Here, at The Brothers Brick, we don’t review stores but I had a very unexpected little LEGO adventure yesterday and I wanted to share it. I realize that this post will only be of interest to people in the Greater Portland and Vancouver area of Washington and Oregon States. I apologize to our readers in the rest of the world. If you don’t live there, feel free to skip this post and bad-mouth me for the rest of the day. I’m okay with that.
I had to take a sudden trip to southern Washington State over the last couple of days and I decided to stop in Battle Ground, WA to see my grandmother. No LEGO was supposed to be involved. Little did I know. I had been told that there was an independent toy store in the area that dealt in used LEGO. I looked it up and the store turned out to be about a quarter of a mile from “Grammy’s House”.
I was much more impressed with the store than I was expecting. For the most part, prices seemed to be about mid-range of Bricklink’s prices. They had a large stock of older sets, some MISB, some opened in the box and some built but loose.
They had large bins of minifig parts, which they were selling for 60 cents a piece or three dollars for a fig. I grabbed up a handful of vintage castle torsos and an assortment of helmets that I was short on. My kids had a blast building figs for themselves as well.
They also had a bins of “building brick” which was sold by large and small cups ($10 and $5) or by gallon-sized plastic bags ($25). My wife was kind enough to fill up a bag with assorted bricks, plates and slopes in green and tan.
There was only one staff person on duty, named Micah, but he was very friendly, enthusiastic and well-informed.
They do not sell online, but have three store locations. They are in Beaverton OR, Canby OR and Battle Ground, WA. If you are in the area, check them out. I had a good time.
Along these lines, there have to be more independent purveyors of used and collectible LEGO out there. If you know of a brick-and-mortar store in your area, feel free to post the location in the comments. Just don’t tell us about your online store. We know about those.
In the interest of transparency, I would like to state that Bricks & Minifigs did not ask for this review nor did they give me anything in exchange. The only freebie that I received was the business card I swiped off the counter.
Kyle from BrickForge has a new brick-and-mortar store called Blokhedz, which was recently profiled in the area’s local newspaper.
Cherry Bomb Toys in Victoria, BC, Canada (near corner of Broad and Johnson streets) carries used LEGO both bagged and in a pick-a-brick with actual cups as well as new sets.
Oh man. I am gonna have to check one of these stores out sometime soon… thanks, Josh!
I’ve been talking about opening a store like this in Beaverton for literally decades, I’m glad somebody finally did.
There was a “Minifig Collector” store out here in Denver for a couple of months this year, reselling minifigs mostly from Star Wars and the other licenses. Looks like they didn’t last long though.
there’s a used toy store in austin, texas called Anna’s Toy Depot. she does have a website, but she doesn’t sell lego through it. she’s got nice bulk bags, a handful of sets (some open & complete, some NIB), a nice build-a-mini section, more sought-after figs under glass… she’s got a couple young FOLs working for her, they know their stuff, so sets are correctly and accurately marked complete or not.
In the Bay Area, there are 2 independent stores under the name play-well:
http://www.play-well.org/store/
There are numerous used-toy stores that have fair-to-middling selections of LEGO.
If you’re in the Seattle area, I’ve used “Math ‘n’ Stuff” to get sets that Lego doesn’t carry anymore. They’re located in the Green Lake area and have a decent selection, all at MSRP, but often they’ll have sets that have been discontinued by Lego, anywhere from 0-6 months ago. You don’t get VIP points obviously, but if you’re local you don’t have to pay shipping and handling like you would on BrickLink. http://mathnificent.com/store/
Im glad that you got my msg about checking out there store and liked it. I had a great time BSing with the staff at the Beaverton store :-D