[quote name='blandstalker']In that case, I'm having a hard time right now finding a focus.
I'm a longtime Transformers collector and I'm fed up with that scene. I also have plenty of Lego, and dealing with moving/selling all my crap made me get back into them. But all the choices are overwhelming. How do you choose what to collect? How do you display it?
I like the minifigures, so that's in process. Dunno what I'm going to do about Series 1 (ouch), but the rest are easy and doable.
From there, I just don't know what to do. Thanks to my son, we have plenty of sets around, both built (and on display) and unopened (and stored in the closet).
But, again, focus. I feel like I need to have focus because I don't want to just buy a bunch of stuff. I feel like I need to get out of the habit of buying stuff I'm only tangentially interested in just because it's cheap. I have too many videogames and too many Transformers that I don't really need. I'm going to be spending lots of time paring them down to focused collections (and, of course, funneling the proceeds into Lego)
I like Lego Star Wars. I was really drawn to the B-Wing at the local Lego store. Price is ouch and no minifigures, but I like the larger class and the original trilogy vehicles. That would put me on an expensive path of large-scale vehicles, and I could do that. We've got the Star Destroyer and the smaller Falcon, the Tantive, the Sail Barge, the AT-AT. The only thing I don't like about them is they tend to be fragile and look better than they play. Most of them look nifty, but they're not a whole lot you can do with them, and they really don't handle well.
I definitely like the little mini-vehicle/planet sets. First time I saw them I was all WTF, but I picked up a couple and they're great. I like the size, like that they come with minifigures and display stands. The thought has also entered my head that they would make great Chrismas tree decorations. These guys would fit in a Lego SW collection.
I like buildings. I could see myself getting into the whole Lego town thing or the Monster Haunted Mansion. Issue with this would be storage and display. I don't have lots of space, nor do I want to do a lot of disassemble-to-store. We just moved and I've been doing a lot of rebuilding and I don't really want to sign up for that as a regular thing.
While I like the Monster Haunted Mansion, the rest of the Monster line is just okay to me. I like the minifigs and the ideas are great. I just don't need a bunch of vehicles, and the Vampyre Castle is just so-so to me.
We've got some HP sets -- the older Hogwarts, Knight Bus, Hagrid's Hut. I'm torn with this, though, because while I like them, I don't feel compelled to get every last HP figure (maybe that's a good thing?) and after awhile, the buildings all seem very similar. I could totally do Diagon Alley, though.
I thought I'd be all over the LotR stuff, but the sets seem expensive for what you get, and the large sets seem very ad hoc -- it's a battle or a scene instead of, say, a castle. I find that I like concrete things -- a shop, a house, a fire station -- better than what I think of as movie sets -- staged areas that are incomplete or full of little partial areas.
I love the Marvel/DC minifigs, but could do without all the playsets and vehicles. I desperately want the Batman Fun House minifigs, and even though the set looks neat, I don't really have a need for it. I am really torn with these, because I don't need to say more than Lego Deadpool! But focus -- the sets without the minifigures do nothing for me. And I don't want to buy the sets just for the minifigs, though I'm tempted. I've got the old Batcave unopened in the closet (I was going to sell it) but I'm wondering if I should keep it and add on to it. The new Arkham looks great.
I like the large vehicles. I've got the convertible and that's just great. I could see myself getting the VW Bus or the Sopwith Camel. But that's 180 degrees from the other stuff. There is zero overlap here -- these sets don't come with minifigures and the scale is completely different. I'm thinking I should just pass on those even though I think they do what they do better than the Lego Star Wars sets.
While I could also see myself doing ALL of these things, I don't want to do that. There's some fun in mixing and matching, and I think I could be okay with Jabba's Palace connecting to Diagon Alley near the spaceport. How do you all organize and display your stuff?[/QUOTE]
If all of the above is not an option to you, you should walk away from this thread, and never return.
A little more seriously I have focused mostly on the Kingdoms/Castle sets (which it seems LotR replaced, both for LEGO and me personally). Most of my stuff is displayed in a book case, which is woefully inadequate for my LEGO storage needs.
I have run into trouble recently though with the Monster Fighters and the Superhero sets. After selling off a lot of my City and SW sets and deciding to try to focus on Kingdoms they had to go and cancel the line which apparently just meant a return to lack of focus for me. And none of this is even mentioning that my wife and I got into Dr Who this summer and she thinks if we are going to have so many LEGOs we should at least have some of the Dr Who sets that Character Building makes (hard to say no to LEGOish sets the wife wants).
Throw in that I can't say no to any set at 50% off and my LEGO collection just continues to expand and expand.
I know, I was no help at all.