b-ran

Can't believe how organized those were! I bet that had to be a lot of fun to go through

I really like watching Jangbricks the best. His videos are very professional, generally very short (a 300 piece set doesn't have a 15 min review), and you don't see him fumbling with the set. Seems like picture reviews are the favorites.

Love the naturalness of the fire. Great work on the MOC!

Nice idea with the Adventurers printed pieces!

Loved the scenes on the mountains, just has a nice adventurous feel. Of course I also loved the forced perspective.

For $50, I think you did well!

This is a very well done castle, especially for a first MOC. I am impressed! It looks good, and the playability is fabulous.

Great work on the stadium, and thank you for sharing it with us!

Thank you for verifying it will run in Windows 8.1. I did to compatibility mode, and it seemed to get further into startup, but I still received an error. I'm thinking my security software is stopping it for some reason. This helps me isolate it to not being a Windows 8.1 problem.

Have there been any known issues with Windows 8.1? I have tried using, and I just get a message that "Brickficiency has stopped working." It then closes. Seems like a great software.

Really like the colors with the water, the trees, accent colors on the castle. Inspirational!

I have hovered around here for a few months, have posted a couple things, but haven't formally introduced myself. Figured I would do that now. Not sure how many people read the introductions. I am from the Northern parts of the United States. Here is my brief story: I remember as a kid in the early 90s staying with my cousin who had a Black Seas Barracuda ship. I loved that set! It was too expensive unfortunately, and I never received it. I did receive a bucket of Lego, and would get a few of the really small pirate sets. Those didn't feel the void of the Black Seas Barracuda, but they were still enjoyed. I quickly outgrew the sets as a kid, and never really got full into Lego, but always had the desire. Fast forward 15 years to my son's birthday. My wife asked if I wanted to get him a bucket of Lego for his birthday. She had no idea what she was starting.... It brought back a wave of excitement for a new set that I remembered years ago. I eventually got a set for Christmas (7345 Transport Chopper), and was hooked. A couple months later, I was browsing Craigslist and saw a posting for a huge used lot. The first picture I saw showed the hull of the the Black Seas Barracuda. I called, met up with him, and purchased the lot. Not only did I get my childhood dream set (which is proudly displayed), but was a nice collection of other 90s sets that I would have had if I had the means at the time. I enjoy the many tips and tricks, inspirational MOCs, and helpful people here on Eurobricks!

With brands like Kleenex, BandAid, or Aspirin, they struggle more with their names being used to describe a type of product due to other products being of almost -- if not equal -- quality. I think Lego will be able to go to the levels of the Kleenex, BandAid or Aspirin through just being much higher quality than the others, and being able to brand themselves differently. Unfortunately, there are plenty who still use Lego as a synonym for any building block toy, but I don't think it is as bad, or ever will be as bad as other brands. I don't know of anyone so loyal to the brands of Kleenex, Bandaid, etc that will get so angry over using the wrong name because they value the brand like we will with Lego :)

It is a bubble that is going to pop. I have watched various Lego investing sites for the past few months pretty regularly. I see so many posts of people pulling money out of their 401ks, spending "all I had this week", etc on sets that they anticipate reselling. Some can do it successfully, but some seem to be spreading themselves too thin. Some get into it to help subsidize their Lego hobby, I know I have been tempted to do so. However, I fully believe the market just won't hold. There are a couple major items to any market: (1) scarcity and (2) information. There has been a large increase in the number of "resellers" or "investors" in the secondary market the past couple of years. These people are stockpiling massive collections (literally massive, like storage units full) of sets for sale later based on historical times when there was significant scarcity for a particular retired set. With the increase in resellers, scarcity will go down, and profits will go down. We won't see the extreme EOL gains on these sets any longer since there will be literally hundreds, if not thousands in the secondary market. There simply will be too much supply for the demand. Another aspect of scarcity is in my mind, I would rather just buy the sets coming out from Lego at much cheaper prices. Lego investors are primarily targeting AFOLs coming out of the dark ages. As a recent AFOL out of the dark ages, I have wanted retired sets, but filled that void with new sets coming out as I can't pay the prices for the retired sets on the secondary market. I can buy loads of sets with thousands of pieces for the price of a Green Grocer. Information: This will hit the Lego secondary market in a couple of ways. Information regarding Lego investing is becoming widely disseminated. With stocks (pretty much worldwide), there is widely available information out in the public. Any information not in the public is illegal to make investment decisions on. Due to this, stocks will pretty much reprice based on any information out in the public, and no one usually has information that the general public don't. This is the efficient market theory which minimizes the quick profits. The same will occur with Lego, it is no longer a secret regarding the money to be made with them. That information will bring down the price as more and more investors flood to sell (back to scarcity), and there will no longer be a price gap due to misinformation (few people knowing the value of Lego retired sets). It isn't the resellers that ramp up the prices, but the buyers who buy at those prices. If you have no buyers at a particular price point, sellers won't sell. The prices wouldn't be where they are if there wasn't a market for them at that price. I only do get frustrated with them purchasing up all the deals so quickly, but I don't know that it is them solely responsible for out of stock items. I don't have anything against them personally, as I know there are lots making good money. To each there own, but these are my personal thoughts on the future of the Lego secondary market. I hope to some degree parting out stays around as I do like being able to stock up on a lot of certain pieces rather than trying to buy whole sets with pieces and minifigures I don't need or want.

I know this has been said, but I wanted to add my enjoyment of the progression of the milecastle and learning more about these. Just fantastic! The fire in the final scenes was one of my favorites as the fire pieces were coming off the building at natural angles.