Moving across the country with a 26ft U-Haul afforded a lot of wiggle roomwhen deciding what to move, and I wasn't ready to part with my most sentimental items. I wasn't prepared for the emotional flood when a friend suggested I part ways with my childhood Lego block collection. They were milestones of my childhood: I could recall which ones I got when, and the time I spent assembling castles or space ships seemed like bastions of stability in the midst of family turmoil. I was an especially fastidious child, and I made sure I had all the instructions, and I even have a scrapbook of letters I sent to Lego of America looking to reclaim a few pieces that had gone missing. I was obsessed.
I discovered a Bricks and Minifigs in our local mall, and my ears perked up when they said they bought old sets. After 12 long years of waiting, I realized my son just wasn't into them, and Marie Kondo'ing the lot seemed more and more attractive than keeping them. The rules were the collection had to be unpolluted by inferior MegaBlocks and K'NEX. They also couldn't have damaged bricks that had fallen to teeth, sun, and other damage. They would pay a premium for complete sets and would also buy in bulk. So I had my work cut out for me:
In the end, I organized by color to make the assembly and culling easier, and then I assembled all the sets I could muster. Countless yard sale acquisitions and thrift store hauls meant I was swimming in Tyco and Megablox as well as a fair amount of discarded Happy Meal toys. Fifty liters of Lego dwindled to a few hard-to-categorize pieces as we pawed and pushed. I made one last ditch effort to see if my son showed enough interest to keep them, but alas. He was more interested in the sale and conversion to cash and other fun activities. As we assembled and found pieces had gone missing. In almost all cases, an hour in the bins at the resale store lead me to the right pieces. We were whole again!
The culling and assembly took us the better part of a month. As much as it cleared space, it also helped me process the loss. I used my saved copies or hunted up online versions of the instructions for each set. I resolved early on to keep a few of the most sentimental ones instead of trying to save everything. One of my earliest memories was of Lunar Lander 6881 which I won at a raffle during a two-night stay in Child Haven after my brother and I were taken from my mom by NV-DCFS. I kept my coolest acquisitions, the big ship from the Ice Planet set (I never got the base), and the medium Imperial Navy ship for which I still had the sails. And I made an effort to return the classic Blacktron ship to my brother after replacing the most missing pieces of any in my collection. I felt whole, even as I was loading the completed sets into the car for the last time.
