And there we have it – the Bricklink Designer Program Round 3 crowdfunding round has now closed. It took just over 12 hours for all 5 successful projects to completely sell out, after crowdfunding opened on 17 May 2022 at 10:00am Pacific / 7:00pm CET / 3:00am AEST.
These were the 5 successful projects that got crowdfunded, which will begin shipping out sometime in Spring 2023.
- 1950s Diner (1,377 pieces) – US$129.99/ AU$179.99
- Train Station: Studgate (4,062 pieces) – US$399.99/ AU$549.99
- Winter Chalet (2,705 pieces) – US$199.99/ AU$279.99
- Mountain View Observatory (3,889 pieces) – US$319.99/ AU$449.99
- Modular Construction Site (3,371 pieces) – US$319.99/ AU$449.99
Round 3 had shades of Round 1, which was kind of a mess, and it sold out much quicker than anticipated.
Unfortunately… I completely underestimated demand for Round 3 sets, and missed the sets I wanted. I opted to not get up at 3am in the morning (yesterday was a big day working on Starry Night), which in hindsight was a massive mistake, as I missed out on ordering the Mountain View Observatory and Winter Chalet!
In an act of pure FOMO, I did pre-order the only one available at 6am this morning, Modular Construction Site to at least ensure I had something from this round.
As I was asleep during the time, friend of the blog, @snowlaina_lego on Instagram helped put this handy timeline together, and some observations!
First and foremost, the Bricklink site handled the surge of traffic and orders quite well, and did not crash, which is great as LEGO seemed to put in the work required in the backend to handle this spike!
Here’s a timeline of when each set got funded, crossing over the 3,000 required orders to take one of the five spots.
All times below are in Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEST).
3:09am – Winter Chalet
3:12am – Studgate Train Station
3:14am – Diner
3:16am – Mountain View Observatory
3:22am – Construction Site
This means they had sold 15,000 sets (3000 units x 5 designs) within the first 22 minutes!
4:32am – Winter Chalet was sold out (10,000 sets)
6:39am – first 4 sets sold out Construction Site is still available.
3:45pm – Modular Construction Site sells out
I can’t verify this, but apparently some people managed to get around the 1 set limit per household. Allegedly, after placing a pre-order, you could go back through and put another one in, BUT trawling through the Bricklink forums, it means that people who doubled up, or ordered above the limit had their orders cancelled.
These order cancellations were done retrospectively… so this begs the question, will LEGO re-open preorders again, if there are unfilled spots?
There were also pricing discrepancies, with Mountain View Observatory, which was priced on Bricklink at AU$449.99, but some people managed to order one and were only charged AU$339.99. In the US, the price was briefly US$249.99 before switching to the correct price of US$319.99
I would expect LEGO to honour these prices.
Round 3 has been really successful, and I’m personally happy that this experiment has worked out well. Even though Round 3 had the biggest and most expensive projects, it didn’t seem to deter LEGO fans, judging by how quickly these pre-orders filled.
This has to give LEGO confidence that they can continue to offer elaborately detailed, and large sets, and raise the price ceiling, because the demand is there, and AFOLs are willing to splash the cash!
Also, really happy for the Train fans who showed up, and backed Train Station: Studgate, which was the 2nd set to cross the 3,000 threshold!
For those that missed out… here’s hoping LEGO do what they did with round 1 and do a second chance round – it might be tricky from a forecasting perspective, and LEGO and Bricklink did go the extra mile with Round 1 (mostly because they messed up the order limit…), but I would love to have a second chance at the Observatory and Winter Chalet, even if we have to wait longer.
Were you lucky enough to score any of the Bricklink Designer Program Round 3 sets? What did you think of the experience this time?
To get the latest LEGO news and LEGO Reviews straight in your inbox, subscribe via email, or you can also follow on Google News, or socials on Facebook, Instagram (@jayong28), Twitter or subscribe to the Jay’s Brick Blog Youtube channel.
Being able to re-order a set beyond your limit has always been possible on LEGO’s online shop. They do not check quantity limits against your account in real time. But they do check later, not just for your account, but apparently for your name and address too, and whenever an item exceeds your household limit, they cancel the order that the item is in.
How this affects BrickLink orders, I do not know. Maybe they just go ahead and produce 9800 or 10200 sets or whatever the total quantity turns out to be, without trying to make it an even 10000 which is probably impossible anyway.
I can’t stand how these sets are distributed. They should be structer like Kickstarter and give people a month to put in orders.
I didn’t try this time. Having to get up so early knowing that it would be real bun fight didn’t appeal. I managed to get the Great Fishing Boat in the second phase of Round 1 (early Aug 2021) but am still waiting for it to ship supposedly in June 2022 i.e. 11 months later. It was galling to see someone in Australia offering 5 of them on eBay earlier this year for AU $1000 each. I don’t really see what benefit either Bricklink or Lego gets from deliberately making something “rare” e.g. the NASA Ulysses Space Probe which immediately sold out for a second time.
