Why I'm giving away (most) of my Lego

[Lego Mike]

I just felt like sharing some thoughts. This is a Lego fan-oriented forum, so I don't really expect a lot of agreement, but some things might ring a tiny bell for some of you.

I don't have a massive collection of the Lego stuff. I have maybe 90,000-100,000 bricks/parts, several hundred minifigures, and 40-50 large sets still intact. But I think most of it doesn't do me any good, and it hasn't for a few years.

I really got into Lego as an adult (I'm 40-something now) at the end of 2016. I was traveling to Hanoi, Vietnam, and saw a Lego retailer just as a thunderstorm started. I ducked into the shop and briefly thought about buying one of those large Lego Classic boxes but decided not to. A few weeks later, back in South Korea, a department store opened in my city, and a toy store in it had a huge Lego section. I started to get an itch. I never got much Lego as a child because it just wasn't in my family's budget, but now there was nothing to stop me. I bought the Pizza Van (60150), then ordered the Architecture Studio (21050) online, and a friend sent me the Beatles Yellow Submarine (which was criminally twice as expensive in Korea as in the US). I looked for all the Lego Movie sets and loved them, and then when the Lego Batman sets came out, I bought most of them, too. It was fun; the build process was relaxing, and it was nice to feel like a kid again.

At the same time, I had a lot going on. I had jobs teaching and writing textbook content in addition to a small editing service I was running, and I had started grad school, taking several courses at once because I enjoyed it so much, and then also there was a death in the family that I had to deal with while on the other side of the world. For a few years, up until about the early pandemic period in 2020, I bought lots of Lego as a way of decompressing or simply escaping daily life. And then I suppose I just stopped. Mostly. I still bought things that seemed fun, especially if they were on sale, but I didn't seem to enjoy anything anymore. As soon as I built a set, I would take it apart and put it away, and I vaguely felt silly for spending money on it. Now at the end of 2024, I have all this Lego and little to no interest in it, though I still keep up with Lego news and watch reviews on YouTube.

Blah, blah, blah.

I decided earlier this year to donate most of my collection to three or four local orphanages/children's charities. They would no doubt need and want it far more than I do. I did briefly try to sell my collection, but of course everyone who expressed interest was just another random BrickLink nobody trying to buy something for 10 cents and sell it for 10 dollars. That was a dumb idea anyway; giving it to kids was always the best idea.

There are a few reasons why I just don't feel like having all this Lego around. Let me break them down for you.

1. I don't need it. It doesn't do anything for me to have a mountain of plastic bricks stored away in a cabinet upstairs. There are a few things I'll keep because they still make me happy -- the Yellow Submarine, the Lego Creator Fiat 500 (10271), the Detective's Office (10246), and many, many minifigs, &c., which will still just be stashed away somewhere -- but most of my Lego served its purpose on some random afternoon when I was bored or stressed, and that's it. Things are different now; people change, people grow. I once thought I might make some MOCs, but I never did except on Stud.io. I write books, and that's my creative outlet now.

2. The "spiritual" cost. I'm not a spiritual person at all, but that's the best word for it. And this is probably the thing most people won't understand, which is okay. But I don't like having a lot of material possessions. Clothes? Yes. A fork to eat with and dishes to cook with and eat from? Duh. Books? Sure. But I think that when you start to own too much, the things you own start to own you. They weigh you down, figuratively speaking, and you get stuck in this cycle of working just to get more things you don't really need or going into debt, and so on. And I say that as someone who's really never had the wherewithal to buy a lot of stuff. I'm just not an acquisitive person. When I splurge, I travel. Plus, I like the feeling of being able to pack up and go without having all kinds of junk to drag behind me. And as you can see with my plan to give away (most of) my Lego, I'm more inclined to give things away than hoard them.

