LEGO Archeology
When I started into the hobby, I ended up buying LEGO at garage sales, off eBay by the pound, and other methods… At the time, I was looking to build a classic castle collection. Some of the lots were just a mess — pounds and pounds of bricks, mixed in with other toys… As you would pick through the lot, you’d stumble on a unusual part or 50 of an unusual part, that most sets only came with 1 of. You ended up scratching your head a lot of time wondering where the parts came from… Anyway, with a friend — who had been in the hobby years longer than I had — together we’d go through my latest LEGO acquisitions, and it became a form of LEGO archeology to sort through the parts and understanding what sets they were from… Like the above picture, the baby, the purple bear, the cloth pouch, and Bellville figure (and a few other odd parts) makes me believe they all came from #5860 – Love ‘N’ Lullabies. The process is fun, but can it be challenging… and a little frustrating. At some point, you think you have a great find. I find maybe 20% of a set, but over time pieces were lost.
Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve resorted to sorting out LEGO… partly to find parts to complete a build, partly to clean up, partly to relax from some of the new work stresses with “working from home” full time. Within this tub of parts, I found the above Fabuland figure, the Belville parts, and some LEGO figure puppets… I didn’t realize they mostly came from basic sets… I learn something new today.
Also in this mess, there were a lot of “loved” parts. Parts that were panted with the same light pink that came in Paradisa sets… The color still matches, which I’m a little surprised at. Apparently, someone didn’t have enough pink parts, so they panted many of them… in some cases, they’re still stacked… don’t know if I’m talented enough to recreate this pink MOC, lining up the paint marks just right… meh, for another time. I haven’t thrown the parts away, figured I’d recycle them in something at some point.
There were several Slope 10 6 x 8 with Slate Roof Pattern as well as basic bricks… part of me suspects this batch of parts were accumulated late 80’s to early 90’s. Also found one Trans-Yellow Windscreen 6 x 4 x 2 Canopy (which I needed for my project, woot!)… which might had gone to a #6872 Xenon X-Craft… one of the smallish sets that I’ve seen most of the parts to, except for the minifigs and printed parts.