What is this? It is a brand spanking new 6080 King’s Castle portcullis of course! Sort of.
Why there is a piece of brown minifig hair in there as well, I have no idea.
As you may have gathered from my previous postings, I am currently acquiring more bricks to start building the castle. A couple of orders were sent out last week, one via BrickLink and one to TLG (the LEGO Group), and the first to arrive was this package from the TLG’s Pick a Brick online store. I decided that since the portcullis was so central to my past efforts to build this castle, I would invest in new bricks for it. Unlike other pieces so far, I did calculate what I would need for the portcullis. It will be the pièce de résistance of my castle. Luckily TLG still makes all the pieces in the portcullis and black has not gone bleck.
Pick a Brick is seemingly a part of the regular LEGO online store, the only exception being that it has a sort of separate collection bag that eventually appears only as a single item in the actual order. I wish I could have reviewed it in the order page as well. Also, only standard shipping was available. As I ordered some other items at the same time, my order shipped in two separate parcels, regular items shipping almost immediately from the online store and the Pick a Brick set a day later from LEGO’s supplier in Strykow, Poland. For some reason, the Pick a Brick shipping notice arrived three days late. Unlike standard shipping for the regular items, though, the Pick a Brick package featured online tracking at least once the shipping notice arrived.
The Pick a Brick parcel took eight days to arrive in Finland after shipping (nine days after order), the regular package came in five days. Apparently the delivery used for Pick a Brick was Deutsch Post DHL Paket International, so additional tracking was available at the DHL site (using the shipper’s reference/referenz number). The progress of the package seemed painfully slow, I wonder if they used the 6010 Supply Wagon to carry the parcel through Germany. The age of airmail has spoiled me. Curiously, the TLG and DHL sites showed slightly different tracking data. Tracking mostly stopped once the package left Germany. All in all, a decent experience, though unfortunately the brick selection at the Pick a Brick store is not classic-friendly. That remains a job for BrickLink.
12 Responses to Pick-a-Portcullis
[…] for the baseplates, so I jumped straight to the fabled portcullis. As you may recall, I received new parts for it from TLG’s Pick a Brick online store two weeks ago. So, I sat myself down with my […]
[…] of old parts, as well as completed the portcullis and some of the minifigures. I have also ordered new bricks and explored my father’s old LEGO. Next I am going to try and complete additional minifigures […]
[…] covered a few topics related to building LEGO MOCs (my own creations), including essential links, Pick a Brick store, LEGO Ideas Book and CUUSOO. This introduction to 21st century bricklaying wouldn’t be […]
[…] have done when acquiring parts for the 6080 King’s Castle. I have also used the official LEGO Pick a Brick store, where you can get new parts (on BrickLink there are new and used parts), but that is less useful […]
[…] black plates in the station, that I wonder if I could almost have built the portcullis without the Pick a Brick order. When I was trying to create the portcullis as a child, was I reluctant to strip my LEGO Town for […]
[…] variation, the fifth, and also found two variations of the LEGO lamp holder plate, which is used in the portcullis and the drawbridge of the castle. Finally I came across two different variations of the old castle […]
[…] parts. Second, I could acquire more through BrickLink and/or, where available, via the online LEGO Pick a Brick (PaB) store. The common wisdom would be to start with the existing collection, inventory what is […]
[…] stuff I may eventually use for powertrain variations (I have also contemplated powering up the portcullis of the King’s Castle), as well as one small BrickLink batch of vintage 1980s LEGO train parts […]
[…] on in my quest for Inter-City train, was use the Peeron parts list to shop at the LEGO Shop online Pick a Brick. The downside: I kept no records of which parts I would still miss and now that time has passed, I […]
[…] aided design tools, it’s all there. There is also a plethora of LEGO blogs, forums and online stores. Naturally most of this content is easiest accessed through common search engines, but once you […]
[…] theme sets, two haphazard BrickLink orders (254 pieces total, some redundant ones), one LEGO Shop Pick a Brick order (31 pieces) and some minifigure mauling get one to the 6080 King’s Castle? As it turned out, […]
[…] surface, but I have been able to gather at least cursory knowledge of essential links, pick-a-brick stores, bley issues, online catalogs, building instructions and parts databases, brick washing, collection […]