Childhood Collection Unboxing

[brodey1]

That's an awesome collection, congrats.

[SirBlake]

This is great! Thanks for the pics and the thorough write-up. I had a very similar event a couple of years ago except I never took my castles apart. Kept them in boxes, assembled all through my dark ages so all I had to do was take them out of the boxes and reattach things like flags. It's a lot more fun to see them assembled on the shelf than have them sitting in the dark in a closet at my parents house.

[pogie]

Nice write up. Upon pulling my childhood legos out, I was disappointed to find out that I had though it a great idea to draw on them with permanent marker. Apparently "Six Flags Shooting Gallery" was a hot idea for a moc to my 8 yr old brain.

[antp]

I have several slopes with numbers written on them. Following the set 6374 that had http://www.bricklink....asp?P=3039pb15 I wanted to have many other numbers. And a paint marker (worse than the usual permanent ink marker) is not easy to remove from the slopes due to their texture...

At least these numbers were well written (by my father, as I asked him), if I wrote on that myself at that time it would have been worse :D

Edited February 2, 2013 by antp

[Zeya]

In the past week, I've been spending time cleaning and sorting. I've got a load of all my Pirate stuff going in the dishwasher right now. I have to run them through twice or more since they're so stinky from moth balls. You should smell the steam coming out of the dishwasher, but at least it makes me happy it's coming off the bricks.

I took some more photos to share.

Here's my Lego desk after getting done sorting all the Basic bricks. So many red/blue/yellow 2xX bricks. I just want to point out this took very long to sort. At one point I lost track of time and thought it was 3 hours earlier. Anyone else ever experience that?

DSC_0001 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Here are the printed and special material bricks from the batch of Basic stuff. Nothing too fancy.

DSC_0006 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Here are the trans-clear and tiles from that first batch. Some of the clear ones are so yellowed:

DSC_0007 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Another shot for no real reason:

DSC_0008 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

And here is a big bowl of wheel axles. Why are there so many? Did someone buy some special axle battle pack? Lol. Note the two yellow parts - both are spring loaded. One is a claw and the other is like a fork lift front. I have to figure out how to wash all this because it has metal and I don't know if it will rust or what. Suggestions?

DSC_0005 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Here's a small bag laid out that had a knight with a catapult and a race car driver with his car:

DSC_0011 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Pirate bag #1 laid out:

DSC_0012 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Pirate bag #2 laid out:

DSC_0013 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Pirate bag #3 laid out:

DSC_0014 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Pirate bag #4 laid out:

DSC_0015 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Pirate bag #5 laid out:

DSC_0016 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Pirate bag #6 laid out:

DSC_0017 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

The Pirate stuff is in pretty good condition. No real wear on the minifig heads or torsos, and the chrome gold coins aren't too worn either.

Over the next week I'll be drying, sorting and maybe one day soon even building! After tonight, what's left to process and wash will be all the Castle (about 6 gallon ziplocs) and one gallon ziploc of Blacktron and hopefully some more classic space remnants in there too.

[Zeya]

Pirate Lego drying. I hand washed the printed and delicate stuff today before the Super Bowl. It's all in really great condition, except for a couple of the smaller flags have broken clips. :( At least the minifigs are in great shape.

Rinsing off with colander inside a bowl:

DSC_0001 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

And laid out to dry:

DSC_0002 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

[antp]

And here is a big bowl of wheel axles. Why are there so many? Did someone buy some special axle battle pack? Lol. Note the two yellow parts - both are spring loaded. One is a claw and the other is like a fork lift front. I have to figure out how to wash all this because it has metal and I don't know if it will rust or what. Suggestions?

There is indeed a risk of rust for the wheels axes.

Do they really need to be cleaned? You could just use a wet towel or wet brush rather than put them fully in water.

Anyway I guess if they are well make dry (e.g. one by one with a dry towel) just after the cleaning rather than leaving them drying like the other parts, there is not much risk of rust.

[Zeya]

There is indeed a risk of rust for the wheels axes.

Do they really need to be cleaned? You could just use a wet towel or wet brush rather than put them fully in water.

Anyway I guess if they are well make dry (e.g. one by one with a dry towel) just after the cleaning rather than leaving them drying like the other parts, there is not much risk of rust.

They need to be cleaned. There's a very strong smell of moth balls on them. I think what I'll do is clean them by hand and have a hair dryer going at the same time to dry them off.

[cortman]

Nice write up. Upon pulling my childhood legos out, I was disappointed to find out that I had though it a great idea to draw on them with permanent marker. Apparently "Six Flags Shooting Gallery" was a hot idea for a moc to my 8 yr old brain.