3. I don't like the obsessive brand affinity of the Lego community. This is most common among younger fans, I think, but there are some adults as well. People will literally try to identify themselves first and foremost as Lego adherents, like it's the Middle Ages and they're gearing up for a Crusade, and usually, I think, it's to fill some void where their own sense of character and personality should be. It's a company that makes some fun and worthwhile products, that's all. I'm not going to feverishly pour my entire life and effort into defending it or trying to clamp my hand around its throat and demand that Lego cater to my frenzied opinions about leg printing, prices-per-part numbers, &c. A hobby should only be that -- a hobby. At best, it helps you cultivate new skills, meet likeminded people, and give you a sense of what you aspire to get out of life. It's not the end of the road, and your value and priorities should not depend on what a multinational company does from day to day. If you find yourself feeling "betrayed" by something a company does, guess what? You're just another disposable little tool in their industry, and they know it.

4. All dat plastic. Forget the paper bags (lined with plastic) that are haphazardly used in the production of new sets and rarely actually recyclable around the world, and forget how all the plant parts are (were?) supposedly made using plant-based plastics -- the Lego Group is bad for the environment. Is it worse than other companies? Not necessarily. Is it better? No. I recycle, I rely on public transportation, I try to make good decisions that help curb the climate crisis (though of course, the carbon footprint of every individual on Earth combined is still dwarfed dozens of times over by corporations), and it just gets to me sometimes, all that useless plastic I paid for in Lego sets. If I weren't giving it to children now (good money after bad, so to speak), I'd almost definitely carry it out to the recycling bins downstairs, no kidding. What a waste. What a pointless waste.

5. "Is there something I'd rather pay for?" It got to the point where I kept wondering that each time I considered buying some Lego. It usually convinced me to put the set back down, though not always. But what I meant was that if a set cost, say, $50, well, shoot, I could buy some really tasty food for that much instead, or it would pay for one night at a hotel in Osaka the next time I went to Japan. I just made it a habit to really see what I was doing with my money and whether I was doing what I wanted to do with it. When it came to Lego, I usually didn't want it. I was, if anything, bored at the time, but I didn't think being bored should cost me anything. Being bored makes a person look for distraction, and distraction by its nature is negative -- it's a hole you throw effort and money into just to fill it up, but there's nothing keeping it full. I wanted to shift to things that made me feel more engaged and less dependent on paying to be distracted. And the punchline, of course, is that even when I persuaded myself to take that $50 and buy some good ingredients and cook a fun meal, when I got to the store I'd just end up buying the same cheap stuff and eating the same (delicious) food as always.

6. I need room to buy more Lego.

So it's become something of a love/hate -- or rather, love/not-always-crazy-about-it -- situation, and some of you might spot a similar feeling that's been creeping around the margins of your mind. And I guess I just mean to say that it's always okay to shift your focus to other things. People should always have several interests to pursue (preferably not all tied to various corporations' commercial/entertainment products). You don't owe Lego anything or vice versa. It's a company that makes some nice products, and you're free to not buy them if they seem like a waste of money or they're just not up to your standards. (I still don't know what the heck their problem is with printing.)

If you don't agree with any of my reasons above, all right. They're my reasons, after all. I just wanted to sound them out and see if I understood myself well enough.

Edited November 17, 2024 by Lego Mike
Added a little more content.

[ILoveSeatron]

I can relate to the "love hate" part. It is like, "I really like this, but what good dose it do?" I can relate to most of what you said about Lego. Giving your Legos to orphanages sounds like a good solution to getting rid of them. If you don't like them I'm shure the children would. 

Edit. The part about Lego owning you I especially get. 

Edited November 15, 2024 by ILoveSeatron

[Mylenium]

I can understand pretty much all your points. I'm just not there yet. Due to my health issues getting worse every year I have considered just stopping and selling off my stuff, but I still enjoy it. It's more a case of not being able to live out that hobby as I would like.

Mylenium

[MAB]

It is perfectly fine to give up a hobby you no longer enjoy, or maybe never really enjoyed. What you say about LEGO could be written about any hobby, whether it is buying loads of sports equipment but rarely playing that sport, buying loads of books and never reading them, buying high end camera gear but never taking photos, buying kitchen equipment but never cooking, and so on. 

