Brickcon 2013 Trip Report

Hey there Brickpickers! Here's my first blog post, thought I'd make it a doozy. Wanted to share some of the sights from Brickcon 2013 in Seattle. I went on Sunday, day two of the event. Took my nephew and my 5 year old son, so if I lack details it is likely due to the attention spans of a 10 and 5 year old. :-)

Overall Impressions

The event is really a must see for any Lego fan in the area. The venue is somewhat small - I would expect it to expand in future years with Lego's growth - but there is a lot to see, and you can spend half a day there pretty easily. Not sure it is worth travelling a LONG distance for, but that could change in future years.

Here's a shot of part of the room to show how packed it was on the main floor.

Sellers, sellers, sellers

Being a Brickpicker, I was of course interested in the vendors who were there to sell their wares. There were a good number of custom sellers, including Brickarms and Custom Army Clones (I think i have that right).

Brickarms sells custom guns and accessories, molded from the same ABS plastic as Lego. I have to say, for a non-Lego item, they are pretty impressive and look and feel like the real thing. They had a sizable display and we picked up a few of their items.

Another cool vendor was one that sold custom capes for minifigs. All sorts of printed capes of different shapes and sizes, which again looked exactly like legit Lego capes.

A number of vendors were selling minifigs. Both custom minifigs, and minifigs from regular sets. You could find pretty much anyone you wanted, although I did not see Mr. Gold anywhere. Being there on day 2 of 2, I wonder what was sold on Day 1 when it opened.

One vendor was also selling some of the custom sets I have seen posted on here, like the Ghostbusters car.

Surprisingly, one of the busiest areas was a vendor (can't remember the name, maybe Math n Stuff) who was selling mostly current market sets at retail prices. Their area was pretty packed with people buying things they could go buy at their local Walmart or Target, or go to Amazon.com, and find for less.

A bunch of vendors were selling used and retired sets. Saw a couple of Cloud City's, and a few other cool things for market prices. There was a used adult owned Burrow 4840 for $100 which I was thinking of buying, but when I went back it was sold. I will say - I saw a number of Harry Potter used sets for sale in the morning, and they were gone in the afternoon. Ol' Harry still has a lot of draw. But I was surprised to see so many new sets being sold. Chowren Toys was a sponsor for the show, and I hoped they would have a booth, but if they did then I missed it.

There is probably an opportunity for someone like the Mack's to come in and blow everyone away with a bunch of old sets, but given what I saw the crowd buying during my time there, I am not sure it would be worth the time/money/booth investment.

Official LEGO presence

So....the only "official" Lego booth I saw was promoting - what else - Chima! Just stand in line and play some Speedzor game, and you would get a free set with Razer in it. So once again, they were using free giveaways to pump the Chima line. As a marketing technique, it might work - both my nephew and son didn't want to wait in line, we did anyway since I can't pass up free Lego, and once we got home they were having a blast with the set. Now my son wants some of the other characters. I don't think it will translate into anything better than Ninjago when it comes to investing, but something interesting to watch.

MOC's Galore

The number of MOC's on display was simply awesome and inspiring. Some you have probably seen before, but I was amazed at the skill of the AFOL's who had stuff on display. Sit back and buckle in, this will be a long ride.

There were a ton of cool things made from Bionicle parts - shout out to Exobro. :-)

This Dragon was probably 18" high and two feet long, and was really amazing.

The big alien monster thing from The Avengers was another cool one - you can see the crew batting it in the pic, sort of.

I also liked this Alien brain sucker head mask thing, which was sized for an adult!

Star Wars of course remained a popular MOC item. This was a cool mini scale Hoth battle scene diorama.

Another section had some detailed 15" tall Star Wars figures. The Han Solo in carbonite had blinking lights on the side, it was pretty awesome.

This R2D2 was as big as a real garbage can, but somehow lost his feet. Poor R2!

This one was a big MOC with an Endor scene on the top...

...and a Rebel Base hanger underneath, with regular sized X-wings and everything. pretty impressive.

I liked the Rebel trooper bowling with the soccer ball in front of the entrance.

They had the big daddy of them all of course, although I think this one had some modifcations.

And it was completely dwarfed by this. A 6 ft long Venator Attack Cruiser. This thing was amazing, and I can only imagine how many parts it was.

Here's a shot of the engines in the back. Amazing detail.

They also had the Giant Squid attacking the SSD, which people may have seen on the web making the rounds a bunch of months ago.

Super heroes were popular of course as well in the booths and on the floor. This Batcave was pretty amazing. The wall in the upper left with the costumes would rotate into a wall with bat weapons as well.

This semi-scale sized Sentinel from the Marvel comic books was pretty cool.

More super heroes stuff.

There were MOC's of all shapes and sizes. I probably took pics of like 20% of them at the most. Here are a bunch with a few comments scattered here and there.

Disney castle was cool.

This monastery on the side of a mountain was amazing. Modeled after a real life place.

Mothra was pretty funny.

This was the other cool space ship I saw, the Aurora. Just massive with a ton of detail.

I don't even know what the heck these were, cities on wheels I guess, but they were amazing.

This one cracked me up - a battle base with mechs manned by Friends figures. Really cool.

Here's the Delorean we wish we could buy.

And I would buy an A-Team van in a heartbeat - bring us a minifig BA Baracus please!

This might have been one of my favorites, just for the detail. A junked car wrapped around a tree. Such imagination, for something that most of us would never think to build.

And then there was Hogwarts...

Yes, they had the most amazing MOC of them all, the giant Hogwarts I think people have seen pics or videos of. It is breathtaking in person, and I try to say that without hyperbole. If you are a fan of the HP series, it is just incredible to see in person in every way. Every big scene at Hogwarts? It is in there. Every detail? They nailed it. I'm not sure what else to say about it, it was the best part of the show for me, and mindblowing to think of it being constructed and planned out.

Here are some pictures without comment.

Final thoughts

It was a cool event. Well worth a $9 admission fee. They were filming some sort of a documentary during the day, so perhaps you will see some video from it in the future.

And to end....obligatory Space Needle made out of Lego!

See you in 2014!