Our Nemesis... The Green Grocer!

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We’ve been wanting to build the LEGO Creator Green Grocer for quite some time now. However, it is a discontinued set and as most of you know, a discontinued set increases in price the older it gets in the LEGO world. We’ve found the LEGO Creator Green Grocer on Amazon for $999. We’ve also found the LEGO Creator Green Grocer on eBay usually starting around the $500 range. Both are too rich for our blood.

So we came up with the “brilliant” plan to see what we have available in our stash and then simply purchase the missing pieces to make the set. Sadly, *simply* is an understatement.

If you’re not familiar with Rebrickable, it’s a website where you can add the parts you have available in your LEGO stash. Then you can select a set you want to build and it will tell you what percentage of the pieces you have and how many more you still need to purchase to build the set of your dreams. What I like most about Rebrickable is they also partner with individual LEGO reseller stores and give you an estimate of what it will cost to purchase your missing pieces from these stores.

As it turns out, we only have about 33% of the Green Grocer. Clearly, we still have a TON more pieces to buy. According to the site, we’d end up paying over $300+ for all of our missing pieces… and would still be about 10% short of all the bricks needed.

My husband and I have been at odds about this for a bit. He’s consistently championed for replacing parts and just creating a similar set to add to our town. I, however, am a purist. I want to build it to exact specifications and have been silently fighting him the whole way. In my heart of hearts, I know he’s right, though. If we want to build anything like it, we’re going to have to substitute parts. So I’ve stopped fighting and have come around.

Yet, the other driving factor for me wanting to build the set to spec is the desire for financial gain in the future. If it’s $500 to buy the set now, can you imagine what it will be when we finally decide to sell? And if we start replacing parts here and there, we start diminishing the final value of the set when we decide to move on.

But for now, I think we will start looking at replacing parts. I want to build it sooner rather than later and there is nothing stopping us from replacing the substitute parts with the actual parts as we come across them in the future. It just requires a little more work.

How about you? What have you wanted to build, but don’t have enough parts? Are you a purist or do you replace away?