A couple months ago I was stressed out and needed a hobby. It occurred to me that downstairs, in my garage, was a gigantic tub of Legos. It was a big tub and one night, while my friend Pete was over playing video games, we went downstairs and dragged the tub upstairs. This box was filled over a decade ago as I was moving my stuff out of my parents house. We popped and open and inside were thousands of Legos. I had managed to hold on to my Lego collection that I had accrued as a kid from 4 to ~12 (when Legos became lame). Also inside was a New-in-Box Generation 1 Transformer, but that’s another story.

My kick-ass wife, who volunteered, helped me sort the jumble of Legos into some sense of order. We managed to consume a weekend laboring, sorting the bricks. It actually turned out to be good quality time. There were many themes; the castle, pirate, and boats where eclipsed by the space and town themes. Then occurred to me, it was time to rebuild.

Unfortunately I didn’t save the directions, but thanks to the magical Internet, I found a site, Worldbricks.com, that saved the day. They have Lego instructions going back to at least 1955. Based on my memory and what I think I saw in the piles I identified at least 45 different sets.

Then I got on Ebay and start poking around. The memories from hours of staring at catalogs came flooding back so I picked up several more sets to round out my collection. Ebay is also an excellent place to pick up spare parts.

I didn’t have all the parts, but I had many, and pictures of the ones I rebuilt are below. Notice the big Space Shuttle model. I couldn’t help it so Suzanne and I went to the Lego Store in Lawrenceville and I got a big-boy set with a mere 1204 pieces, definitely my favorite.