Pick a Brick merging with Bricks & Pieces

I wonder what this means about the quantity we can order? Is the 200-part limit going to be lifted, or only for the PAB parts?

Edit: Also, will they fix the issue where if you accidentally order more than 200 between two B&P orders the second order gets cancelled in it's entirety, but only sometimes so it's clearly not automated?

It all sounds promising.

In theory.

Next step: open and run a BL store that integrates with their main site and port this over there?

Sounds good. I didn't even know pick a brick was available online. I thought bricks & pieces was the only option.

Yesterday I bought at Bricks and pieces. What would happen with it now? I'm nervous by the way ??

this seems good! I had no idea about bricks and pieces until late last year and it's been a huge boon for my mocs. hopefully this merges the best things about both and doesn't end up being like when they converted VIP points...

I hope you can still put a set number in and see all of the parts.
It sounds like lots of parts will get dearer if they are trying to equalise prices and qualify towards promos.

I thought I was ordering from one platform the whole time. So whatever. The best part of this announcement is the shipping times. Great improvement.

It's not a store, it's an "experience".

lol

Are these changes also going to affect the missing/replacement bricks process?

"Cautiously optimistic" indeed.

I've used the Bricks and Pieces service in the past and always found the experience a little awkward, especially without the ability to save the content of my shopping cart and continue a session later. Hopefully this will be addressed now. Also, it'll be great if shipping time to Canada is reduced as the article says, previously my orders used to come all the way from Germany and took weeks to arrive.

Overall great news. Like many, I didn’t know about B&P until I think Jangbricks mentioned something... So having both combined will be SO much easier.
Being a replacement service, I’m sure that they will retain searching by set and part(s) number, but I look forward to hopefully searching through B&P by type/colour, too, since I don’t always have part numbers at hand, and simply browsing by sets is always so slow.
I know that with the two current platforms we already have “split carts”, but I’m imagining that this might end up being the most frustrating aspect of the new system in practice. We’ll see...
Overall a good move, though.

I just wandered over to online Pick A Brick for the first time a few weeks ago. I wasn't very surprised to find higher prices than BaP for the same pieces there, and I'm also not very surprised to see that they're merging the platforms. I'm honestly surprised it didn't happen sooner! Hopefully prices don't increase too much, and I'm excited to get pieces more easily (and have them count towards GWPs)!

@CCC said:
" @eiffel006 said:
"I’m also curious to see the effect this will have on Bricklink. "

Me too. For run-of-the-mill unprinted parts then I imagine BL will still be cheaper as LEGO's pricing can be rather high. Whereas for new and especially printed parts, I usually use Bricks and Pieces.

But if more people know about the wider selection available direct from LEGO, it might hit BL sales.
"

It might hit BL sales, but at the same time, BL is generally way cheaper (except when you need several orders coming from different locations, then shipping costs might be an issue).

I usually like buying printed pieces or even clear pieces on BL as many BL sellers are way more careful with the parts they sale than LEGO. They'll pack them individually, etc.

Yay! I just found out about Bricks & Pieces yesterday, and it has such a better selection than Pick-A-Brick! I wasn't sure if I could get anything from it though as everything was defaulting to Australasian Dollar. Glad it will count toward promos, not too sure if I like this split basket idea though...

"Orders must meet a minimum threshold of €12 to waive an order fee of €3 for Bestsellers and €6 for non-bestsellers. Fees in other regions have not yet been disclosed."
https://www.brothers-brick.com/2022/01/12/lego-to-merge-online-pick-a-brick-with-bricks-pieces-starting-february/

This will make it much more expensive to make small orders, having to pay a €6 fee, or €3 if the parts are among the 1,600 most "popular". :((

I wonder if the shipping cost still will be as low as on B&P (around €1, at least for small orders)? I doubt it...

I am excited about this change and hope that it goes smoothly. I've never liked the interface for either, so I hope that is more intuitive and user friendly. I was going to place a big PaB order this week, but now I'll wait until the change has been made later this month.

As I live in the US, and use B&P on the regular for years now, this is HUGE! Anything to speed up shipping is a godsend, as I always have to wait weeks/month+ for my orders to unexpectedly arrive (on account of no tracking).