I ran across a number of these in a used lot I bought- I found that "Brakleen" or some other generic brake cleaner (strong stuff- don't use indoors) takes the marker right off with a paper towel, without damaging the brick. You can pick the stuff up in an aerosol can at Walmart or auto parts stores.

[Haldiron]

WOW! Lucky you. I wish I still had my old sets!

[legotrainfan]

You got your childhood collection back? Who had it all the time? Or was it in your parents' attic or basement?

Your collection looks as if it is in great condition. Some of your instructions look like new. You've got some great sets! Enjoy building all those gems!

Edited February 6, 2013 by legotrainfan

[Zeya]

You got your childhood collection back? Who had it all the time? Or was it in your parents' attic or basement?

Parents' attic. On a past inquiry, I was told it might have been given away to younger cousins, but that was not the case.[quote name='legotrainfan'

Your collection looks as if it is in great condition. Some of your instructinos look like new. You've got some great sets! Enjoy building all those gems!

Thanks!

[TheLegoDr]

I painted a good chunk of my childhood pieces/figures also when I was a youngster. Something clicks in your brain and you have to do it. And then years later you kick yourself for it! I don't know how many pieces I've ruined. I may try that brakleen sometime too just to see. If it works great, if not then the pieces were already useless anyway.

[shawn_low]

I wish my parents kept my Lego instead of, erm, giving it to the neighbour's kid. GAH!

[Zeya]

This past weekend, I managed to finish off cleaning the rest of my childhood Lego. Every last piece has been cleaned, with the exception of the rope/string (which I'm not even sure why I'm keeping all of that - someone talk some sense into me!) So it's all laying out drying now. I've found that the batches usually need a good 3 days or so of air drying before all the water is evaporated.

I snapped some more photos to share.

Here are some shots of what came out of the bags before washing:

DSC_0008 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

DSC_0007 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

DSC_0006 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

DSC_0005 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

DSC_0004 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

DSC_0003 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

DSC_0002 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Here is a special batch of elements that have metal in them. I wanted to dry them off on the ironing board with a hair dryer to minimize their exposure to moisture, so they wouldn't rust any more.

DSC_0001 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

Here is the last batch of printed elements soaking in water before final rinsing:

DSC_0015 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

For anyone interested, here is how I've been using my dishwasher to clean the bricks. The thin mesh bags work really well. I've run this final batch through about 5 times, which wouldn't normally be necessary, if not for the very strong moth ball odor on these bricks. I wish I had run my first batch through more than twice.

DSC_0013 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

And here are my cloth elements after washing. If you want to read more about how I washed the cloth stuff, head over to here.

DSC_0015 by ZeyaV, on Flickr

So now I can get to the fun part of piecing sets together. I've already gone through a fair bit of my Pirate stuff. I plan on writing reviews for most of not all these sets. I anticipate that will take quite some time. I have a couple orders of photography equipment coming this week to help with the reviews (and also general photography is an expanding hobby of mine). I've got a nice tripod and head coming, and also a "light shed" or "light tent" with lamps, which will be used to photograph the Lego for the reviews.

[Nagyzee]

Very nice collection, I was dreaming about having those Castle and Pirates sets all the time as a kid. (And the early 90s Trains stuff, mainly the Metroliner.)

My childhood collection consists of 1x 6074, one basic set and about 8-10 small Impulse sets mostly from City and Castle. My brother had roughly the same. Still, we had lots of fun with it. And Lego was quite a luxury back then over here so we were happy to have as much. I don't know why, but I keep my childhood collection separate from my adult purchases, even from sets from the same era. I guess it's sort of sacred, not to be sold or mixed with other Lego ever. I'd never sell even my least liked set, the 6814 Ice Tunnelator even though I'm totally uninterested in Lego Space. (And wasn't a fan as a kid either.)

[Zeya]

I don't know why, but I keep my childhood collection separate from my adult purchases, even from sets from the same era. I guess it's sort of sacred, not to be sold or mixed with other Lego ever. I'd never sell even my least liked set, the 6814 Ice Tunnelator even though I'm totally uninterested in Lego Space. (And wasn't a fan as a kid either.)

I'm doing the same too. In fact, I'm even putting all the elements together in their sets, and if (when) I'm short pieces, I'll be placing BL orders to complete the sets. I imagine I'll be keeping them together as sets. And that's different from the rest of my adult collection which is all parted out by element shape/type. I have a feeling I'll never sell any of these sets. I have given some thought to sending some of them to my cousin that likely belonged to him, such as the classic space sets. We shall see...

[Agent Brick]

Wow... That's a lot of LEGO from when you were a child... Spoilt much?