Whats the rarest/oldest piece of Lego you have in your collections?

[mpfirnhaber]

AHA!! That's you with the Craigslist ad.... someone made me aware of it, and I thought.... smart way to approach it!!

If you do find any rare or unusual parts, please let me know.... also interested in stories and anecdotes!

No responses yet, but I'll be sure to share if I find anything :)

I've been buying a lot of Samsonite bricks, and they're just awful quality. Sloppy CA plastic, lots of inconsistencies with logo orientation. I even have a pile of bricks with double logos oriented in different directions. I'm glad Samsonite doesn't make parts anymore :)

I just got an interesting anecdote about those newly discovered Grangemouth bricks from Scotland. Seems that when a LEGO rep found out about a pair of Borg Warner guys using the LEGO mold to make marbled bricks at their Grangemouth plastics plant... not only did TLG demand the return of the mold, but Borg Warner lost the account for making LEGO pellets for British LEGO Ltd.... at their Wrexham Wales LEGO plant (British LEGO Ltd. was owned by Courtauld's Corp., the LEGO licensee for Britain, Ireland and Australia).

I kind of suspected that might have been the trigger for them losing the mold. Now I'm even more glad I bought up one of those bricks and own a piece of that history. I hope more are found some day, they're really wonderful.

[5imon]

I don't have really old stuff like PA bricks or the like. There might still be some bricks from the seventies in my parents' house (from our childhood), but I don't have them in my current collection which is more focused around studless Technic.

However, I have collected a few parts in rare / non regular colours:

The 2x4 brick top left is form the Allianz Arena model in the german Legoland, according to the Bricklink seller. It's a kind of "glitter milky white" colour.

And I also have one really old "part":

Which might not be the most extraordinary or rare of H0 Lego cars, but I stumbled upon it in a Bricklink shop where I bought other stuff, and as a Citroën and Lego aficionado, I just had to have this one.

Edited February 28, 2015 by 5imon

[LEGO Historian]

Nice find with the Citroen 5imon!! That's one of the rarer 1:87 LEGO vehicles, since it was only produced from 1965-67.

This vehicle is known in 5 colors.... white, red, blue, light gray and black. The black ones are extremely rare.

Here's how they look with and without the box they were sold in (image from my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide - Chapter 36 - 1:87 Scale LEGO Cars/Trucks)...

[5imon]

Thanks for this deeper insight, Lego Historian. Seems that it's still one of the less common cars, and of the colours you mentioned, I think light grey is the nicest and fits the DS shape very well.

Mine has some brownish spots on the grey body, but otherwise I think it's in a quite decent condition. All parts there, wheels firmly attached and the windows are only slightly yellowed and scratched.

[mpfirnhaber]

Here are a few of the many rare colors I have in modern 2x4 bricks. Yellowish-Green, Light Aqua, Flat Silver, Trans-Light Blue, Trans-Orange. The trans-light blue and trans-orange are interesting because they don't use the same mold as other modern bricks. Instead of thin side walls and vertical ribs for strength, they have thick side walls, much like older bricks that lack the center cross-support. I assume this is to maintain the transparency effect. The only modern transparent bricks I've seen that have thin walls are also frosted on the interior, presumably to lessen the visibility of the vertical ribs.

Here is a nice example of Samsonite's poor quality control. Somehow this mold has the LEGO logo on each stud twice - once vertically and once horizontally. These were put in sets just like any other brick. They're cellulose acetate plastic which explains the shiny, waxy apperance and orangish hue.

Lastly, here are some wonderful marbled slotted bricks from the 50s. These were only in my collection for a few weeks before I traded them away for a pile of Kiddicraft bricks (1950s slotted bricks, not LEGO but possibly the inspiration for the first LEGO bricks). I miss them already!

[whitswj]

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Edited December 3, 2021 by whitswj

[Duq]

I've a few of these, they used to belong to my dad:

[danth]

Who do I have to kill for a trans-yellow windscreen like that?

[Shawn]

I do not have any of these yet, but I have been eyeing up a spiderman one. These 19 inch display figures that Lego produces for stores are pretty rare. I bid on a spiderman one a few years ago and I have not seen another. For lack of funds and availability, I have been collecting pictures of these things. I have found 43 of them and I have another 20 pics or so.

Have nay of you seen a Batman one of these? I have bigger pictures here. http://www.minifigpriceguide.com/MAXIFIGS.0.html

[Breakdown]

I have a bin of unremarkable old Pat Pend bricks from the Samsonite era in the US that are difficult to date precisely. Perhaps the oldest parts I can verify dates for (thanks to LEGO Historian's excellent guide) are these windows that were produced between 1958 (when the hollow studs arrived) and 1963 (when LEGO switched from cellulose acetate to ABS plastic). These are CA windows. I think the 1x2x2's would have had glass originally. You can see the tell-tale warpage that was a problem with the CA plastic in the window on the right. One of the side walls has warped and split from the front along the corner.

The warpage is one clue to the plastic type, but also when you put these windows next to the more common ABS versions they stand out. The plastic has a different shine and feel to it.

I was just over at my sister's place and she had picked up some used lego for her son to complement his growing collection of sets (which he will not mix).

Somehow he had three of those ancient doors. I thought that they might be worth something. Not something that you see every day, I never had any. But no such luck.

I finally got my hands on one 1 x 1 yellow window, have to find another one yet.

No freaking wonder these things go missing from just about every set I see for sale. They don't really attach at all!!

[mpfirnhaber]

These are old color test bricks from the 60s that I recently added to my collection. They are made of Cellulose Acetate plastic. It's interesting to see these from a time when official LEGO sets contained only clear transparent bricks.

In fact I don't think sets have ever contained 2x4 bricks in anything but trans-clear...