I never understood why you would use PaB over B&P when the latter has such a fuller catalog, but with the introduction of a US facility with “bestseller” parts shipping much faster, I can easily see myself ordering frequently from both US and Billund; ordering the more generic filler from US and the more exotic parts from Denmark. Hopefully then I can get like half of my past “full” orders in much faster.

If someone could make a spreadsheet with the prices of a number of parts "before" and "after" that would no doubt be useful to the community.

I found 'Pick a Brick' has a limited range (1400 pieces) of fixed colours, just an extension of the buckets in the Lego Shop. 'Bricks and Pieces' is more extensive and easy to navigate via set number if don't know the design ID, but always 'out of stock' for the most popular pieces in discontinued sets. Overall I can see the former just disappearing. I don't think Bricklink needs to worry as both sites are more expensive, with less pieces and 5-week delivery delays?

I've been using the BrickHunter browser plugin for BAP orders for over a year now. That has been a lifesaver from a UX standpoint. It will totally break with TLG's redesign though, so I'm hoping whatever TLG does still provides the same piece selection with some easier search, filter, save capabilities.

@gatorbug6 said:
"Over anything I want a user interface overhaul. Bricks and Pieces is so slow and hard to use. If a set has 150+ parts available, I shouldn't have to keep hitting that load button and scrolling. it should all load at once. There should be a category filter too. I wish there was a way to type a common search term in like 'computer' and have it come up with tagged items. That's wishful thinking thought. They def should put limits on the new animals (sheep took 5 months to get checking multiple times everyday) for the first few months and allow in stock notifications for high demand parts."
Only 5 months? That’s nothing. I’ve been after a particular piece for over 6 months. Have checked almost every day. SIX £%€\*¥ MONTHS!

I completely agree with what you said by the way.

Looks like some good changes in there, but will reserve judgement until it is up and running as if it is anything like what they have done to the wishlist on shop at home it will be a case of breaking something that was fix in the name of "improving" it. Seriously though, what is with the new wishlist format, didn't realise how bad it was till was adding the new sets for this year and hit the 25 items per wishlist limit, so dumb!

The best feature of Pick-a-Brick is the ability to choose by colour (I mentioned/recommended to Lego to offer that capability to Bricks & Pieces numerous time). If we can choose by colour on the new platform then, to me, this will be one of the best move this company has made in recent years - they had many screw-ups but I'm always ready to give credit when credit is due - but first, let's see if this option will be available. Imagine going there and asking: of all the pieces that are currently in production, show me everything in (let's say) sand green. Then you can see what's available and plan your moc accordingly. I never suffered anything about the 200 limit - I usually order pieces by the 000s and it is split about 40/60 PaB/B&P - It was however a pain to check each part on both platform to find the cheapest and delivery times were horrendous. I am cautiously optimistic.

Now the next thing we need is: Lego starting producing parts in colours in high demand on Bricklink. I.e.: For each parts on Bricklink there is a value of how many parts people have placed on their wish list for each and every colour (available or not)

@daewoo said:
"I am excited about this change and hope that it goes smoothly. I've never liked the interface for either, so I hope that is more intuitive and user friendly. I was going to place a big PaB order this week, but now I'll wait until the change has been made later this month."

If I'd be you, I'd do the exact opposite. I would rush my order before the change happens.

@ytjedi said:
"I've been using the BrickHunter browser plugin for BAP orders for over a year now. That has been a lifesaver from a UX standpoint. It will totally break with TLG's redesign though, so I'm hoping whatever TLG does still provides the same piece selection with some easier search, filter, save capabilities."

didn't know what brickhunter was, but after looking it up, that's exactly what I've needed lol. the most annoying part about buying parts was not being able to upload a full parts list to LEGO. Hopefully these features will be fully integrated into the new platform

“I would also highlight that elements with different prices between the present Pick a Brick and Bricks & Pieces platforms will now have the same price, as described in the above press release.”

Oh, darn. Here I was hoping it would randomly assign one price or the other for each piece that you add to your basket.

@piteous:
Nope. Holiday penalty. If you order a set, someone picks up _a_ box, and it’s ready to be packed and shipped. If you order the same set as loose pieces, it could take a few hours for one person to pull, and count, and bag, all the parts you ordered. Last year they even shut down B&P orders for the holiday shopping season and didn’t turn them back on until they could see post-holiday daylight.

@crankybricks:
Years ago I wanted to make parking lots, so I needed to order at least 1000x black 2x2 tiles. And there was a 200pc limit on each element. I discovered that you could “+1” the item, and it would let you exceed that limit. I did this _EIGHT_HUNDRED_TIMES_. Later, I bounced a message to my LUG, letting them know about this handy trick. One of the other members responded that your B&P order shows up as an item in your shopping cart...and that you can change the number of “bags” you want to buy.

Previously I've found it hard to access one of these two systems (I believe Pick a Brick is in the LEGO shop while Bricks and Pieces you have to access through customer service or something like that) so putting them in both places sounds like a great move!

Pick-a-Brick never had a the greatest selection, and Bricks and Pieces was awful to navigate through unless you knew exactly what parts (or sets of parts) you were looking for... and managed to unlearn hitting your browsers back button.

This merging is long overdue, and I'm excited to see it!!

About a year ago it occurred to me that as more people discovered B&P and began to use it, LEGO would notice an increase in the resources needed to fulfill orders and something would eventually change. With the acquisition of Bricklink, my first thought was that they would spin off B&P into some kind of "Official LEGO Bricklink Storefront" and remove the option from their website.

While I'm still interested in seeing whether TLG will do anything with a BL storefront, this merge indicates that there has been a substantial increase in usage of B&P and some internal restructuring in needed to continue offering the current variety of parts without drastic price jumps.

Huh, this is a bit surprising. I knew that the experience was sometimes annoying, but I would've thought they'd decide to slash it rather than trying to revamp and improve it, given that it seems to require a tremendous amount of effort to sort everything on their end. I'll be interested to see how this plays out; currently appreciate the large selection of pieces they offer, even the more uncommon ones, so hopefully those aren't removed from the system to make it more streamline.

It was about time they merged these two categories. I am a part of LEGO comunnity for nearly 7 years and I still can't tell the difference. :P

lego.com not shipping in Greece for the majority of these 7 years didn't help either. At least there are somereally basic pieces (really really basic - bricks, slopes, plates, tiles mainly) on lego.com/gr but nothing compared to other countries where sheep, mammoths, elephants etc could be ordered. Hopefully by merging those two categories worldwide, we can have a full pallet of pieces in our part of the world too.

The only part that sounds like it might be clunky still is the “standard” vs. “bestseller” terminology. By name alone, at least, I don’t see why “standard” bricks couldn’t also be bestsellers…Maybe it’ll make more sense seeing it in place I guess.

As long as I can still get animals and specific Minifigures parts, I'm fine with it.

This is great news as having two separate systems with different parts available is horrible. However, I’m not too crazy about this US warehouse deal. Does this mean that I’ll have two separate carts and both will have to reach $35 to get free shipping? I understand that this should reduce their expenses, but it will greatly increase our expenses.

I think it's great that they're looking to revamp this side of their business, I'm using it more and more.

I do hope they'll improve the UI significantly, that's the biggest pain I have with the curent system. Alternatively let us upload lists made on other websites, I already maintain a parts wishlist on Brickset for example, but that's likely wishlful thinking.

My guess is that they intend to tie this into the now official Studio and wtv plans they have for Bricklink.

@CCC said:
"It will also be good if they get rid of the items they never have in stock. Something like 80% of the minifigure torsos on B+P never come back into stock and are from themes long gone and are unlikely to retun."

Front-end, yeah that makes sense. Doing so for set inventories (which you can search by) however would also mean things like Brickset lose access to that data... Though I find it unlikely they would remove those.

I'm guessing this means the API might change...

@magmafrost:
Oh, they’ve made a few positive changes over the years. My favorite of recent years is the queueing system, though there are ways they could improve that still. At some point they added PayPal support, but I have no idea when that was. Rolling back the short-lived requirement where you had to check a box in the middle of checkout to say that yes, you absolutely did want the GWP that you were about to qualify for was another great change, albeit one where they first had to implement that system (another member of my LUG missed out on the Shadow ARF Trooper because he missed that detail, but I think several years later he was able to grab one when they resurfaced briefly). I think there used to be a problem with GWPs not stacking, and B&P may not have allowed outright purchases (being originally set up to handle replacements for lost/broken parts).