I get a lot of pleasure out of building with my LEGO and haven’t really spent that much money on it in the past ten years. I still buy LEGO, mainly to have new figures or new parts that I want to make new MOCs around and I sell on the parts I don't want, and I also buy sealed sets to sell on to cover costs of the hobby so i dont feel the need to think about how much I'm spending or what else i could have bought with that money. I spend time on it, especially in colder months, but I consider it time well spent as I enjoy it. I cannot really spend that 'LEGO time' on other hobbies, especially in winter, as I prefer building compared to other activities. Whereas in summer I can go for weeks without building something as other hobbies take preference. 

 

[Toastie]

7 hours ago, Lego Mike said:

I just felt like sharing some thoughts.

Thank you very much for writing this up. It was (and still is) a great pleasure to read some passages of your text over again. I sure hope many people have read, are or will be reading your post.

I did earlier this morning, then walked the dog, then had three coffees - and still think about your thoughts. I shall write more - I very much appreciate when people share personal deep thoughts on matters of this kind.

There may be a "wider perspective" though - or maybe it is only a different view ... I need to assemble all my thoughts on this. By the way, this alone, making me think about complex matters, is something that makes me very happy. So thank you very much again!

You wrote you started your "LEGO assembling career" (I bluntly call it that because you also wrote you never "moced", except in Stud.io) in late 2016. And now you are about to donate most of your collection. That is a time span of about 8 years - within a period, TLG makes ever-increasing tons of money by selling 18+ sets, along with these 1 piece per step instructions, resulting in boring cartoon-books rather than instructions; they are made for relaxing rather than thinking. I recently dragged out some older (< 1990) instructions and - well - I had to figure out where to put the 20+ pieces of one step. Which is so much more fun than attaching a "color coded" 2x2 plate to a highlighted place in Step 42 of 666. This alone may render a disassembled set, stashed away in some closet, a pile of plastic bricks. And many of such sets a burden in many regards. I am totally with you. From that perspective, essentially with everything!

But let us widen the view of the camera a bit. I turn 63 early next year. I got my first LEGO set for Christmas in 1965. My parents never had the money to buy any larger sets, nor many. When my first LEGO world came to an end, I was 15 years old. At that time, my "collection" of bricks and plates (not sets, these were all atomized - in LEGO world only of course, where the H-atom analogue at that time was a 1x1 round plate) found space in a medium-sized plastic container. And for these 12 years I was "mocing". The necessity to come up with a dedicated word for "building on your own" - or "creating" - is a bit disturbing. But so is "googling", whatever. Languages develop over time. I missed out on Technic. I missed out on early LEGO electronics. Completely. Then, in 1998, shortly after our second daughter was born, I saw the LEGO light again: The RCX programmable brick - along with Technic ...

Today, I am "immersed" in brick-built stuff in my home office. I am very lucky to have a wonderful family, an attic for me alone, I am writing this literally surrounded by plastic. Do I feel bad about plastic? Yes and no. Here are many of my own creations as well as display models - the latter mostly not from TLG, other companies can do much better, when it comes to display models. The thing though is: "Creating", "imagination", "construction", "vision", "trying and failing" (there is only one way to "learn": You need to fail and then succeed), "learning" ... this was, was LEGO was about back in the days. This has been said so many times here and elsewhere ... 

My last purchase of a LEGO set costing >$10 is years ago. MK, BB, Pantasy do get my money for (display) sets - and even this faded away. Today, I buy pieces only. Mainly old LEGO electronics and >old< Technic, the bricks and plates with holes in them .

This is my view on the plastic around me. A bit of nostalgia, good memories, and endless hours of thinking and creating. With old LEGO stuff.

All the best and make these children happy!!!

Thorsten 

@Mylenium and @MAB: Gentlemen, I just read your posts; I am so thankful of beeing a memeber of this forum. It simply feels good reading such replies. 