Glad I was on right at the beginning. I was able to order the three sets I really wanted… Winter Chalet, Studgate Train Station and the Modular Construction site. I ended up also getting the 1950s Dinner… Figured I already spent all the monies. This was an expensive day.
Jay- I like your optismism for Lego potentially honoring the errored prices, however- I picked up both Observatory and Construction Site for $250 according to my email notices from LEGO, but when I log in to my LEGO account on the proper site, they are 339.19 and 264.99 USD respectively. (includes 6% sales tax) My charge card also shows those amounts pending.
I likely won’t bother trying to push the matter as I knew the true cost when ordering and had no idea about the errored price until I read it here and checked my documentation.
oops, the Construction Site being properly priced and only the Observatory being wrongly noted in emails though correct in LEGO account and Charge pending.
The construction site set had no pricing error to my knowledge, so the $339 is correct for that. For the observatory you were billed the erroneous low amount $264 so it seems like they didn’t correct that.
Wanting the sixth place finisher (steampunk science
), I’m quite upset with the time based popularity contest. Pre-ordering (window) would have been better (ala Kickstarter) but not who can get online in the middle of the workday (or middle of the night) at that moment.
After reading your article I checked my Lego order for the Observatory and, yes indeed, I was charged $249.99. I was on the site the second it opened. (I am in the US)
Most of these are just going to be on eBay being sold 5x the original amount. So I’m really not sure what Bricklink’s purpose of selling these in a limited amount but just to give the scalpers the benefit of reaping more money from the actual Lego enthusiast.
Do you know if later we’ll be able to buy just the instructions if we wanted to get the pieces on our own?
As far as I know, and if you look at round 1 sets, you do not have to buy the instructions at all. They are available on Bricklink for free to download in pdf format.
Good morning Jay !… Your friend was right. A buddy and me were both interested in the Chalet as well, and we were ready at 10:00 PST (California time). When it went live both Studgate Station and the Chalet took an early lead, and that set the tone for me right there. We got our Chalet in the same minute; three minutes after going live.
I then went back in to look at the Studgate Station and read some more about it. While reading, the four sets surged ahead, so I decided to get the station too. Not only because I liked it very much (it reminded me of my old, small town European station when I grew up in the Netherlands), but also because I like trains in general, Lego trains in particular, and Lego doesn’t really ever give us a nice big station like that…
Both my buddy and me had an ok experience this time around, but it is always with some kind of urgency more than it is a fun experience, it feels like ?…
Lego could easily tweak the setup of this, to include maybe all sets for just two weeks of funding, and make what ever gets through ?… But then again, this is kind of a sport this way, and you end up with a set that is special and limited in numbers, so it is a nice reward for the excitement you get right away…
I got the Venetian Houses in the second round (and lost out on the Modular Lego store; only because the allotment for my region was out ?), and now I was more prepared and got the Chalet and Studgate Station.
I was one of the people who originally voted for the Chalet in Lego Ideas, and was one of the many people that were really pissed when Lego decided not to make the set.
No need to say that I was very excited to find out that the Chalet was going to be part of this round and I was prepared for it this time; even ready to take the time off from work to get the vote in on time ! 🙂
My offer for a guest review still stands if you’re interested in any of these three sets when they arrive; I think it would be a honor for me to write a guest review for your outstanding blog 🙂
Very unhappy with this, being released at 3am AEST. (Which would mean the Asia-Pacific region really got shafted here.) Like you, I didn’t think they would sell out so quickly and preferred to remain asleep. Therefore missed out on everything (though two sets I wanted didn’t achieve funding status). Quite surprising given the cost of the sets and that some round 2 sets didn’t sell out.
Orders could have been drip-fed, e.g. 5000 initially, then another 5000 12 hours later. It’d cater better for timezones. Or why even have a limit? Produce to demand is an option too.
Doubling and cancellation of orders was probably minimal, so I don’t think they’ll be re-offered. On the flipside… saved $1000?
Seconding your hopes of a second round, and maybe even a round 4 with some of the designs that initially didn’t make it. I like and support the program, but I think it needs some changes to make it fairer and to give everyone a chance.
I really wish they would have done this as any set to hit the threshold, even if they produce the first 5 first and the others later. Also it would absolutely make sense to do a few time slots if they then go through and purge duplicate cardholders, addresses, names, accounts, etc.
It’s cool they did this, and I needed up really splurging and getting 4 different sets from this round, but even so I really liked the science one and am disappointed it wasn’t funded. It’s almost disrespectful to the creators and teams they worked with to get ready to end this way.
*ended