Now, that’s not to say everything is perfect. There are certain sets that you almost have to search by set number to find, because they don’t seem to fall into any of the Theme categories, and they’re not in the Seasonal section. Queueing has to be manually turned on/off, rather than being set up to automatically react to heavy traffic (meaning they have to predict its need beforehand). I enjoy the physical VIP Reward options, but I know that, and the points shuffle they needed to implement it, are still somewhat divisive topics (it doesn’t help that people don’t have an easy way to gauge how much rebate they qualify for at any moment, and they absolutely need to do better than 2021 with handling demand for the physical items). But even so, I remember a time when you had to fill out order forms and mail them in an envelope with payment included. That system sucked so bad that I used it precisely zero times.

As for how this will impact Australia, I would guess you’ll see it go live when Europe does, since you’ve often been serviced from there. Note that they didn’t mention any additional warehouses outside of the one planned for the US. If you do get one, anticipate it being in China, for the same reason Canada isn’t getting their own.

@The_Toniboeh:
It was originally set up just to handle replacement parts, while Online PaB was for bulk part purchases. But people wanted to _buy_ the range of parts offered through B&P, and a lot of people probably just submitted for tons of free “replacement” parts because that was the only easy workaround. So they shrugged their shoulders and added the option to purchase. It’s still not intended for large bulk purchases, which might explain why it takes forever to ship at certain times of year.

This merge will be tolerable as long as I can still search by set and see all parts for a set, and search by element id to see all available colors for that part.

I'd like to see improvement to the amount of parts you can view at once (or some way to load in all parts for a set in one go instead of having to repeatedly click the 'Load more' button), and a better way to search for printed parts - currently you have to know the set the part is included in then load the inventory and scan thru it; the element ids are unique for printed parts and not the same as what's indicated at bricklink or rebrickable (they us their own id system).

Currently, after you save a Bricks & Pieces order it will appear in you shopping cart and you have the ability to edit it to add/remove/modify the parts selection up until you decide to pay for the order. So there has always been a method to save your progress if it's taking a while to gather all the parts you desire in one session (not sure if that also holds the parts for you; I've not had any problems with losing out that way but never sat on a B&P order for more than a few days).

If they're merging this all into the B&P model, the interface could do with some additional search and filtering criteria like they offered in Pick-a-Brick, would definitely be useful.

The best improvement will be having all orders apply towards GWP thresholds. Like many here I exclusively ordered parts in the past thru B&P and lost out on that dollar amount contributing towards GWPs.

I’ve never heard of bricks and pieces.

@Mitchsmini:
Keep in mind that the first UCS ISD stayed in production through the color change. As they ran out of old grey parts, they started subbing in new grey. As they did that, they updated the set inventory to point at the new greys. I took a quick peek through the wedge plates, and they all came up Med Stone Grey, even for the old Space wings that are no longer produced
And aren’t available as replacement parts.

If the first two years had it in either shade of grey, they probably used up any remaining old grey parts during the production run. The last copy to roll off the line was probably all bleys. Any remaining parts that managed to stick around would have been thrown out years ago to make room in the warehouse for all the other parts they have to stock now.

Gah! No! The last time I placed an order through Bricklink was about two years ago. That was for parts I used to build and refine Starro the Conqueror over the four shows we did before the pandemic, and (more importantly) it was before Bricklink started forcing buyers in the US to use onsite PayPal on a site that has not been given a ground-up rebuild since getting hacked into oblivion. Twice.

I just placed my second pandemic B&P order to get parts that I mostly would have ordered on BL in the past. Until I can find a way to buffer my PayPal account from anyone who may have hacked into BL, they’re off-limits.

@ALEXDTI:
Online PaB was geared towards bulk purchases with large quantities of a few elements, it could trigger free shipping on its own, and it qualified for GWPs. B&P was more geared for one-off replacement parts, had a much wider selection of parts, needed a foot in the door to trigger free shipping, and didn’t count at all towards any GWP.

