Hi. My name's Gnoll, and I'm an AFOL.
That's not pronounced like "awful".
Or maybe it is. I'm not sure, actually, as I've not heard it
pronounced as a word very often. Normally, people just speak it out
loud as "A-F-O-L", as I am wont to do. But The fact
remains, I'm an AFOL: an Adult Fan of LEGO.
So again, my name's Gnoll, and I'm an
AFOL. And while I have been an AFOL for the entirety of my adult
life, for the last six years or so I've been out of my "dark
ages" -- a term defined by other AFOLs as that period of a
person's life in which he or she forgoes their love of LEGO in order
to pursue more "adult" activities. But for me, I don't
really consider myself as having "dark ages". I still
dragged out my collection to tinker with it when visiting home in my
early adult years, and began collecting the Star Wars licensed sets
upon their release in the late 1990s, although that didn't become a
major pursuit until a few years later. In fact, the only reason why
even had any sort of "dark ages" was simply a logistical
one: I just didn't have the space to accommodate a collection of any
note.
That changed when I was last shopping
for a house. Previously, I had rented a room from a friend, shacked
up with a former girlfriend in a one-bedroom apartment, lived alone
in a tiny downtown rental, and owned a modest but cozy condominium.
In 2007, however, I bought a house. A real live house, with a yard
and everything. And when shopping for said house, one of my major
considerations was finding one with an extra bedroom -- a bedroom
that I could turn into my LEGO room.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have a
LEGO room. It's not the third bedroom, or the front bedroom, or the
guest bedroom, or the sun room, or anything else practical and
adultish like that. It's a LEGO room. And that's precisely how I
describe it to anyone who'll listen, AFOL or not. The LEGO room, all
120 square feet of it, is lined with conference tables which support
a sprawling city scene. The city features everything from
skyscrapers, hotels, emergency units, government buildings,
restaurants, rail yards, and a working monorail, and all of it fits
atop three 30" by 60" folding tables. Along the other walls
and beneath the tables are dozens of plastic drawers and buckets, all
filled with sorted LEGO elements of all varieties. Hanging above the
tables and scattered about the other usable wall space are decorative
floating shelves, housed with Star Wars sets I've collected over the
years. And the entirety of the room's 2' by 6' closet's content is
comprised of even more sorted LEGO elements.
The LEGO room is teeming with LEGO
elements, and yet I still take great pride in amassing even more.
Sure, there's a LEGO store or two within a short drive. And the local
department stores and toy stores sell plenty of LEGO. But the fun
part is acquiring the collection of someone who's outgrown theirs and
making it my own. Frequent scans of Craigslist, roaming garage and
estate sales on the weekends, and occasional stops into thrift stores
often yield big scores of LEGO elements, and usually at quite the
bargain compared to actual retail or eBay. In what was easily my
largest single acquisition to date, I once procured over 100 pounds
of LEGO from a young man whose wife had forced him to part with his
lifetime's worth of collecting, all for $100. My car barely fit my
haul that day.
Of course, acquiring a stranger's LEGO
collection can be a perilous situation. Usually, these toys were
owned at one point by a small child. Quite often, they shared a home
with a smoker or a pet. Occasionally, their collection found itself
joining forces with other toys in their collection. And as you can
imagine, even the most careful of LEGO builders has the occasional
fumble of a candy bar or can of soda, leaving a sticky residue where
you certainly don't want it. So after happening upon a large
acquisition, I have a three-part process I complete before I
integrate my latest finds with my existing collection.
