Hey great video! 😊 i’ve considered doing more used parts in my store but had no idea where to start. Sorting this way definitely makes a lot of sense to me.
I wash all my used Lego buys. When picking the pieces apart, I pull out minifigs, obviously unsellable, and anything that shouldn’t go in the water (electronics, etc.) Then the huge tub of Lego gets filled with water and soaked for about half a day. If it smells, I add a little detergent, but otherwise water does a decent job. The reason I wash everything is because I can see that, even though the parts look fairly clean, when I’m finished sorting through a bulk buy, my hands are filthy. It’s not really a big job, I find. I use a big strainer to take the Lego out of the water and dump it into a towel lined plastic shoe box, and then it gets quickly spread out on a towel on my carpet. Ceiling fan turned on, pieces stirred a bit 2-3x a day, and after 48 hours, everything should be all dry. Then I gather it up to be sorted later. I do about 20-25lbs at a time. The other thing I do differently is my first category sort is into 17 containers (about 5x5” each, in 3 rows of 6… one of my kids pinched the 18th container, lol!) When a category container is full, I just dump it into a gallon ziplock or a plastic shoebox). Categories are… 1. regular bricks 2. mod. bricks, arches, round bricks 3. Technic 4. regular plates 5. mod. & round plates 6. Minifig accessories, animal, riding stuff, and containers 7. slopes 8. doors, windows 9. plants, fences 10. tiles 11. windscreens 12. brackets 13. hinges 14. tires, wheels 15. panels 16. wedges & wedge plates 17. bionicles. Everything else goes in a plastic shoebox for a later sort. Same layout every time for years now, so by having more categories pulled out at once, I don’t have to do it as many times.
I start with all bricks, then anything vehicle related, and anything flat then refine from there on those especially putting anything with a print that takes 3/4 of the stuff away then refine from there. Hell I bought a collection with 20k plus pieces last weekend and still going through them.
I am still working on building up my store. I've got about 1300 lots done so far in 2 months with help from my kids and wife. I sort by color first and then part type and then by lot. It goes pretty fast once I get past the color sortiing.
Hi Stacy .I sort by color first . at same time sort out figs and door and etc. ,and put all trans parts in one bin , if your way works good keep with it
I can see how sorting by color would be faster... but it's just too hard for me to break my habit of sorting by category. And that works for me until BL changes the part to a different category! LOL
I prefer color first, also. You’ll eventually have to sort them by color anyway. Sorting by categories forces your eyes and brain to work harder to recognize those patterns. Color is much easier at the beginning. I’m sure you’ve been doing it long enough that you’ve trained your brain to do its thing. Lol.
I feel like I'm in the minority by sorting by category and not color. But like someone commented, I have trained my brain to see the part, not the color.
Good question! I sort by the most parts most likely to be in the container. There are always a lot of bricks, plates, slopes and plate modified so I like to get them sorted out first, then it's easier to sort the rest. Sorting by parts that sell the most would be tricky because that varies so much week to week (month to month). Some months I might sell a lot bricks, then the month I could sell a bunch of technic parts. My sorting process to basically to sort out the categories with the most parts first and go down from there. Thanks for watching the video!