@bricks4everyone:
I just ran into that problem. The trick is, you need to close the bag before exiting the browser. Then you can go to your shopping cart and reopen the bag to keep changing the contents. If the bag is open when the browser is closed, or your device crashes, all the parts spill out.

@PurpleDave said:
" @magmafrost :
Oh, they’ve made a few positive changes over the years. My favorite of recent years is the queueing system, though there are ways they could improve that still. At some point they added PayPal support, but I have no idea when that was. "

Paypal support still isnt available in Australia LMAO. They only made it available in a tiny handful of countries for absolutely no discernible reason. Though I agree it was a good change for those who got it. Cant say I've ever experienced the queueing system personally

Meanwhile our only official way to buy loose parts, outside of LUGBULK, is still the Pick A Brick wall. The only Bricks and Pieces service available to us is free part replacements in actual missing/broken parts incidents. I find the idea of Bricks and Pieces selling parts strange.

@ArmoredBricks said:
"If someone could make a spreadsheet with the prices of a number of parts "before" and "after" that would no doubt be useful to the community."

How?

I mean we could whine a lot about 'part X being too expensive' or praise the €0.02 drop in price of part Y, but how would that really help us?

I never could tell the difference. Isn't Pick-a-Brick the one where you order parts on LEGO.com, and Bricks & Pieces the wall of parts in a brick-and-mortar Lego store?

Funny, I've been suggesting TLG do this for a while now...wonder if they'll get on that P.O.D. idea I had...

I sure hope they make it possible to import a selection, save or continue purchase at a later time. Today your selection is gone once your session cookie times out.

@magmafrost:
I’ve hit the queue a few times. Other times I experienced the reason there is a queueing system. In the latter, you just land in an error message page, with no indication of when things will clear up. A lot of people missed out on the Ulysses because of this, as it actually changes your URL, so refreshing just keeps you on the error message. I don’t know if the error message pops up randomly and some people are able to get through, with error messages persisting until they finish up and leave in enough quantity to reduce server load to manageable levels, or if everyone gets the error message at the same time, and it only goes away when enough people give up and exit the site.

The queueing system sends you to a page that explains that server load is too high, and that people are getting let in as other people exit the site. It gives you a status bar that refreshes automatically and even includes a number showing how many people are in front of you in line. The number counts down surprisingly quickly, as there are tons of shoppers checking out all at the same time (plus others probably give up and try again later). But once you’re past the gate, the only way you should end up stuck in the same situation is if you accidentally exit the site, or if you refresh the page.

@Slithus_Venom:
Pick-A-Brick is the wall of loose parts at physical LEGO Stores or LEGOLAND stores. There’s also an online version which, like the physical walls, has had very limited part selection. Search is handled by part category or color.

Bricks & Pieces is exclusively online (or by phone), and was developed primarily as a way to handle replacement part requests if they were missing, lost, wrong, or damaged. Previously this service had been exclusively handled over the phone, which limits you to business hours and requires that the customer be able to accurately explain what they were missing. Search is handled by design number or what set it was included in.

One word: finally!

I hope this doesn't remove parts that would otherwise have been available, like some of the hair pieces and minifig torsos that only appear in one set currently.
I also fear a price increase for many parts rather than decrease.

Now when I use google sheets to compare prices of set inventories it only needs to be Bricklink vs LEGO now, and I don't need to check both of LEGO's services. Huge win. Have I ever actually tried to buy the parts from the cheapest source after spending hours inserting price data? No. But this way I'll lose less time!

Sounds good to me! The first time I tried ordering pieces from Lego irritated me to no end. Obviously I caught on pretty fast, but I still thought the system was weird. These new changes should be great!

Noooooooo....
I see why they want to do this, it seemed odd to have 2 systems.
For me in Australia pick-a-brick has free postage over $150 and bricks-and-pieces has flat rate $15 postage.

@bmerigan:
My read is that the new hybrid system should have free shipping at $150 AUD, and stack with any other product you order from them at the same time, like sets. If you order less than $150, I would expect shipping to be charged as normal for anything ranging from a keychain on clearance to a set that costs $149.99. I don’t know which system you prefer, but living in the US I can’t even imagine being happy about $15 flat-rate shipping. Much of the time I’d expect to come out better on metered shipping. $15 generally comes with some sort of premium service, like expedited delivery and/or signature required.

