know anything about original classic Lego prices firsthand because I haven't been around the block many times.)

Heh how the times have changed, I had a lady buying yesterday of me new sets metal beards sea cow, Benny’s Spaceship and rescue reinforcements all for 350e, asked if she is a collector as well, no the schools are off need to keep kids busy:)

One of the classic sets.
I too received this as a gift (from my most wonderful godmother), and cherished it. Still have it. What a gem of a set!

It's a lovely vehicle. From the first wave of Classic space this is the only thing missing in my collection. I'm looking forward to add it, but for a small set like this it's so expensive nowadays..

A wonderful example of Classic Space at its finest. I had this when I was ten, along with all the other smaller sets of the time (apart from the rocket base and the awesome 928), and it was always my favourite. Those alternate builds were built and rebuilt many time, but I always put it back to the proper design. Even the box was great, with a landing pad printed in the inner tray.
Sadly, they all disappeared in a parental tidy-up a few years later, but I have since re-obtained them via Brinklink, plus the base and Galaxy Explorer. Like twodoors, mine are proudly on display in a vertical glass cabinet. Fab.

Yes...... been waiting for this to show up on a random or featured set. I loved it and often added extra parts which were anything from the trans plates to the rocket sleds from 6822 etc. I kept the box as it had a base plate pic on the back. I think i still have it. I think the old light grey will have yellowed slightly but i do keep thinking of trying to make it again with LBG were possible. And again on the "back of the box front" I later bought more 918 sets, or parts and made up the top 4 models on the back. I also bought 924 and 928 in my late twenties from ebay. Excellent theme.

One of my first sets. And as above I spent hours playing with it, building the alternative models and wishing for the larfer galaxy explorer which was beyond our means. Need to dig it out.

Speaking of spaceships, the UCS A-Wing was revealed on the Star Wars Twitter account

My older brother and I both had this set. An absolute epic!

Thank you for this feature!
This was one of my favourite sets which I never got as a child.
However, I bought it twice as soon as I was aware of the aftermarket.
In fact, the license plate on my first car ( http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=190344 ) was a reference to this set, so it definitely is my favourite set of all time.

P.S. I wanted to log into my Brickset account from yesteryears just for this comment but I don't have access to my old mail address. So I had to create a new account.

I get it for Christmas 1981. Through years only two pieces and instruction ware lost. Now my son play with it and I think maybe my grandchildren will in the future… :)

I had most of the Classic Space sets from those early years including this one. What a great set and theme!

My mother donated all my LEGO to charity when I entered my Dark Ages. At some level I wish she hadn't done that, but it went to a large family that could not afford LEGO, so at least it found a good home.

I wonder if the sets of today will hold the same fond memories in future.

@twodoors , Thanks for sharing. By the way, I think you meant 'acronym', not 'anagram'.

Had it as a child and found the pieces up a while ago and rebuilt it. My younger sister also used to play with it, so now that I've acquired the bits to make another - I may make one for her.

SPACESHIP!!!!!

My cousin had this set, along with 928. I got it when he handed all his Legos to me when he turned 18 and focused on girls rather than Legos... What a loser :))

Great, this is what I ultimately tried to recreate with the parts I had back then.

Thats a great memory. I think it was one of my first spaceships. Remember when loosing one of the wing plate. I recreated one with layering Cardboard to fit the hight to still have "complete" ship. No bricklink back then

Wow, thanks for this! This was my favourite set as a child and is currently on display with some of my other classic space sets. It's such a simple but effective build; younger me copied the techniques to create dozens of my own spaceships.

Hmm... My Dad might have had this set as I recognise some pieces. I’ll have to check...

@dps10030 said:
"I had this set as well as a child in the late 70s, and I played with it so much I can still remember how to build it without instructions. I marvel as to how few Lego sets I had as a child; just enough to fill a biscuit tin, but oh how much I played with it. 918 I salute you."

My father had a rubbish tin that had coloured jelly beans as the decoration on the outside of it. He let me store all my Classic Space Lego in it. I would rummage through it every Saturday morning to create "new" Space sets from the existing ones. When he moved house 20 years ago he took it with him and 10 years ago, my daughter and I fished it out of his shed. The noise of me rummaging through that tin at 6am on a Saturday morning drove my father crazy, I'm surprised he didn't take the chance to bin it when they moved house but I'm oh so glad he didn't. It brought me so much joy as a kid and to rebuild the sets with my daughter 10 years ago was a gift I could never have predicted Lego was going to give me. Thanks for posting your comment, cheers, Mark.

