Swamps. Muddy, stinky, and generally not desirable places to live. But if you need to, it’s way better to be mobile. Why lock yourself into a single location when all of them are available!? Jake (Mountain Hobbit) shows us exactly what this would look like with his wonderful Swamp Walker MOC. We also get to pick his brain a bit on how he went about designing and engineering this. Inspiration Chris: What was the inspiration for this build? Jake: The idea for this build came from a piece of concept art that I found while looking for build inspiration. I didn’t have much of an idea of what I wanted to build, just that I wanted to make something swamp-themed. I came across this piece of art and knew I had to try building it. cONCEPT aRT BASED ON Bridal Procession on the Hardanger I actually followed the concept art very...

The history of LEGO Technic is simple and straightforward, right? The theme began in 1977 with four sets, and it's been a constant fixture in the catalogue ever since. Well... the fact that you're reading a BrickNerd article about it means things are not that simple. Before There Was Technic Let's start with the pre-history of what we now know as Technic. It actually starts much earlier than you might expect with set 001 "Gears", a Samsonite set released in 1965 that mainly contained, well, gears! Axles and bars didn't exist yet, so these gears were actually modified plates with studs and anti-studs. You could put them on metal axle wheels with studs introduced two years before. The gears weren't that big a success, appearing in only two more sets the year after. Samsonite set 001 from 1965. Image from Brickset. A few years later in 1970 with lessons learned from...

Happy Brick Giving Season, BrickNerds! This time of year we choose to look to help others where we can. We think of friends, family, local charities, national charities and international charities and donating our time, skills or assistance to help others. Our LEGO community is no exception; our love of the brick, our passion for building, and our passion for giving can go much further. So today I wanted to compile a brief round up of the LEGO-related charities you can consider supporting. I'm sure I’ve missed some, so please add any others in the comments so we can have all the good causes included. Internationally, the LEGO Foundation works hard to improve the lives of children through education and play, partnering with many groups as a way to encourage building and play. The LEGO Foundation and UNICEF have partnered since 2015, focusing on child wellbeing and empowering children to become creative, lifelong learners through...

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published December 2, 2022. BrickNerd is happy to present the second article in a short series on LEGO investing where we will analyze if holding onto LEGO sets for the long-term is a sound strategy to generate a profit. Safe build by Tom Gion and boxes by RAWF8, VIA ENVATO ELEMENTS Previously On BrickNerd… In Part 1 of this investment series, I conducted a review of the returns made from LEGO Investing by looking at the price increases of all sets retiring between 2005 and 2021 with 500 pieces or more. The annual return on investment from a sample of 826 sets was a healthy 11.7%, in line with an 11% return published in an academic study by Victoria Dobrynskaya. Image by rthanuthattaphong, via Envato Elements However, despite this impressive return, the sample took into account sets that had been sold and didn’t pay attention...

Best of BrickNerd - Article originally published December 1, 2022. Sometimes Nerdvember just isn’t long enough for all the incredible deep dives we have planned for you here at BrickNerd, so today and tomorrow we are happy to present a short series on LEGO investing where we will try to quantitatively answer the perennial question, “Is LEGO a better investment than gold?” 1. Introduction Stocks, Bonds, Gold, Art… & LEGO? In December 2021, the Guardian Newspaper in the UK published an article with the headline ‘Investing in LEGO may be ‘more lucrative than gold’. It reported on the work of Victoria Dobrynskaya, an associate professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at HSE. The research concluded that the annual return from investing in LEGO was 11% per year (8% in real terms) based on a sample of 2,322 LEGO sets over the period of 1987 to 2015. Image by 9_fingers_, via...