Date when a brick first appered in set?

[Superkalle]

When new sets arrive, the first thing I start looking for is if there are any new cool bricks. I love the thrill of finding if a brick has finaly arrived in the color that allows me to complete the dream MOC. What I'm looking for is either new brick designs, bricks that appear in a new color for the first time, or old rare colors have been re-issued (and finaly become affordable).

OK, so now all I'm wondering is: Is there any way to find this out besides manually scanning each and every set at BrickLink?

For example, I've been trying to compose some sort of search at BL that would pick out bricks that have appeared in a new color for the first time. For example 85970, that recently was released in tan.

I've tried just about everything but can't figure out how to do it.

The dream solution would be a list of Brick IDs together with color, when it first appeared and in what year. Something like this:

85970 - Tan - 2011

85970 - White - 2010

93274 - Red - 2011

30374 - Green - 2011

2436 - Dark Red - 2003

etc, all bricks

[mikey]

You might know this already but Bricklink can list the latest additions to the catalogue here. But that only shows actual new elements (or stickers/ prints on old elements), and not new types of colour for elements.

*Obviously the list is a bit boring now, but when new waves appear in a certain region, it gets more interesting.

Edited August 16, 2011 by mikey

[Superkalle]

You might know this already but Bricklink can list the latest additions to the catalogue here.

Yeah, I know about that list. The problem with it is that

1) you have to manually browse it wading through pics of bricks with stickers on them, Duplo and god knows what.

2) you can't see if a brick has been released in a new color (it only lists the brick ID the first time it is released)

[Fugazi]

If I correctly understand your request Superkalle, then Peeron has a partial solution. For instance, if you search for a Brick 1x2 (part no 3004) and you want to know the year any of the colours this brick is available in have been introduced, just navigate to the bottom right of the page where Peeron displays a table with the chronology of all available colours. Then you can even click on a year/colour icon to search for sets from a specific year in which this brick was used in a specific colour. Voila!

http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/3004

Oh, I see you want an automated way to find new combinations. In this case you still need to wade through the catalogue to find every new brick/color combination. So this is still not optimal. Nevermind!

[mikey]

I don't really understand databases, but here is another suggestion...

Your LDD Manager App seems to know (most of the time) if particular elements actually exist in that colour. I assume you downloaded the bricklink catalogue?

If so, is it possible with some filtering of unnecessary data to compare two different instances of the bricklink catalogue? So that the differences would be either New Elements or Established Elements in a New Colour?

[Aanchir]

I've had similar difficulty trying to find out when particular colors made their debut. Bricklink has timelines for each one, but they're often inaccurate, especially considering how often colors are misidentified in the database. I don't know any easy solutions for you, but one suggestion: the element IDs for parts (seven-digit number which identifies design, color, and decorations all at once) usually are roughly in order of date. Now, this may be inaccurate because individual elements, like the overall part designs, probably get registered before the part begins appearing in sets, and so it might not be a perfect sequence. However, it can still be a starting point.

If you want to know where you can find element IDs, the "replacement parts" section of the LEGO Customer Service website (service.lego.com) has images of several parts. Each image's URL includes the element ID for that part. This is the best suggestion I can offer.

[Superkalle]

If I correctly understand your request Superkalle, then Peeron has a partial solution. For instance, if you search for a Brick 1x2 (part no 3004) and you want to know the year any of the colours this brick is available in have been introduced, just navigate to the bottom right of the page where Peeron displays a table with the chronology of all available colours. Then you can even click on a year/colour icon to search for sets from a specific year in which this brick was used in a specific colour. Voila!

Thanks for pointing it out to me, I hadn't thought of it. Now, if only one could get/extract when a part first appears in a new color.

And imagine a service from TLG - something like "receive an e-mail when we release a new brick/color combo"

Your LDD Manager App seems to know (most of the time) if particular elements actually exist in that colour. I assume you downloaded the bricklink catalogue?

If so, is it possible with some filtering of unnecessary data to compare two different instances of the bricklink catalogue? So that the differences would be either New Elements or Established Elements in a New Colour?

It's actually a very good idea. And at least it will solve the problem for me since I can do some queries on my own PC. Got to think some more about this.

EDIT: Just remembered. BrickLink keeps changing the ItemIDs, which makes it problematic. An item called x177 in the first data extraction might be called 89039 the next time. Hm, maybe if the ElementID (part/color code) could be used? Got to think some more...