BrickLink Discussion Forum

Sadly I don't really have the time to keep up with the part-out game any
more so I'm wondering if any other UK store (or I guess worldwide if you
want to pay the shipping on 39k parts) would be interested in taking the lot.

Current 6-mo average price is ~£2,750 according to BrickStock and an XE conversion,
and I'd be looking for £1,000 imcluding shipping which is about 64% off the
6-mo average. I also have 8 of your typical 4 x 10 small drawer storage units
that could go as well for a little bit extra.

I feel like normally when I see these posts people are always expecting to get
too much so I hope I'm not too far off base here. Please check out my store,
note that this is only the parts (and the few loose minifigures) and not the
few sets I have listed.

Cheers.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Mar 21, 2023 12:30

Subject:

Re: Wanted: Bionicle Kraata slugs!

Viewed:

59 times

Topic:

Wanted

In Wanted, Rakali writes:

Thought I'd ask on here if anyone has a pile of slugs laying around that
they don't feel like undertaking the process of identifying and would like
to offload. Drop me a message. I realize I might be a few years late to the party!

Re-reading this post makes it look a little ambiguous... I want to BUY these,
not looking for handouts

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Mar 21, 2023 02:23

Subject:

Wanted: Bionicle Kraata slugs!

Viewed:

114 times

Topic:

Wanted

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

May 8, 2022 03:09

Subject:

BL forcibly removing parts in unusual colors.

Viewed:

181 times

Topic:

Problem

Got an email through last night notifying me that some items had been removed
from my inventory with the reason:

"Reason: Item is a clone, replica, photocopy, modified element, or is counterfeit"

The item in question is

58247 Minifigure, Weapon Gun, Blaster SW Standard
Parts: Minifigure, Weapon {Black}

in Tan, Lime and Yellow.

I picked up these parts a few years ago now from a seller in Hungary who I assume
must have had some sort of factory connection. I was placing an order anyway
and picked up a few to resell as I thought they were interesting.

These parts are not fake, have the LEGO logo and the part number etc.

Is Bricklink now policing selling items in 'un-officially' released colors,
or is this an order from the corporate overlords similar to the *whispers* Osprey

I notice there is still a Red Darth Vader helmet listed, however it was forcibly
changed to Black on my wanted list this week. What's going on here?

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Nov 2, 2021 12:58

Subject:

Re: Could Lego Actually Do This ?

Viewed:

57 times

Topic:

Buying

Yup, it was especially noticeable last year on Black Friday where everything
that was out of stock mysteriously came back in stock the day the prices went
back to RRP.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Oct 10, 2021 00:11

Subject:

Re: Programmers: Page reqeust limit help.

Viewed:

28 times

Topic:

It is probably easier to use wants lists but least favourite any stores manipulating
fees.

Sadly at this point that is not an easy feat. What I want to do is start with
stores I would like to buy from (reasonable fees, decent pricing) first, and
then see what parts they have, and go from there.

For reference my test project is 90 something lots, 84 of those are available
on B&P, so Im manually finding a store to buy the missing lots from.

Then because I am buying from that store anyway, I would like to compare the
rest of the lots in the list to see if they have any cheaper than B&P so I can
pick them up as well while I am there.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Oct 9, 2021 16:55

Subject:

Re: Programmers: Page reqeust limit help.

Viewed:

30 times

Topic:

However, the API is slow and if it's part-out values you're after, those
are not available in the API. Also, the API is very complicated compared to BrickOwl's
- it's probably not feasable for the OP unless they get some help with it
(like I did).

I've ran into the same problem, Bricklink simply doesn't want you to
do it, at all. Which is clearly reasoned from a non-BL-seller perspective. I've
ended up simply adapting my workflow to that reality. Maybe you can design things
in a way you can process smaller batches spread out over several days, and cache/save
everything you've got to minimize how much you need.

I can totally understand why they don't want people mass scraping data, that's
why I'm just keen to know the limits so I can abide by them.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Oct 9, 2021 16:52

Subject:

Re: Programmers: Page reqeust limit help.

Viewed:

34 times

Topic:

If you have the wants list and are in the store, why not just use the wants list
to search that store. For 100 parts it is not that onerous. Or do you plan to
do it in multiple stores?

The plan is to do it for multiple stores so I can choose the stores I want to
buy from as well as compare to B&P, that way I can make my own decisions instead
of having the auto-finder recommend me stores that are manipulating prices using
fees and other such shenanigans.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Oct 9, 2021 04:59

Subject:

Programmers: Page reqeust limit help.

