Building the new LinkedIn Logo in LEGO bricks for the Mountain View lobby required me to buy a huge number of specific bricks in the same color. This is useful because you can order any brick in production. Limitations are that you cannot order bricks that are out of production, and fulfillment times are often 10-15 business days for large orders.2) Fax an order to LEGO. The LinkedIn logo required over 5,000 blue 2x8 bricks as the primary component of the construction. For large, detailed orders you can call the LEGO store at 1-800-835-4386, and they will give you a fax number for the order. Unfortunately, fulfillment times here depend on brick type - I ended up waiting 6-7 weeks for some components of the order. Also, LEGO seems to have no concept of shipping notifications or tracking for orders placed this way.3) Local LEGO stores "Pick a Brick". I used both the Valley Fair and Hillsborough stores to acquire bricks at times. You can buy bricks three ways: a small cup for $7.99, a large cup for $14.99, and an entire box for $70.
As you can imagine, you are somewhat limited by your ability (or patience) in terms of cramming different brick types into containers. Most clerks will tell you that you can't buy bricks by the box - they are mistaken. Ask to talk to a manager, and they will sell you a box, but only if they have more than one in the back. They are not allowed to sell "the last box."The biggest limitation of this approach is that not only do stores not stock all brick types or colors, they also have no ability to "special order" Pick-a-Brick bricks. They get fulfillment once a week, and have no control over which bricks they receive. The trick is to call ahead, and be flexible with your design to adapt to the bricks they do have.4) Bricklink. For example, getting 20-30 small 1x2 tiles to finish off the base edges of the lettering. Bricklink is relatively slow on fulfillment, and it's common to get bricks that are discolored by age or cleaning. This means they may not match other orders of a similar brick.
It's also very hard to get large orders of many brick types & colors.Overall, for the LinkedIn in LEGO project I purchased approximately 12,000+ bricks. 8,000 I was able to get over 7-8 weeks from a Fax order to LEGO. /) and click on "Buy Lego." BrickLink is a kind of Craigslist for Lego bricks -- you can get pretty much any kind ever made, in any color it was made in./PAB/ Prices aren't great but they are actually roughly about the same as what you would pay in a boxed set.In the customer service section of the LEGO Shop at Home website, go to “Bricks and Pieces” and “I want to buy a piece”. This section lets you call up a part number or set number and see the list of parts. You can order up to 200 of at least 10 types at a time of whichever parts are in stock, albeit at a price that is higher than the mean price in sets. What you gain in direct applicability to your model, you pay for in higher price per piece. first to compare prices because new parts can be either cheap or expensive.
Sometimes the lack of availability or the high price on Bricklink means that the Shop at Home option is most convenient.I have made a couple of orders for my BB-8 Droid. In some cases I wanted a higher quantity of a piece than Bricklink could offer. If you take into account your time in making multiple orders, the convenience of a single source of new parts can work out cheaper overall.If you want gears, axles and pins then normal Technic kits have loads of them. Motors would be bought individually as Power Functions items from LEGO Shop at Home. I would usually go for new motors or other complex functional elements because I know their history. In quite a few locally-sourced 2nd hand lots I’ve had in the past, it seems the owners may have lost interest when the motors burned out.I found it tricky to get pneumatic parts or belts from LEGO Shop customer services; they always show as “out of stock”. LEGO Education may be a better source of belts as those kits use them more. I look at the latest sets containing pneumatics for those parts.
At the moment the Bucket Wheel Excavator 42055 has a large selection of parts for a reasonable price. £180 for almost 4000 parts works out at 4.5p/piece, a lot cheaper than individual parts from LEGO Shop at Home, so a couple of those for the bulk and fewer specific orders might be the cheapest way to do it. You may also find a discount of up to 20% in toy retailers at this time of year (October) because toy retailers make most of their sales in the run up to Christmas.I suggest Bricklink for the cheapest route, but have fun searching through the categories of Technic pieces, as they do have multiple names and can be considered different things. and click on the Bricks and Pieces tab, where you can independently order however many pieces you need, it’ll be slightly more expensive than Bricklink, but it seems better to find the parts.They tend to have packages of specific pieces. You can order any individual LEGO pieces from the online stores there. Create a Just Bricks account and you'll:
- Receive exclusive offers via email (no spam, promise) - Browse and Checkout much faster - Access your purchase history and change your detailsOfficial LEGO stores have this awesome feature called the Pick-A-Brick Wall, also referred to as PAB-Wall. It is a section of the LEGO store where you can buy loose LEGO elements by the cup from clear plastic bins arranged on an entire wall of the store – a LEGO fan’s dream! One challenge is knowing what LEGO elements are available at the Pick-A-Brick Wall. If you live close to a LEGO store you have the privilege of checking the PAB-Wall regularly to see what’s there. However if you have to travel several hours just to get to the closest LEGO store you might want to plan ahead and make a shopping list. You may be working on a LEGO project and would really like to know if your closest LEGO store carries the elements you need in quantity. So how would you know that? You could call the store and ask if a specific element is in stock, but if you have a long shopping-list this can turn into a tedious conversation with a LEGO store-employee.
There is an online inventory of the LEGO Pick-A-Brick-Wall maintained by LEGO fans at the BrickBuildr LEGO community site, you can check it out here: PAB-Wall inventory at BrickBuildr. Unfortunately the site has a quite cumbersome method of updating (involving downloading and then re-uploading an Excel-sheet) therefore many of the store-locations have been greatly out of date. Now another LEGO fan, Daniel Walton, decided to tackle the same problem and create an online LEGO Pick-A-Brick Wall inventory with a friendlier interface, and an easier way to maintain and update the PAB-Walls by the LEGO fan community. You can simply access the site from your phone while at the store, and fix any discrepancies in the inventory. T, and I recommend you check it out. Please note that the site is very new so the Pick-A-Brick Wall inventory of many of the LEGO stores are still empty (last time I checked the Orlando store selection was completed for sure). However the PAB-Wall layout for each store is already set, so if you live near a LEGO store you can help out by filling in the PAB-Wall selection. E
ven if you can’t do the whole wall at one time, even doing a section would be of great benefit to the LEGO community. Also, the site is not just for the USA. You can add PAB-Wall inventories in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany and in the UK, and you can also request more locations. It would also be great if employees at LEGO stores would update the inventory, especially since it is so easy to do. Actually, best would be if LEGO would maintain a website like this themselves, but since they don’t, LEGO fan maintained inventories are the second best option. S, and if you live near a LEGO store please use the site to help update the inventory. I Speaking of LEGO Pick-A-Brick-Walls, you may or may not know that buying loose LEGO by the piece is also available at the Online LEGO Shop at the online Pick-A-Brick section. LEGO fans often choose BrickLink to buy specific LEGO pieces, however I highly recommend you also check the online Pick-A-Brick selection directly from LEGO. They don’t have the vast inventory of every LEGO element ever made like the community of BrickLink sellers do, however if you are looking for currently produced LEGO elements in quantities the online PAB store could be a great option. I