I am getting ready to start on Raskolnikov 's aggressor which I purchased the instructions for. I will be doing it a couple books at a time to allow me to save up for the pieces over a few months. Anyways, I have found the spread sheets for the parts per book, put them into bricklink, and have gotten to the point of being able to create carts. A few questions about using bricklink that I couldn't find after searching the forums.

- After getting to the stage just before creating lots I went to check on the terms of each store but I had to regenerate the list each time. Sometimes new stores would come up. As I understand this changes if either stock or prices if the stores changes?

- How much does bricklink factor in shipping costs? i.e. if it picks from a store until there are no more parts left then switches to a slightly more expensive store to fill the rest. With two stores I have to pay two sets of shipping but what if the second store has a full stock of what I need and it would be cheaper to go with that store when shipping is factored in. Is there anyway to handle that without going through each store manually and factoring shipping and costs?

- Any other tips for buying large lots on bricklink?

5 hours ago, MasterTyvokka said:

How much does bricklink factor in shipping costs?

Bricklink's autobuy feature doesn't take into account shipping costs, PayPal fees, lot limits, etc, and you have to check this yourself under the terms and conditions of each selected store. To stop the auto-buy selecting a specific store, you can add stores to a list of "stores I don't like" and tell Bricklink to exclude these.

5 hours ago, MasterTyvokka said:

- Any other tips for buying large lots on bricklink?

You can help steer the auto-buy in the right direction by setting a maximum price for a few of the parts on your wanted list - only three or four parts, if you set too many then the auto buy will return dozens of shopping carts with only one or two bricks each. Sometimes it helps to set a price limit on the rarest parts, other times it helps to set price limits on the parts with highest required quantity. Don't pay more than the price shown on Lego's customer service "Bricks and Pieces", this can sometimes be cheaper than bricklink (and has a cheap flat rate postage no matter what you order!). 

After running the auto-buy, I then start "pruning" unnecessary stores. Start with the cart with fewest lots in it, then see if any of those bricks can be added to other carts - you may pay a little more for each bricks, but save a lot on postage by removing a cart completely. Keep repeating until you're down to three or four stores (or however many is reasonable for a project of this scale)

Also, keep an eye out for parts you will need for later instruction books. If you find something you will need later on (especially a rare part), buy it now to save having to place a special order later.

That's very helpful thank you! Unfortunately bricks and pieces isn't available right now so I'll have to go through Bricklink. Love the Thunderbirds Lego, btw!

Hope I'm not hijacking the thread. But is there a way to apply the entire contents of a set I own (donor set), against a wanted list of parts I need on Bricklink?

45 minutes ago, Kevin86 said:

Hope I'm not hijacking the thread. But is there a way to apply the entire contents of a set I own (donor set), against a wanted list of parts I need on Bricklink?

Am I understanding this correctly - you want to add all parts from a set into wanted list? 

9 hours ago, zux said:

Am I understanding this correctly - you want to add all parts from a set into wanted list? 

Not quite, I have a wanted list of parts.

You know you you can apply order on Bricklink to automatically update 'have quantity'

Well can you do that with a donor set? For example, if the wanted list has a lot of axles, gears, liftarrms etc, and I have three donor sets, I can bulk add them (to the have quantity) and reduce the wanted quantity.

I know rebrickable has a compare feature, that will compare an offical set to a moc,  but that is for an individual Moc, my wanted list has a whole heap of random parts from 6-7 Mocs.

I have a few donor sets that will include some of the parts required on the wanted list. Is there a quick way to add the contents of the donor sets (to update the have quantity.)  

@Kevin86 I get your idea now. I don't know of a way you could do that with Bricklink. However this is somewhat achievable with Rebrickable. This would work if you got all you LEGO collection and additional parts stored on Rebrickable already and your MOC is designed digitally (it would would work with non-digital models too, although not as convenient).

So once you got all your collection sorted on Rebrickable go to My LEGO > My Custom Lists and create new list. This then allows you to upload a digital file of your MOC and will produce a part list. You can add and remove parts manually as needed (generally, it is easier to add part from part page as custom list will appear on the list of groups you want that part to be added to) and once satisfied with this list click "Build this List". Next page will list parts you are still missing and has several options for exporting this list, including Bricklink XML that can be used to create/add to wanted list.

Thanks, I will give it a try.

 

 

I agree, I have found that it's cheaper to get everything you can from B&P and then buy the extra on BL to part out a set.  Parting out is expensive in my opinion, usually cheaper to buy the set together unless you're willing to sub expensive pieces.  For actual bulk buys, BL can be cheaper, but that means you're looking for a very specific piece in high quantity (I have bought several thousand of one part trying to get pieces for a MOC before, and if you do your homework and find a seller selling for cheap, you can definitely save over new from TLG.

It may just be me doing something wrong, but I would be careful on the auto buy option. I recently did that for a set I'm trying to build and long story short several of the top stores were VERY EXPENSIVE. I'm talking $1.50 for used 1x4 black brick. The cart total was almost triple the part out value of the set and they didn't even have all the4 pieces I needed. 

I've started finding the stores that have the quantities of the rarest pieces I need. And as long as their prices are good I'll load up with what I can, then move on to the next store. There's also a couple stores I know that use the 6 month average sales price (this is nice because I don't bother to check to compare their prices) and I'll load up with as much as I can from them and then go hunting for the rest of pieces I need. 

Hope this helps. 

In your wishlist, you can set a maximum price, then on the 'buy all' option, use the checkbox to exclude parts above your maximum.  That way you can weed out sellers that have exorbitant prices.