Viewed:

92 times

Topic:

First let me say that I am not a programmer, not even a little bit, and what
code I have so far is cobbled together from stack overflow and is extremely janky.

I'm just trying to make a little program for myself where I can compare LEGO
B&P prices of a wanted list to a BL stores prices.

I can pull the prices from B&P, and they don't seem to have any sort of lock
on how many page requests I make or how fast, but when I try to do the same from
a BL store, I'm running into 403 errors half of the time, and eventually
getting completely locked out to the point where I cannot view the inventory
of any shop even within my browser.

I'm not exactly flooding the server with requests here, a wanted list of
~100 items with half a second wait between each request gets me locked out straight
away so it has to be pretty strict.

Is it documented anywhere how many requests are allowed to be made, or is there
a better way to be doing what I am trying to do than loading each page individually
(and using some jank regex to grab the price).

Cheers for any advice!

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Oct 3, 2021 03:37

Subject:

Re: No Lloyd vehicles

Viewed:

41 times

Topic:

New Sets

In New Sets, Ninjaacatss7 writes:

Will there ever be a single ninjago wave without any lloyd vehicles? It just
gets on my nerves that I see one every time I open a LEGO catalog.

That's like asking for a City wave without a helicopter or a Harry Potter
set without Harry, Ron or Hermione! Madness!

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Aug 20, 2021 14:13

Subject:

Requesting help from a US seller =)

Viewed:

98 times

Topic:

Help

Hiya, I've had an order today an unfortunately I was missing 14x DBG

15100 Technic, Pin with Friction Ridges and Pin Hole
Parts: Technic, Pin

It's not often I get an order from the US, and even less often I'm missing
parts, but it's sods law they have to collide.

It there anyone in the US willing to ship these 14 parts to my buyer in the US
for me that I can order from?

Thanks!

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

May 13, 2021 20:45

Subject:

Re: 10-25% off + Treasure hunt - Fat Dragon UK

Viewed:

56 times

Topic:

Sales

So if I add all the eggcellent items it's about £130 after the 50% off. Can
I make enough money back on the expensive Harry Potter figures at 50% off to
cover that and make a profit?

Maybe for someone with a bit more time

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Aug 30, 2020 06:00

Subject:

Auto-select is awful. A different solution.

Viewed:

145 times

Topic:

Status:

Open

Vote:

[Yes|No]

Long post incoming.

As someone who does like to put together the occasional MOC from purchased instructions
as well as sell, I am having a hard time understanding how anyone manages to
buy parts these days.

Here are a few of my results from using the auto-select feature on a wanted list
of ~2500 parts in 374 lots.

UK ONLY, straight auto-select:
369/374 lots, 16 stores, £290.88
UK ONLY, manually filling from my own store first, then hitting auto-select:
369/374 lots, 14 stores, £270.19

I also tried the same list from a different account with the same results, so
it isn't just excluding my own store from my own search results.

I understand it's a very difficult programming task especially for such a
large wanted list, however with just one store manually selected, I was able
to reduce the number of stores by 2, and therefore shipping costs, as well as
the parts price by 7%, so why was my store not recommended to me in the first
place?

Let's try something else, and expand our search to EU stores.

EU ONLY, straight auto-select:
369/369 lots, 4 stores, £319.71

To keep it fair I removed the 5 pieces I could not get from UK sellers from the
query.

Now we are at 10 less stores than my optimized UK result, but for £50 more. UK
shipping is not going to be anywhere close to £5 per store, so we have given
the finder more choice, and somehow came away with a worse result.

This isn't even accounting for the fact that most EU stores charge a 5% Paypal
fee that the auto-buy can't see, and also the increased shipping cost for
international transactions.

Let's try and find those hard to find pieces.

UK ONLY, straight auto-select, then EU for the missing 5 parts:
374/374 lots, 20 stores, £332.33

EU ONLY, straight auto-select:
374/374 lots, 4 stores, £438.67

Now of course with 16 less stores, I am saving a considerable amount of shipping,
however we are not accounting for the additional 5% Paypal fees from most EU
stores. So average £2 shipping across the UK stores, add 5% to the EU store prices,
and I am still saving £100 by giving the auto-select LESS choice.