I'm a little surprised to see Lego wanting to directly encroach on Bricklink sellers, as Bricklink sellers help Lego retailers clear unwanted inventory and make more shelf space available for new sets.

I also suspect if Lego are going to compete head-on, Bricklink sellers will respond by moving into reselling used parts, which means Lego risks also losing part of the MOC parts market altogether (that they previously had indirectly via new set partouts).

@jemili:
Some Bricklink sellers also cause them no end of headaches by monopolizing stock of new sets right after they’re released. There was a stretch sometime in the last 5-10 years where LEGO Stores stopped carrying shared exclusives. You could still buy them online, but the physical stores stopped getting any shipments. When I asked about this, I was told that while they might get over 100 copies of a comparable regular set, for something like 76040, they might only get a dozen copies total for launch. Resellers would often show up before the store opens on days when these sets would release and buy every copy before they had been open more than a few minutes. Then regular customers would come in all day looking for a single copy, go home empty-handed, and scorch the ear of some poor customer service rep who was unlucky enough to answer the phone when they called.

I’ve also seen the claim that Bricklink sellers clear out old unwanted stock before, but the money on new elements is better soon after launch, so more copies will probably be parted out early in the set’s life cycle than during the last few months before the set retires. Ideally, they don’t want any sets to last long enough to land in a clearance section. Large clearance stock is a problem for their retail partners because they earn almost no profit, or even take a loss, on these sets. It also tarnishes the image of the brand to have piles of unwanted merch that can’t even sell at a steep discount.

@PurpleDave

Bricklink sellers rarely by new sets at release at RRP. The value of the parts within the set fall over the lifetime of the set, and the sellers don't want to hold inventory which is rapidly depreciating. Bricklink stores buy the vast majority of their stock at clearance, when they know the price won't fall any further.

While ideally retailers wouldn't have to clearance stock, in the real world it does happen, and retailers need a channel to dispose of this slow moving stock. A large proportion of the Vidiyo, Hidden Side and Lego Movie 2 range ended up in the hands of Bricklink sellers for exactly this reason. Bricklink sellers are a buyer of last resort who give stores an avenue to free up shelf space that is better than selling it to liquidators for cents on the dollar.

@jemili:
That depends entirely on the seller. Some only buy used collections to sort through and list as Used parts (after taking what they want to keep). Some only buy at clearance to maximize long-term profits. But some absolutely will buy new sets because they realize there’s a limited market for early sales of exclusive minifigs and parts at higher prices before the market normalizes. Some buy new sets on release to keep the minifigs or the models, and sell what they don’t want. Some buy up as many sets as they can on launch to resell at a markup as sealed sets. Now, most of the latter takes place on Amazon or eBay, but it absolutely does on Bricklink, too.

@PurpleDave

Sealed set resellers are really a different kettle of fish and won't be impacted much by Lego's moves here.

I want to reassure you that it's not Bricklink part sellers buying up large quantities of sets soon after release. Yes, the parts are worth more soon after release, but the sets also cost significantly more initially as well. It's a very risky move buying early and hoping to sell early enough to still make a profit. If you estimate wrong you are stuck with rapidly depreciating product that you purchased at a premium. Few sellers are willing to take that risk, which is why there isn't much stock available initially, which is why prices are high initially. Prices really fall when large volumes of inventory arrive, which occurs after the sets are clearanced, and sellers gain confidence that the prices have bottomed.

It's not just Bricklink sellers who will be impacted if Lego moves more aggressively into part sales. Fewer bricklink sellers means less demand for clearanced / liquidated sets, which means more risk to retailers if they stock an unsuccessful range or order too much inventory, which means more conservative buying behaviour from retailers, which means less range and product available to the general public. Retailers really do rely on having someone to act as a buyer of last resort for sets that customers aren't interested in or they ordered too much of.

@jemili:
You’re sounding like the sort of person who has developed a strategy that works for you, but maybe made some faulty assumptions, like that this is the only strategy that can possibly work, that everyone else is using the same strategy, that everyone else is successful, and that everyone else has the same definition of success.

