BrickLink has launched its MOC Pop-Up Store, which offers a convenient way to order the pieces for 41 fan-designed LEGO sets – including one that could cost over £1,000.
Conceived as a way to capitalise on rejected submissions from the first and second rounds of the BrickLink Designer Program, the MOC Pop-Up Store allows BrickLink users to purchase digital instructions for fan designs, and then order the required pieces directly from BrickLink and Pick a Brick. The secondary marketplace gives a guide price for the elements for each design, and some of them are likely to break the bank.
Potentially the most expensive of the 41 different designs is jazlecraz’s Forest Citadel, the 3,864 pieces for which BrickLink suggests could cost anywhere from £397.66 to £1,013.34. That incredibly wide price range isn’t typical for the designs in the MOC Pop-Up Store – a few span a couple of hundred pounds, while at the other extreme ExeSandbox’s Container House is predicted to cost exactly £315.57. But most of these models are sizeable, and carry high price tags to boot.
BrickLink also states that the price for the parts is ‘an estimated range’, and doesn’t include shipping and handling fees – but the beauty of the MOC Pop-Up Store is that it makes buying the necessary pieces as convenient as possible. Hit the big green purchase button for your favourite design, then let BrickLink figure out the best possible combination of stores (and Pick a Brick) to find you the cheapest combined sources.
Once you’ve clicked purchase, you’ll be presented with up to four possible options: a combination of BrickLink stores and Pick a Brick; the lowest possible price from BrickLink stores only; the fewest number of stores from BrickLink only; and only domestic BrickLink stores. Each one may have a different price, and not all options will be available for every single set.
For example, we gave it a test drive with the Container House, and were offered two of the four available options. The site wasn’t able to find a combo between BrickLink and Pick a Brick, nor were there enough domestic stores to fulfil the order. The price for only BrickLink stores ended up being the same whether we chose the fewest stores or the lowest price: £390.46 including shipping fees and the price of the instructions.
All of the chosen designs were originally submitted to the BrickLink Designer Program (which transforms fan builds into boxed LEGO sets with the help of the LEGO Group and its designers), so you’ll likely recognise a few favourites from that scheme if you took part in the public vote to find the final designs – such as TheKingOfLego’s Working Mini Golf Course, Brickproject’s The Lost Temple and NicolasCarlier’s Medieval Market.
Click through to BrickLink to check out all the builds, and find the prices for your faves. Designers will earn 80% of the revenue generated by their building instructions, while profits on the pieces will presumably be split between BrickLink sellers and the LEGO Group (for Pick a Brick orders).
The sets available in this trial period – which is due to run until November – have been screened by the LEGO Group, but not thoroughly tested for stability and viability in the same way as the mainline BrickLink Designer Program sets. The platform has devised a three-tier difficulty level for the builds, though, which runs from 'moderate' to 'challenging' (with 'advanced' bizarrely in the middle).
The MOC Pop-Up Store is only accessible in a select number of regions at the moment, including the UK, USA, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
Head over to BrickLink to find out more about the trial MOC Pop-Up Store.
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