There are more colors out there, but these are quite rare, this is all I have been able to find so far.

[LEGO Historian]

I've a few of these, they used to belong to my dad:

Duq,

Those are from the 1963-65 Architectural Sets series... from parts packs 518-521... small plates sizes 2x4 (518), 2x3 (519), 2x2 (520), and 1x2/1x1 (521). These were very unpopular, and therefore a shortlived series of sets/parts packs. The 3 sets were 750, 751, 752. These were only sold in continental Europe. This is the only source for those strange 8x11 gray plates, and those 8x11x3 trans-clear boxes.

I have an entire chapter in my LEGO collectors guide devoted to this short lived, but very interesting series of sets. They never caught on because there really weren't enough parts (unlike smaller scale Modulex) to build much of anything with these... most of the parts in the sets were plates... and you can't do that much with just plates and bricks...

Edited March 11, 2015 by LEGO Historian

[mpfirnhaber]

Some animals in non-production colors.

[Shawn]

those are nice!

[LEGO Historian]

These are old color test bricks from the 60s that I recently added to my collection. They are made of Cellulose Acetate plastic. It's interesting to see these from a time when official LEGO sets contained only clear transparent bricks.

In fact I don't think sets have ever contained 2x4 bricks in anything but trans-clear...

There are more colors out there, but these are quite rare, this is all I have been able to find so far.

German collector Jan K. has an off shoot on these old bricks.... he has an assortment of the type used in the 245/1245 Lighting Bricks Parts Pack.... but no bulbs....

With the recent discovery that the 1309 Church set in Norway had a 1245 lighting device included, I now think that these may have originated in Norway, as part of that Church set, which was introduced in 1957, but the lighting part of the set was discontinued within a year. No other country appears to have had this lighting device as part of this church set, and we have still not found an original boxed example of this 1309 set (but my Norwegian collector friends are on the lookout!! ). The 1957 Norwegian catalogs mention that a 1245 lighting device was included with the 1309 Church set... but we're still looking!!

I have found an example of the church model that was glued for a display piece, and has some melting from heat, likely interior lighting. But I think this example would have had to have had several of these lighting bricks connected together to generate anything near the amount of heat that caused this!!

P.S. The baseplates of this set are not made of Cellulose Acetate, but of another plastic (unknown type). So that plastic may have had a lower melting point than Cellulose Acetate, which would account for it's extreme deformity versus the CA bricks of the model.

One of the few "missing links" I 'm still searching for, for the collectors guide....

Edited April 14, 2015 by LEGO Historian

[mpfirnhaber]

I've seen those photos. Really wonderful bricks. I'm surprised they may have been actual production parts!

[LEGO Historian]

Yeah.... here's part of a Norwegian Retailer Price List that mentions the 1309 Church Set containing a lighting brick "lys-sten"... and a 1245 Lighting Pack. Also, in most other countries the 1308 Fire Station and 1309 Church set are the same price. Here in Norway there's more than a bit of a price difference.

Edited April 14, 2015 by LEGO Historian

[mpfirnhaber]

Here's a prototype DUPLO hippo that I recently had the good fortune to add to my collection.

[Master_Data]

I have set 555, so my oldest/rarest pieces are the minifigures, the flag pole, and the baseplate (when did they stop producing rounded baseplates?).

[zux]

Ok, it looks like I managed to score rare part (unintentionally) for the first time. I've ordered couple of used Technic, Liftarm 1 x 6 Thin in black. Thanks to sunny weather I managed to see that one of the parts looked a bit transparent... and turns out to be in Trans-Black [bL]. Color is uniform. According to BL none of such colored parts existed in any of sets, which is cool!

[Count Bricktooth]

I got a hand me down lot of 70's bricks and pieces back when I was a kid, that's probably the oldest stuff I have.

The bulk of my collection is from 84-90, that would be next.

[LEGO Historian]

Although LEGO wooden toys go back to 1932, the first LEGO plastic bricks sets go back only as far as 1949, with the introduction of the very first AUTOMATIC BINDING BRICKS sets of LEGO.

TLG (and all old time LEGO collectors) had always thought that the oldest LEGO sets were found in colorful cardboard boxes without the word LEGO on the box. However, this (pictured) extremely rare and previously unknow (to even TLG) wooden box set dates back to 1949... Day 1 of LEGO bricks. The white catalog confirms the legitimacy (and date) of this set.

This very rare box would be a proud addition to almost any museum collection... and the Billund TLG Collections are on the lookout for one of these.... If it were in my collection, I would insure it for $10,000!!

The crown jewel of my recent updates to my Unofficial LEGO Sets/Parts Collectors Guide....

Well found out some new research on this very rare (only known) Automatic Binding Bricks set of circa 1949-50. It appears that the official LEGO timeline mentions making Kindergarten LEGO sets starting in 1950. Since all the Kindergarten (TERAPI) sets of the 1960s and 1970s were wooden box sets with red on the box top.... I suddenly realized that this could very well be the 1950 introduced Kindergarten set. It could explain why it's so rare (only one known).... and why it's made out of wood (as all Kindergarten sets were).

I wouldn't change the value, since it doesn't change the rarity of it... but I would love to know what number this set was sold as. Perhaps it was the same set number (700/1) as the cardboard boxed set, just in wood.

Edited July 4, 2015 by LEGO Historian

[IronFish]

I have 2 of the Green "My Own Train" passenger cars, and one of the red cabooses, that's the oldest I have that's still all together.

[mpfirnhaber]

This black Prima brick from Sweden circa 1954 is both very old and very rare :)

[-zenn]

I got the mxi024, the one in the blue overalls, via a friendly retailer, It's my desk/build buddy.

Edited July 7, 2015 by -zenn