Maybe it is just not designed for such a large number of lots, but my list was
just the parts for two medium sized Star Wars models from Brickvault. That seems
like it would be a popular use case.

So what is the solution?

Work backwards. Start with the stores, then find the parts.

With so many stores having a whole myriad of different fees and limits these
days, it makes more sense to start with stores you are comfortable buying from,
and work from there.

I have attached an image of a piece of software that was written by BobDeQuatre
in 2013. It would load your wanted list, then you could give it stores you wanted
to buy from and it would cross reference the prices of all the parts between
the stores. You could then select which parts to buy from each and create the
relevant wanted lists. (if this was built in to BL you could of course just create
carts).

Sadly the software soon broke due to changes on BLs end before it ever had time
to gain traction, and the author did not care to work on the project any longer.

I used this to put together this MOC:
https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-6703/thire5/ucs-arc-170-starfighter/#comments

It was by far the easiest buying experience I have ever had as well as being
the largest MOC I have put together with parts from BL.

You can use the current features to find some stores with a lot of parts you
need with fair prices and terms that an auto finder cannot account for, put them
into this software and cross reference.

Need a rare part? Find a store manually that has it, put that into your table.
That store also had a few of your other parts cheaper than your other chosen
stores? Accounted for.

Unfortunately I am not a programmer, nor do I have the funds that it would take
to hire one, but I think this solution is worth something. I can offer up a token
£100 to anyone that would like a bit of a coding project to dabble with that
could be very beneficial for buyers and sellers alike.

Sorry for the ramble. Any thoughts?

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Apr 3, 2020 12:37

Subject:

Re: Use my store's inventory to fill Wanted List

Viewed:

84 times

Topic:

Not one that won't get you barked at, but the easiest solution is to have
a "friend" make the order for you and either pay the BL fee on it, or I guess
you could cancel the order and not relist the parts if that would stop the BL
fee.

People will be quick to call out that having multiple accounts isn't allowed
hence why you need a "friend" to do it, but it's baffling that this doesn't
have a real solution by now. Going through your inventory manually adjusting
counts is absurd.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Feb 7, 2019 23:13

Subject:

Re: Please approve, in hand

Viewed:

94 times

Topic:

Catalog

In Catalog, tEoS writes:

I'm beginning to grow tired with Lego. I visit eurobricks, brickset, brothersbrick,
rebrickable, and s@h as often as possible and still cannot seem to stay in the
Lego loop. Last year(?) I missed out on the classic set exclusives, some s@h
specials, and now these special sets.

41999 was bad enough, but that was more quantity, a smaller audience, and worldwide.

Releasing these with no notice and just to Wal-Mart in the US is a dick move.
It's not like they are fringe characters either, a lot of people like these
two, it just doesn't make sense to not release these popular characters worldwide
to take advantage of the movie.

I'm all for scumbag reselling, you have to hate the game not the player.
LEGO shouldn't be enabling this in the first place, just like 41999, just
like the series 18 Policeman. I'm all for taking advantage as a seller, but
I don't agree the opportunity should exist in the first place.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Apr 27, 2017 11:00

Subject:

Re: First time International buyers.

Viewed:

25 times

Topic:

In Suggestions, binksanator writes:

I have had to cancel quite a few new buyer International orders when they find
out the shipping costs. Is there a way to have them request ahead of tome so
I don't have so many cancelled orders?

A shipping table in your store terms might help. I wouldn't expect people
to go to USPS and enter details to figure out rough prices.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Jan 5, 2017 01:11

Subject:

Re: ADVANCED Minimal buy ammount override button

Viewed:

32 times

Topic:

A few times I have had to fill the minimum order with small cheap items like
technic pins and then tell the seller that I just don't need them and I'm
happy just with the other parts.

For me this mostly happens when I need a few rarer parts for a model and I have
to buy used. I don't sell used and I try not to build with used if possible
so no parts is better than padded parts in those situations.

There definitely does need to be a better solution to the bypass password though.
Before I set my minimum order to £6 and removed all fees I was happy to take
single part orders as the buyer was covering the packaging and PP fees so I wasn't
making a loss.

I have the bypass password on my splash page but no-one has used it in the month
it's been there. Maybe the wanted list auto fill could say -BYPASS AVAILABLE-
or something on stores where the minimum order isn't met but there is a bypass
password.

Author:

Rakali

Posted:

Nov 12, 2016 04:21

Subject:

Re: alerting new foreign buyers to postage

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40 times

Topic: