nemesis4670

It won''t let me start a topic.... so figured I'd share my collection for sale in some threads. Very sad to say I have to sell my giant LEGO minifigure collection. I have about 100 licensed minifigs that I'm going to be listing today as well as some high quality machine printed minifigs from the highly coveted christo7108 customs. Trying to get the word out for those who wants to get them way cheaper than his auctions sell for and much faster if you're in the US. (I ship from US rather than South Africa) Here's my eBay profile... ill be listing more and more as time goes on. It's an amazing collection for any DC, Marvel, Comic, or Star Wars fans. http://search.ebay.com/?sass=nemesis0528&ht=-1

Very sad to say I have to sell my giant LEGO minifigure collection. I have about 100 licensed minifigs that I'm going to be listing today as well as some high quality machine printed minifigs from the highly coveted christo7108 customs. Trying to get the word out for those who wants to get them way cheaper than his auctions sell for and much faster if you're in the US. (I ship from US rather than South Africa) Here's my eBay profile... ill be listing more and more as time goes on. It's an amazing collection for any DC, Marvel, Comic, or Star Wars fans. http://search.ebay.com/?sass=nemesis0528&ht=-1

He made a mistake on something and needed me to help him with a few shipments. Something along those lines. As a thank you he hooked me up with a free one. Coolest part is that minifig now goes for about $300 on eBay because of the custom made helmet. My collection of super heroes is even bigger now. About another 15 extremely awesome minifigs. I have total OCD when it comes to these things. No other LEGO theme really intriguies me as much as the DC and Marvel ones do simply because I was a huge comic book geek as a kid first and foremost. LEGO came second. The coolest part is that I just got the official 2013 DC Universe Minifigures and the machine printed ones from Christo actually look BETTER than the official LEGO. For instance Bane, Aquaman, and Comissioner Gordon are way more detailed and have sharper/higher quality printing. Christo is seriously a master of his craft and I highly recommend his work. Hey sorry... but may I suggest something? They make many mods for forum scripts like this that will auto-size photos down to whatever pixels you want. When someone posts an image over 800 pixels it would resize it down to 800 (or whatever you want) and then when a user clicks on it you can have it either expand to the full size, open in a new window full size, or create a pop up in full size. Much easier than members having to constantly resize every image especially if it's one that's not ours and is hosted on another site. I'm sure a lot of instances pop up where you want to just paste an image from another site and it becomes tedious to have to download it, resize it, and then re-upload it elsewhere just to share it. They also make mods that implement a tinypic or imgshack upload tool right into the post menu page. That way you can upload an image and select a resize option and it will even produce a proper BBC code for the forum with the reduced image. Just some suggestions to make this place better.

I can't say how but I got a Custom Flash for free in exchange for a favor. It's seriously amazing and that custom helmet just blows my mind. If you guys want more detailed photos I took some as well as a few to show off my collection of 100% machine printed minifigures. All of them are either official LEGO or high quality machine printed. No decals in the bunch. Then the last photo is one of my new cabinets I'm filling (I have 3 full of minifigures) which has star wars LEGO and some customs made with decals which I will hopefully have as machine printed instead at some point. Enjoy! LEGO & MACHINE PRINTED COLLECTION HERE ARE SOME LEGO & CUSTOMS WITH DECALS (hopefully will have machine printed versions soon)

That's cool I would love to see. Although I was referring to doing them as high quality machine prints. I consider them two totally different things. Even with waterslide decals it's just not quite there. You're referring to people offering to invest in a business that doesn't exist yet, right? Not me? I hope I'm allowed to garner information on machine printing? Never saw a rule against that. It would be pretty hard to do through PMs without knowing who to talk to first. I started this thread simply to get information on how it's done so I could invest in it myself. I didn't ask for anyone to invest in my business venture. People just said it on their own. I'm looking to go solo to be honest just to start off and once I'm established maybe I'll consider buying designs from others. I don't know if this is any help with the guys who have knowledge on this subject but Christo told me that he has to create a printing press for every unique design. So he's claiming even if it's multiple LEGO heads if they all have a different design printed on them he needs to make a separate printing press and that each press holds about 50 parts. If this sounds familiar to you and you can better narrow down what he's using that would be cool.

Thanks that was actually the first MOC I did when I got back into LEGO. I didn't have the high quality decal paper so I just used regular stickers. It would have came out better with maybe waterslide decals... and maybe I will go back and redo them when I get my hands on some and learn how to use it properly. As promised I finished my custom cafe corner interior... although all my photos are large and don't know where to host them and resize them so they fit on here within the guidelines of the forum. Any suggestions on photo host?

I meant in the sense that Green Lantern already exists as a LEGO minifig. I don't think LEGO wanted it to look like Ryan Reynolds though... more like the comic book which is more accurate IMO. But I love his version too. Are you sure that headpiece is custom? I think I've seen it before...could be wrong. I want to make characters such as the ones I named which have never been produced by or licensed to LEGO. I know christo also makes some characters that LEGO hasn't made but they pretty much are still in the same DC/Marvel universe that LEGO already released. Video game based minifigs would be a HOT commodity... especially machine printed ones in high quality. There's a guy on eBay who sells minifigs from these same video games I mentioned but he does it with decals and it's a little bit of a shoddy work. Even still he makes a fortune off them... $20 a pop and sells 100s of them. I ordered a custom Kratos and Young Link minifig from him and you have to be standing like 10 feet away for them to look like a real LEGO minifig... when you look up close it's pretty obvious that it's stickers. So it's not really the quality I prefer but a cool alternative for the time being. Machine printed no matter how close you look can look better than LEGO's printing... simply because you're printing in small qualities and so the consistency in the print quality is MUCH superior. Whereas LEGO prints millions and there are always chances of printing issues on that scale. Teaming up with someone isn't out of the question if they have designs that are in demand. But I already pretty much have the designs for the video game characters I would like to produce. They just need to be edited to be transparent I'm assuming for the machine printing process. I'll figure it out when I get my hands on the machine but I think that's how it has to be. I think my first line of minifigs would be Cloud Strife, Sephiroth, Squall Leonhart, Gordon Freeman, G-Man, Solid Snake, Link from Zelda, and a combo of Chris and Claire Redfield with a zombie. My goal is the quality that christo produces and possibly even better by adding some stuff from brickforge and stuff. Things like the buster sword and crowbars will make all the difference. I have to see how hard it is to print on rounded surfaces... because if I could I would even go as far as to print red handle on the silver brickforge crowbars to make it perfectly accurate to Gordon Freemans crowbar. Stuff like that would be my dream. To make something that looks as good as LEGO produces if not better. I know it would make a fortune but primarily I just want them for myself.. I would seriously have a blast creating any minifig I can dream up. Don't get me wrong... I love his minifigs. Nickfury

Actually what I was saying was that the current machine printers PRIMARILY do licensed characters. Their imagination seems limited to stuff LEGO has already put out rather than making stuff we can't get. Like video game based characters such as Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Legend of Zelda, Half-Life, etc; That's what I would be interested in. However, this guy christo makes some amazing ones. I actually just bought a custom Green Lantern and Nick Fury off christo. How awesome is that? Not only Face and Torso printing but also ARM and BACK printing. He sometimes prints on the legs and hips too. The color and detail is even better in person. I swear this guys stuff is better than what LEGO puts out itself. I don't think they can sue you for simply making a minifigure. But I do notice that they only list one figure at a time... and don't offer them in large quantities. I'm not sure if that's to stay within the guidelines of the "law" or if it's because they want to make more money. Christo will only list one Green Lantern at a time for instance... and because there's only one available at one time the bids go up to $100 for a single minifig. Then he just lists another as soon as the auction ends. So it could just be a business strategy. So far my venture is at a halt although I have found some machines that seem suitable for this purpose. But unless I were to have a business setup to sell mass quantities the machine just wouldn't see enough use for it to be financially worth it. But I'm sure if I setup a business similar to what others have I can easily get customers. But here's some information for you guys... Christo actually offers custom printing services. You send him the parts and the design you want printed and he sends them back. He said that it's 50 cents per color per print. But that it'll be more expensive if you don't buy an entire jigs worth of printed parts. Meaning if you just want a single head printed it'll be more expensive per part. Maybe we can all chip in and get a bunch of our stuff made? I sent him an e-mail back asking how many minifigures fit in a jig so I know how many to buy to keep the 50 cent price. But it looks like if you wanted a simple minifigure with 2-3 colors it would be around $2 per minifig. So if a jig holds 50 minifigs you're looking at $100 which is definitely a GOOD deal. But he's extremely hard to get a hold of for obvious reasons and he's all the way in South Africa. It took about 2 weeks to get the minifigs I bought from him. So if you don't mind waiting 2 weeks and have $100 to spare you could probably get like 50 custom printed minifigs from him. Not bad.

The Freejet 320 Plus looks like a good start. Affordable price range and it has no color restrictions so it can reproduce any color. Auto-height sensor AND auto cleanup are two very great features. I just always thought these types of machines would melt through a LEGO figure but I guess not. But yea if I were to do it I would think of it as an investment. I of course don't have that kind of money to just throw away just to indulge in it myself to make a few personal minifigs for myself only. I would make it an investment into an online and/or eBay business to either produce my own line minifigs to sell at auction like most others are doing or I would setup a website to do custom orders and design just to offset the costs of producing minifigs for my personal collection. No offense to the current custom machine printing fabricators but I think most of them came across the machines for other purposes and their kids asked them to make a custom minifig and they realized how to monetize it. Their imagination seems to be limited to custom versions of characters that already exist as LEGO minifigures in an official capacity or directly related to them. The whole reason I wanted to do this was to expand the minifig universe into the imaginative spectrum of people with humble financial status who make their custom minifigs with decals and stuff. My goal would be to make high quality machine printed minifigs of popular video game characters such as Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, Legend of Zelda (with machine printed shield!!!), Gordon Freeman, Final Fantasy, and others just to start. Then dive into minifigs of popular movie and TV characters (even current popular genres in demand like Game Of Thrones, Dexter, The Walking Dead) and then maybe some more obscure comic book characters. If I were to do them in mass production I would design a jig to hold the minifigures in place so I could churn out a large quantity. The price tag may seem hefty but if you look on eBay custom minifigs can sell at auction for $50 or more if you know the right minifigs to do and I bet the ideas I have would sell in even larger quantity. Sell a few hundred minifigs and you already make your money back on the machine and then from there you can break even on materials and then eventually start making profit. It's not that farfetched as I've seen 100s of one single custom Nick Fury and Spiderman machine printed minifigs selling at $50 a pop from one seller. So he probably made all of his money back in the first few months more so than with whatever original function the machine was meant for. LEGOs never seem to fall in popularity and they expand across all ages already so the market is already there and you don't have to do any work except supply the demand. Selling and/or collecting LEGO in any capacity seems to be a solid business model as LEGOs appreciate in value better than most stocks do these days and they never ever seem to go down in value. The longer sets/minifigs are retired the higher the price goes and custom minifigs that you can't get anywhere else jump ahead of the priority list in my book. People want stuff that they can't even get from LEGO themselves but at the same quality that LEGO produces. Custom minifigs with decals (even high quality waterslide decals) are COOL but they just don't have that same feel as a permanent machine printed minifig. The machine printed ones feel like a LEGO production that could quite possibly be a reality. I will keep you guys updated and if I get my hands on a machine I will start a thread to document my journey of setting it up and the learning process to finally share the information that all of these other fabricators have been keeping to themselves in order to squander all the riches. To me it's about a love for LEGO and the last priority is making money. I would only sell them to make my money back on the machine for the most part and then from there it's about spreading the knowledge and making some really cool minifigs! Thanks for the help. I wrote down the names of everyone who helped me in this thread. If months from now I somehow manage to become a machine printed fabricator of minifigs I will definitely offer a customized minifig on the house to each one of you. Either one that's part of my current work load or one that you think up and work with me to create.

Thanks this is a good start. I was expecting the prices to be within the $10,000 range and wouldn't have been suprised by that. But $30,000 seems excessive and there is probably cheaper machines as those ones look like multi-purpose and have extra functions I don't need. Unless I found a host of applications for it that were profitable other than just LEGO minifigs like personalizing items and stuff. I've noticed these guys make about $50-60 per minifig if they do the right ones and if you can churn out hundreds of them you'd make your money back pretty quickly. I know some other people also use engraving to print on minifigs. Curious about that too as it's a more permanent solution.

I have been searching for this answer all over the place and can't seem to find it. As many of you know there are people out there who have discovered the art of machine printing onto blank minifigs. Some are selling custom printed minifigs on eBay with permanent printing on faces, torsos, and even legs along with custom clothing and accessories from places like brickforge and the like. My question is if anyone knows what kind of machine is used to print on ABS plastic and LEGO minifigs/pieces specifically? If anyone can even just tell me the name of the machine used I would be thankful. I'm trying to research into it and see what the average price range is for these machines so I can see if it's feasible. Any information whatsoever would be great. At this point it seems like it's a trade secret that certain people were lucky enough to figure out and are not giving it up. Rather than spreading the knowledge so others can do their own take on customization they are keeping it to themselves so they can continue to monetize it and minimize any potential competition. I've tried asking multiple sellers who print their own minifigs with no response. Anyone know anything about it? Thanks in advance!

Best advice yet. Thanks for actually naming some sets that you found were good for adding to your collection. I really like your modular buildings by the way. Very clean and impressive artwork with those bricks you've done. I am still re-inserting myself into this LEGO hobby and I haven't played with LEGO since I was a kid so it's all so overwhelming still. I quickly became obsessed with them again and the nostalgia factor coupled with the euphoria of making your creations come to life is a great distraction from the 9-5 grind of everyday life. I have been having hours and hours of fun just sitting with a pile of bricks building or customizing my existing modular buildings. What I have done so far is I am furnishing my Cafe Corner and turning the stale bland and empty interior into an actual Cafe and Hotel. I furnished the floors with tiled bricks to make them look nice and made a really cool Cafe and hotel rooms with beds and book shelves and stuff. I will take some pictures when I'm finished as it's looking pretty cool. This is a good start for me until I feel comfortable taking on an entire building. The thing is like I said I don't want to break down my official modular buildings because I like them so much. Seems that the only course of action is to buy one of the modular buildings again just to part it out although this can be expensive once I build a MOC and want to do another one and run out of bricks. LEGO seems to overprice their sets these days anyway. I remember when I was a kid the LEGOs were expensive by that time period's standards but even with inflation in mind they have gotten way more expensive. I feel that LEGO is cashing in rather than spreading their creation so everyone can afford it. They make millions of bricks every hour and for some reason still charge an average of 11 cents a brick or more. Not to mention their factory is entirely robotic so they don't have to pay many staff salaries. It should be 1 cent a brick. Another issue is that I notice a lot of sets nowadays have customized parts whereas the essence of LEGO was building with the same standard blocks. It's great that they've expanded the parts but at the same time it makes it harder and harder to get just simple bricks for when you're doing your own build. I just wish that LEGO created one of those sets where they have an array of bricks except more geared towards AFOLs than children. If LEGO produced a set that had a few of every single brick in every single color they could make a fortune. Maybe a 5000 piece set for a few hundred dollars where even if you just bought one set you would know for sure that you had at least a few bricks of a certain part and in any color you can imagine. Then to build up your collection you can just buy another one and another and another until you have one of these massive collections you see people having. My brick collection is pretty big at the moment but I'm still at that point where during a MOC build I constantly find myself compromising and having to do things a different way because I'm missing a single brick either in a certain color or type which ends up halting my entire idea. So I have to change it up or do it differently just to make it work. I just wish I had access to every brick at any time that way all of my ideas can come to life with no boundaries and I could create whatever I wanted. But we can't always get what we want unfortunately. I would spend more time building and less time searching for pieces. I envy these people who have the money to afford gigantic collections with towers of LEGO bricks all sorted and separated into bins. Maybe some day... and thanks for all the great advice guys. Really impressed with the responses.

Awesome thanks for all the tips guys. My primary goal with building MOCs is to build my own modular buildings. I've been inspired by some really cool custom modular MOCs I've seen for sale on eBay like this one guy who builds a bunch of fast food places with awesome detail. That got me thinking that it would be really fun to look online for photos of certain buildings I think are cool and to just try and replicate them to add to my modular town and share with a community like this one. Here's some examples of his work But you can see in order to make whatever you want you seem to need a collection as ridiculous as that guys. As you can see in the background his collection of bricks is an entire wall full of organized parts. If I wanted I could drop my live savings on LEGO bricks but this is just a hobby for me and not my lifestyle so I'd like to find the best and cheapest ways to get just bricks I would need for modular buildings. I currently have all the modular buildings now except Market Street which I don't consider part of the series. I have Cafe Corner, Green Grocer, Pet Shop, Grand Emporium, Fire Brigade, and I just got the Town Hall (which is beautiful). Town Hall seems to have a lot of bricks that would be universal with other modular buildings. But the other sets have specific colors that probably wouldn't work well with any other buildings unless you just pulled the windows and the bricks that aren't sandgreen/sand blue bricks. Each modular building is so uniquely detailed that really only the windows and bricks used for the walls would be most useful but that's only if you're going to create a building that looks pretty much the same color as the modular building you're buying for the parts. I was hoping there was a set that just like the one someone posted above for $75 that has like a lot of tan, dark tan, brown, white, light bluish gray, and dark bluish gray bricks in the standard sizes. It seems that LEGO sets these days come with so many custom pieces that you really don't get that many of the standard bricks in sets anymore. Not to insinuate anything but this sounded really weird. lol. Bribing teenage boys and all. I did actually look on craigslist to see if anyone was selling their LEGO collection but since parents are usually the ones who buy the LEGO for their kids they are also the ones who are usually selling them. So the parents know that LEGO is expensive as heck since they were the ones who bought them and so all the giant lots I've found are overpriced or they've been snatched up by other LEGO hunters doing the same thing. I DID find one parent who was completely clueless and was selling the original Batman sets like Arkham Asylum, the original bat cave, and Mr. Freeze sets for like $20. Arkham Aslyum alone is worth a few hundred on eBay and the Bat cave is worth even more. Unfortunately someone else stole that deal before I got in contact with the person. That would of been a good score to gain some disposable funds to put towards buying bricks. Oh well.

Yea I don't either which is disappointing because I thought that would be a great way to do it. The closest one is in city a few hours away. Wish they would bring one here as it would probably be a good idea to begin with. Thanks for all the help I'll definitely see what I can come up with and I will post any results here.

Thanks for the response. Have you ever purchased a LEGO set specifically to pull parts and build a MOC out of it or do you usually just design something and then order specific parts in lots? I'm looking to build a modular building that blends in with the current modular series. Just was curious if there were any sets that people buy to get a good assortment of bricks either of a singular color or a good mixture of all colors primarily used in modular buildings. (Such as tans, dark tans, browns, white, etc;) I notice the tower bridge comes with over 4000 tan bricks but most are tan cheese bricks that are double talls. But it seems like a good price for that many parts. Something along those lines was what I was referring to. Where it would cost probably double the price to buy them individually you can get the tower bridge for $230. Thanks