1. Sifting.
Upon getting my latest haul home, I sit
down, usually in front of the television with a movie or something
on, and sift through the parts. As a LEGO purist, I get almost
irrationally annoyed at having to separate the wheat from the chaff
in dealing with my hobby. This is most commonly identifying what are
known as "clone brands": toy lines such as Mega Bloks,
Tyco, Best-Lock, Cobi, and K'Nex, which are compatible with LEGO
bricks, but are of a far inferior product quality. Even Hasbro, a
company I generally admire, has gotten into the game with their Built
to Rule and KreO lines. I abhor these off-brands, and purge them from
the system as soon as humanly possible. At the moment, I have a tub
with over 50 pounds of these parts in my attic, which are of so
little worth on the secondary market that I have tried unsuccessfully
to get a modest amount of cash from them on Craigslist or at a yard
sale on more than one occasion. I've considered donating them to
charity, but I would hate for some poor child to be disappointed when
his or her mother showed up with a giant tub of what she unwittingly
called "Legos" (another pet peeve of mine) only to find out
it's nothing but cheap plastic junk. Aside from the clone brands I'm
purging, there are usually other random toys tossed in to these lots.
Plastic army men, toy cars, action figures, and other random
playthings sometimes find their way in. There's other unusual junk to
be found sometimes as well, such as Popsicle sticks and candy
wrappers and paper clips. Of course, finding the occasional quarter
or other piece of change is always a welcome distraction.
2. Washing
Now that the useless junk has been
eradicated from the equation, it's time to get the remainder in ship
shape condition. It's a pretty common phenomenon after handling
someone else's LEGO collection to find yourself with a certain sticky
residue on your hands. Pet odors and cigarette smoke also seem to
soak in to the ABS plastic more than one would assume. So for these
reasons, my new acquisition is thoroughly washed. The LEGO elements
are stuffed into a mesh garment bag and put into my kitchen sink.
Warm water is run over them for a few minutes to loosen up dirt and
grime. Afterward, I soak the elements in warm water and dish soap.
The soaking time can range from a couple of hours to overnight,
depending on how filthy they were to begin with. There are some parts
that don't get rinsed or soaked, however. During the sifting session,
I typically do some light pre-sorting, putting standard bricks,
sloped parts, flat plate parts, and everything else into four
respective containers. Parts with stickers, metallic and chromed
elements, and anything electrical are set aside, and are usually
dabbed with a sponge to get them clean. After soaking, I rinse
thoroughly for a good 20 minutes or so with cold water, and lay the
elements out on a towel with fans blowing on them. Drying usually
takes at least about 48 hours.
3. Sorting
Sorting is the third, and easily the
most time consuming, of the initial steps. Sorting LEGO elements is a
much-discussed topic among AFOLs. There are debates on what methods
work best, what types of containers to use, and how finely sorted the
parts should be in the long run. The size of one's collection is
generally the determining factor for all of those variables, however.
In my case, I typically sort regular bricks, slopes, and plates by
color, with smaller elements being broken away from the larger ones.
Other elements get broken down by color, function, size, shape, or
scarcity. There's no real standard on how it's broken down in my own
collection, and it's constantly evolving. Occasionally, when a
certain bin gets too full, the elements in that bin are split up and
sorted in three or four different bins. And sometimes, when those
bins get too full, the same happens with them, or ironically, get
recombined back into a larger bin than they all began in. Acquiring
containers to keep your LEGO elements in can be almost as costly as
acquiring the actual LEGO itself. Larger and more common elements are
generally kept in plastic drawers of varying sizes, while smaller and
more unusual elements are usually kept in bead-sorting containers
with small compartments that can be easily rifled through. Sorting
can be quite a chore, though. A large acquisition may require a few
good weekends' worth of work in order to get everything squared away.
Many AFOLs with large collections spend so much time sorting their
collection that they find themselves limited in their actual time
building things with them. A frequent joke I have found myself making
is that my hobby is actually sorting LEGO, not building with it.
But being a grown-up LEGO fan, despite
all the hard work that goes into it, is still a rewarding hobby.
There's something to be said about learning that new building
technique, or the excitement of finding that exclusive minifigure, or
discovering a use for a part that you thought was completely
worthless before. And when that creation of yours goes online and
winds up receiving scads of positive feedback, the amount of time you
put into it makes it all worthwhile.
So yes, my name is Gnoll, and I am
indeed an AFOL. And while that may or may not be pronounced "awful",
perhaps it should be. Because a lot of us AFOLs go through an awful
lot of work just so that we can get a chance to play.
-Gnoll
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