Last year, when we really got into building the modulars, I found myself browsing eBay looking at other building instructions I could buy. As it turns out, I fell in love with a beautiful MOC called “Blue Corner Cafe“. Not thinking anything of it and assuming the seller was the actual creator of this wonderful creation, I purchased the instructions and proceeded to source the pieces from our small, but growing LEGO collection.

I’ve been working on collecting the pieces for several months now and it’s been a slow process. Recently, I decided to do a search online to see if I could find inside photos of the MOC (the eBay listing only had exterior photos). I ran across a thread on Eurobricks with the image of the MOC I’m building and a multitude of complaints about the eBay seller from whom I purchased. Much to my dismay, I discovered I purchased from a seller who was not the original creator of the MOC and had shady selling practices as he simply uses the original creator’s MOC images in his listings. So, not only is he deconstructing someone else’s hard work and creativity, he’s also selling it for a profit using their original images. On top of all that, he only seems to ‘fess up to the false assumptions when confronted. It’s all rather disappointing.

To make matters worse, the original creator, stefauster, never made instructions for the set, so if I had seen the set from this seller and wanted to buy it from the original creator, I couldn’t. Instructions were just never made.

One of the commentors on the thread mentioned he contacted the seller about his shady business practices, to which the seller replied:

I have made the building instruction viewing the pictures which he posted. It is comparable to a painting of the Eiffel Tower that is being sold. While the painter is not the actual designer, he/she holds the rights to the painting. Nothing illegal here.

While I don’t like his logic, Mr. Family Brick feels he makes a good point. Either way, neither of us is a lawyer, so we can’t say one is right over the other. All I know is I feel a little slimy continuing with the build, but at this point, I have purchased the instructions and am long past my period of complaint with eBay.

I’ve also sourced almost all the pieces I need to build the MOC, so I plan on going through with it.

Sadly, it’s like there’s a little grey cloud over something I was looking so forward to…

What do you think of all this? Would you buy deconstructed building instructions knowing they weren’t made by the original creator of a LEGO MOC?