There's something so enticing and alluring about seeing someone else's LEGO collection in storage when it's all organised and especially when it's a large collection. Bryan Maike recently had some time over a couple of long weekends and a few late nights to move his sets to a single location which is climate controlled with concrete walls and ceilings. Aside from that primary location, there's a smaller room just across the main area for more unsorted and loose bricks to be hosted. He was kind enough to allow us to share these photos with you. And before you ask, no this is NOT A RETAIL STORE.
Before you all go crazy and ask what does he do with all this LEGO - he and his wife also operate Broke4Bricks a Lego-Centric educational 501(c)(3) Nonprofit organisation and some of the stuff you see here also is part of that initiative.
What starts out as an empty and narrow but deep-shaped storage space with bright sea blue floor by itself is so very pleasing indeed.
Building it up, bit by bit as it all comes together.
Getting it all loaded up into the truck for transportation isn't an easy task as well.
Transporting process in containers on a trolley - separated by themes. I'm just going to visually poke around the Star Wars set and be all curious about it.
There seems to be a good number of store displays too!
We can see that sometimes the best way to sort stuff pretty and nice is via themes. So we get all the nice colours lined up. I spy a lot of CITY sets with some Friends in the far back in purple.
I can tell that someone is also a huge fan of Minecraft. The virtual world of building in blocks comes to life with building in bricks. I call it Brickception.
I spy more themes lined up on the right shelves from LEGO Movie to Ninjago.
Got to love the minifigures Box of 60 collections all lined up and fitting nice and snug. Seems like they were made just especially for them.
Your LEGO collection isn't complete if you don't have some books to go along with them.
And you know you're always going to need some containers to fill them up with the parts that you haven't got round to sorting out just yet.
The flip side of the photo above showcases some nice Creator Expert Sets and larger boxes.
What Bryan wants us to also know is that, yes, he does build these sets. A large portion of these have been built and returned to their boxes. So, like most of us, we love our LEGO boxes and if given the chance, we'd love to keep them. This collection was also not acquired overnight, but spans across, many, many years.
He's also shared that in order to amass such a collection, he does not drink, smoke nor do drugs, which helps funds his collection and purchases. So, remember kids, if you aspire to be like Bryan, stay away from that nasty stuff so you can put your money to good use! And while Bryan has several lovely kids, he assures us that the kids cannot play with his LEGO, just like how we all Adult Fan of LEGO likes it to be. They all have their own LEGO and he can attest to that by the number of times he's stepped on LEGO elements throughout his life.
All in all, the end game for Bryan is to have a store like this in which his wife can continue to run their LEGO-Centric Nonprofit organisation while he can have his own space to build his LEGO City (and perhaps even sort of a Museum area. And if you must know, yes, his collection is insured, and no, you cannot have his address of where he lives of this excellent stash is hidden at.
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