As a child I had only one LEGO set, my beloved 6923 Particle Ionizer. I remember playing with it for years. My fondness for LEGO came back when my sons came into the world, and it was hard to resist buying more and more. Eventually I also decided on my first purchase “just for me” and once again became the owner of set 6923.
I first came across the BrickHeadz series in 2018, when a friend of mine posted a photo of his mini collection online. And I admit that I disliked those figures so much, and understood so little of what could be fun about this series, that I forgot about it for two and a half years.
It’s hard to point to the reason why I eventually changed my mind about BrickHeadz. It certainly matters that they are quick to build and don’t take much time. 10 to 15 minutes of building is the perfect amount of time to quickly unwind after a long, hard day, or even during work. BrickHeadz are also easy to collect: they aren’t expensive, and the collection grows quickly. Over time their style also became a plus for me. I don’t know how to describe it better than to say that they are simply pleasing to the eye. And finally, it’s worth mentioning that practically every set has some printed pieces, which give BrickHeadz sets their uniqueness.
Officially, I made my first purchase on 2 January 2021. Maybe it has something to do with New Year’s resolutions 🙂 I don’t remember which set tempted me, because my notes (which I keep meticulously!) show that I ordered as many as 18 of them at the time (20 figures in total).
After less than two years, on the day I’m writing these words (2 October 2022), I already own most of the released sets and close to 200 figures. Even though the vast majority of my sets were new, I simply can’t stop myself from building them. I’m not particularly interested in the boxes, I flatten them all. Of course I care about original pieces, and I also look after the instructions.
At the same time I’ve come to terms with the fact that I will probably never own all the Comic-Con 2016 and 2017 exclusives. For a while I also wasn’t interested in sets from special events like store openings. In the end I think it would be nice to add them to my collection, but here too there is an exception: set 6315025 from the Amsterdam store opening, whose price is still prohibitive. Finally, I can’t fail to mention Nonnie from the Inside Tour 2017 Edition, which seems practically impossible to get. Fortunately it looks like LEGO gave in to the criticism, and for some time now they haven’t released sets outside official distribution. Let’s hope it stays that way.
I keep the instructions in Argus binders with a colourful brick pattern. The hardest part was finding suitable sleeves split horizontally in the middle, so that two instructions fit in one sleeve. In the end I managed to buy Tatuner sleeves on Amazon. I’m writing about this in such detail because either I’m bad at searching or this is an extremely niche product. I spent a lot of time looking for something at a reasonable price. Just in case, look for postcard sleeves or search for the phrase “2 x DIN A5 sleeve”.
Like many other collectors, I struggle to find room for my collection. A large part of my collection stands on transparent shelves from IKEA; I describe them in more detail in this post.