August 2017: Visiting the Pick-a-Brick Wall Once Again!

About a week or so ago, I made my third ever (!) trip to an official LEGO store.  As with my other two visits, one of the biggest draws to the true LEGO stores is the Pick-a-Brick wall.  Since it's fun (for me at least) to keep track of what I find and buy from the wall, I figured I should show off my cup's worth of bricks as I did the last two times.

To recap, my first visit to an official LEGO store was back in 2015.  At that time, I made a rather rookie mistake of putting a bunch of the 2x4 bricks in my cup (they are both large and overly easy to come by via Classic sets).  Still, I was happy with my haul then because I also landed a lot of bamboo plants and fence pieces (both of which I had precious few of at the time).  I ended up with 298 pieces the first time.

In February 2017, I made my second visit to an official LEGO store (the first one was in Maryland, my other two visits were both in Rochester, NY), I did a bit better with my cup - at least in terms of the number of pieces I fit in it!  In the end, I had a cup with 596 pieces in it which included 6 large white panels and a bunch of sand green stuff.

Now here we are in August 2017 and I have made my third trip to an official LEGO store.  Let's take a look at what I was able to score in my cup this time around...and we shall see if I did any better than either of my first two visits.

First, it should be noted that I went to the same store as I did in February and much to my dismay, a lot of the piece selection was exactly the same.  On the bright side, I had actually used up quite a few of the pieces that I bought the last time around, so it wasn't all bad but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was hoping for a larger variety in choices.

As I did last time, I landed a whole bunch of sand green pieces (because I can never have enough sand green).  Specifically, I grabbed 55 1x2 plates, 25 1x1 bricks with studs on two sides, and 4 standard 1x1 bricks that were mixed in the the side-studded bricks.  That wasn't nearly as many sand green bricks as I grabbed last time around but it is still a decent haul.

Some of the other pieces that didn't change from last time were the 1x1 gray bricks with a single stud on the side.  I took 41 of those as well as 37 of the green 1x1 bricks with a stud on the side.

Continuing the "repeats," I ended up making 11 "complete" turntables as well as grabbing another 38 of the white "frames" for use in various MOC projects (such as perhaps a stained glass window).

As I looked through the various options on the wall, I couldn't help but grab a few more pieces that I already took the first time I visited the store.  That included 19 of the white angled brackets (those are super useful for MOC building I've found).  I also took 32 of the white 1x2 bricks (because you can't really ever have enough of those) and 38 of the 1x2 inverted white slope pieces (also a piece that I seem to run out of quite quickly).

And finally, finishing off the "repeats," I threw another 28 of the green 1x2 modified plates in my cup.  That did it for pieces that were identical since the last time I visited the Rochester, NY store (at least in terms of the pieces I grabbed on both trips).  To go with the green modified plates, I also added in 12 of the 2x6 plates.

The Pick-a-Brick wall actually had a lot of 2x6 plates in different colors.  Besides the green ones, I also nabbed 9 of the tan 2x6 plates and 10 of the brown 2x6 plates.  I finished off my "large" plates with 12 of the always useful 4x4 gray plates.

By this point, my cup was getting fairly full - but I still had room for some more so I grabbed a bunch of the black pieces on the wall including 14 1x2 plates, 8 of the 1x2 plates with handle, 8 of the 2x2  curved slope pieces, and 29 of the 1x2 cheese slopes.  I figured those pieces, while not overly "special" were all useful to have more of on hand.  Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photograph of the black pieces individually but you can see them in the big photograph at the bottom of the post.

Speaking of useful pieces, I also went after some of the 2x2 plates available including 30 of the white ones and 8 of the lime green ones.  There were also a bunch of brown chair pieces available so fit 12 of them in my cup.

And finally, to finish off the cup I put in 5 of the ball joint "pairs" of pieces, plus 29 of the printed tiles, 89 of the pink flat tiles, and 28 of the bamboo plants.  After all, you can never have enough greenery in a custom city (or so I believe at least).

Phew!  That was a LOT of sorting...

So, how'd I do?  In the end, my cup held a total of 636 pieces.  That's more pieces than I had on either of my first two visits to the LEGO store...BUT I didn't grab any large pieces this time around (the largest being the 2x6 plates).  Overall, I think I ended up with a satisfactory haul, even if it wasn't full of super exciting pieces.

The only question I have now is how often does LEGO change up their Pick-a-Brick wall in their stores?  I think I'm probably good on most of the pieces on the Rochester wall for quite some time now...I need more variety next time!

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