Edited November 15, 2024 by Toastie

[idlemarvel]

@Toastie I could have written what you wrote. Almost complete agreement except for me Lego trains and Lego System rather than electronics and Technic. And I  can relate to all the points raised by the OP, thanks for raising them.

There's nothing wrong with plastic per se, its a wonderful material that can be hard soft strong flexible rot proof any colour any size any shape and recyclable. The problem is too much due to one-use plastics and lack of proper recycling.

I don't buy large display only sets any more, rather parts that I can make something with - not necessarily a MOC but older sets from online instructions - I can relate to the comment about the lack of thinking required by modern piece by piece instructions - and then take them apart again. Instant reuse. My collection of bits does increase but only incrementally as I buy specific parts for a model I'm making, and I limit the palette of parts and colours and adapt my models accordingly. That's how I  reconcile the joy of building with Lego while avoiding too big a plastic millstone. 

 

[Berthil]

I have a lot of LEGO as compensation for growing up in a poor family not being able to buy LEGO. I understand the point of doing something good with it when not needed anymore. But it is also possible to use the LEGO for something good, rather than giving to charity. Of course creativity is needed for that and you already indicated your creative outlet is somewhere else. As a creative outlet I create MOCs and create free building instructions for them that many people enjoy. Next do that, I do shows for free with the ball machines to see many happy faces. So it is not all greed or brand obsession.

[ILoveSeatron]

9 hours ago, Toastie said:

 TLG makes ever-increasing tons of money by selling 18+ sets, along with these 1 piece per step instructions, resulting in boring cartoon-books rather than instructions; they are made for relaxing rather than thinking. I recently dragged out some older (< 1990) instructions and - well - I had to figure out where to put the 20+ pieces of one step. Which is so much more fun than attaching a "color coded" 2x2 plate to a highlighted place in Step 42 of 666. 

I totally agree about modern instruction books. The old instructions that you had to study to build the set were so much better! I recently bought three instruction books from the 90's, two of which were for larger sets, and all three on stacked on each other weren't even as tall as a smaller set that was recently released!

6 hours ago, Berthil said:

But it is also possible to use the LEGO for something good, rather than giving to charity. Of course creativity is needed for that and you already indicated your creative outlet is somewhere else. As a creative outlet I create MOCs and create free building instructions for them that many people enjoy. Next do that, I do shows for free with the ball machines to see many happy faces.

Giving your Legos to a charity for children would also be a good use of them!

[Lego Mike]

14 hours ago, Berthil said:

I create MOCs and create free building instructions for them that many people enjoy.

I just took a look at some of your MOCs, and that Excaliburg is hilarious. Very fun idea!

[Peppermint_M]

I suppose that the difference for me here is I primarily MOC, so all purchases are to supply my builds, much as new pens or paints supply someone who has art as a creative outlet.

I am glad you are donating, just sending the bricks to a plastic munching recycling plant is truly not in the spirit of the bricks. They last for so long, 40 year old sets will combine with the one I purchase tomorrow or next week (month, year...) I am sure the children who receive those toys will get much joy from the gift. 

I fully recognise this need to downsize though, with my collecting Diecast cars. A small model would cost me less than a Starbucks coffee, have no calories (unlike a chocolate bar) and provide the little serotonin burst that makes modern life more bearable. However after a while they build up and get in the way/gather dust. So I sort them all through my criteria (Do I collect this specific model/livery?) and then I either donate to a charity or like most recently, gave a young family I know a nice box of cars and trucks to play with. It is rather nice to see them when we bump into each other and the youngest boy is cheerfully clutching one of the cars I gave them (he adores cars). 

Thanks for sharing your insights.

[Yperio_Bricks]

On 11/15/2024 at 12:47 PM, Berthil said:

As a creative outlet I create MOCs and create free building instructions for them that many people enjoy.

Props for building these great mocs and sharing the instructions for free. A classy act!    

I am sure you make many people happy!