@ iwybs
The only place my parents shopped that stocked Lego was Target. I remember running out of the car to the Lego isle and just standing there looking at all the Space sets while my parents shopped for what "we really needed". I definitely remember the small sets were $0.99, then 1.99, 3.49, 4.99. It's quite possible that this 718 was 14.99 and not $25. Nonetheless, my pocket money of 20c a week was never going to accumulate fast enough to buy this set before it was gone from the shelves. I remember Lego was very expensive compared to other toys at the time because it came all the way from Denmark and Australia was a long and costly route to stock for retailers. Thanks for your post, cheers, Mark.

@CliveyB said:
"A wonderful example of Classic Space at its finest. I had this when I was ten, along with all the other smaller sets of the time (apart from the rocket base and the awesome 928), and it was always my favourite. Those alternate builds were built and rebuilt many time, but I always put it back to the proper design. Even the box was great, with a landing pad printed in the inner tray.
Sadly, they all disappeared in a parental tidy-up a few years later, but I have since re-obtained them via Brinklink, plus the base and Galaxy Explorer. Like twodoors, mine are proudly on display in a vertical glass cabinet. Fab."

I never kept the instructions or the box (although I was really tempted to do so with this set and wish I had - ahh regrets, ain't they grand!). My father had the foresight to rescue the Lego when I had "grown out of it" but not the instructions. When my daughter rekindled my love of Lego 10 years ago, I made folders to house each of my children's Lego instructions, not the boxes though, unless they really want them. Thanks for posting your comment, cheers, Mark.

@ Lego34s

Like you, In my teenage years, I made a "super cruiser" that had all my Lego Space sets combined using 918 as the base. It sat on my shelf until I moved out of home at age 22. My dad dismantled it (with my permission) and stored it, along with all my other Lego, in an old metal rubbish bin that my daughter and I recovered some 20 years later! Thanks for posting you comment, cheers, Mark.

This was the first set I got my hands on...

I think this was my first set, aged five... still have it, built it again a couple of days ago. It's in pretty poor condition, definitely battle damaged! Still love it though.

As a massive Lego fan with many many sets all over the house, this is the one that sits by my bed. Says it all really...

Of the space sets we had, this one was my brother's pride and joy. I was keener on the surface based stuff but at least that way we had a bigger variety.

"The most significant set in my life is 918 One Man Space Ship."

I would have to second that! Bought it at the age of 10.
twodoors' story sounds almost the same as mine, except I think I saved up for mine.

Best. Set. Ever. Period. :)

I got my 918 around 79-80, still have it today. Plus two more that I've been lucky enough to dig out of used lots of Lego that I've bought over the past few years.

Where the 924 and the 928 look a bit big and clumsy, the 918 has a nicely balanced design. Small and nimble. The perfect Lego space ship, IMHO :)

Very special to me too, it was a gift for getting my first diploma (A) in swimming, I was just 5 years old, and my largest Classic space set ever. I loved building spaceships. One birthday I got 885: Space Scooter 3 times, which I thought was awesome. I remember being able to built all the space sets from memory. Sometimes I would create my own ships and would end up with just a large triangle shaped bottom as I wouldn't have enough bricks to create a top - or worse - my little brother would smash my work-in-progress to pieces as he was very frustrated he couldn't build the way I could and his builds would fall apart. Memories, memories.

Classic Space is my absolute favorite theme of all time, and this is one of my favorite sets of the theme. Unfortunately I was too young when these sets were originally available, but they were some of the first sets I tried to get via ebay in the late Nineties. Now I have got all the important sets (891, 894, 897, 918, 920, 924, 926, 928) and am only missing some of the more obscure ones.

What I liked most about this is its balanced design with roughly similar amounts of mass above and below the mid-plane. Both 924 and 928 mostly had stuff only on top .

Such a coincidence I found one of these in the stairwell of our building just a couple of weaks ago. It was opened of course but the box was still in pretty good shape. I have it in my desk drawer as we speak.

This would probably have been my pick as the set that means the most to me as a kid, because like the OP my parents couldn't afford (or perhaps justify) the bigger sets in the CS range. And we also were in Australia at the time.

I do find that $25 AUD price hard to believe as RRP. According to brickeconomy.com it retailed for $7.49 (and that would almost certainly be a USD figure - the Australian dollar was apparently worth more than the US dollar in 1979 too! )

According to the same site, 924 was $19.99 (USD) RRP and 928 was $32.99 (USD) so I can understand why I ended up receiving 918. It also seems 924 was less widely distributed.

In any case, it is an absolute classic. A year or two ago I bought one with a box to display on the shelf in the Legotorium, and then was given a bulk lot of lego that contained most of another one. I could almost put it together without instructions as a kid, I built it that many times...