There are sellers on BL who have no idea what they’re doing, who buy sets to part out, underprice everything to generate brisk sales, and who eventually find that the sales dry up and they have no money left to reinvest. They equate sales with profit, and don’t have a clue how to calculate their actual ROI, or they’d know it’s in the toilet.

There are sellers who complain about them because they can sell water in a desert, but not if someone’s sitting next to them giving bottles away for free. They do well when the market heavily favors sellers, but don’t really know how to determine which sets will be the most profitable vs which sets will be the safest investment, and they keep getting burned because they expect the market to conform to their assumptions.

There are sellers who _can_ sell water in a desert when someone next to them is giving it away for free, because they know how to make a more appealing offer. They absolutely do buy new release sets, they absolutely do part them out, they charge _above_ market average, and they’ve been selling for years while people in the first two groups keep going out of business. I know this to be true because I’ve bought from some of them for years.

I’ve built MOCs where I spent far more on shipping than I did on parts. Having the lowest price doesn’t mean jack if I have to place two dozen orders just to build a 200pc model. It’s even worse when one or two of those sellers only invoice or ship once per week, and an order placed with plenty of lead time arrives the day after I needed the parts.

If I can satisfy an entire Want List from one store, pay one modest shipping fee, get fast turnaround, and never worry about the accuracy of my order, it’s worth paying 10, 20, even 50 percent above market average. Those sellers quickly recoup the cost of the set on the minifigs and exclusive elements, so they can afford to buy piles of new release sets to part out before the market is saturated. They rest of the set adds to their immense selection, which helps them keep that “one stop shopping” status that keeps customers returning. To stay at the top like that, they also have to be able to size up new sets and tell whether they’re safe investments, or if they’ll end up with a pile of chaff that you’d only get rid of if you use it as packing material.

But that’s only the for-profit side of things. Not all Bricklink sellers are actively trying to turn a profit. Some just want to unload the parts they don’t care about, and will purposefully price them to move. Some buy sets for the minifigs, or the rest of the model, and use Bricklink to liquidate the unwanted part of the set. If they can recoup most of the cost of the set, that makes what they do keep a lot less expensive, which is a win in their books.

As for the clearance thing, yes, in cases where they don’t manage to sell everything, stores do need someone to buy them on clearance. It doesn’t have to be resellers, though. One of the co-founders of my LUG didn’t like paying more than 25% of MSRP for any set, and back when this set came out would regularly wipe out clearance aisles to fuel his personal collection. I’ve picked up several sets that were retiring that way, including nearly 40 Dimensions Aquaman sets (they cost as much as the going rate for Aquaman minifigs with no tridents, so I figured it’s better to have the extra parts than not). Vidiyo is the one exception. The main buyers of those are likely to be people who are willing to buy everything, open them all, and sell the minifigs they don’t want to keep. They may collect a few of them, but boxes is what kept people away from them. Clearance prices don’t mean you can suddenly identify the contents by feel.

@eiffel006 said:
" @CCC said:
" @eiffel006 said:
"I’m also curious to see the effect this will have on Bricklink. "

Me too. For run-of-the-mill unprinted parts then I imagine BL will still be cheaper as LEGO's pricing can be rather high. Whereas for new and especially printed parts, I usually use Bricks and Pieces.

But if more people know about the wider selection available direct from LEGO, it might hit BL sales.
"

It might hit BL sales, but at the same time, BL is generally way cheaper (except when you need several orders coming from different locations, then shipping costs might be an issue).

I usually like buying printed pieces or even clear pieces on BL as many BL sellers are way more careful with the parts they sale than LEGO. They'll pack them individually, etc. "

Agreed.
And in regards to the fluctuation of sales, either way, it's just moving profit from one pocket to the other.

Contrary to plans outlined above, both services now appear to be down/withdrawn as Bricks and Pieces is no longer accessible too.

I will just say i make a order 14 december where is dont have the requirements for the GWP 40484. But today my brick and piece get shipped and the new things is brick and piece count too GWP, and the funny part is that the old order from 14 december today also get the GWP 40484 shipped so yeah? (And yes with the brick and piece i meet the requirements to the GWP of cause)