Surviving lost LEGO building instructions
December 25, 2009
My 4 year old son is beginning to play with and appreciate the LEGO sets that I had as a child. These sets span the years 1978 – 1985 and are still mostly in perfect condition except for one thing: building instructions.
Daddy can you fix this ?
My son was holding a single piece of LEGO but I knew exactly what set it came from and what it had looked like before being dismantled.
I searched through the collection of building instructions which had survived numerous moves, fishmoths and the march of time. Then I got that sinking feeling – the building instructions were missing.
Trying to find the relevant pieces in a storage box containing pieces from multiple sets is difficult enough even with the help of building instructions. Without instructions it is almost impossible.
I have the internet …
After calming down to a mild panic in the face of a 4 year old’s tantrum I thought – “LEGO must keep an archive of all their building instructions”. Visiting the Building Instructions section of LEGO’s Customer Service page revealed the following:
We currently have over 3300 building instructions available online which date back to sets packed in 2002.
2002 ? That wasn’t going to help me !
Life savers
Google saved my life and provided me with links to the following sites:
| Brickset | Allows searching and graphical browsing of sets by set number, year or theme. Has set information from 1961 – 2010. Contains links to Peeron and BrickLink for building instructions and set inventory. |
| Peeron | Has scanned building instructions and set inventory information. Allows simple searching and browsing of sets. |
| Worldbricks | Allows searching and graphical browsing of sets by set number, year or theme. Has set information and scanned building instructions from 1955 – 2009. |
| BrickLink | Has set inventory information. Allows simple searching and browsing of sets. |
Happiness restored
Using the Brickset site I visually browsed through their catalogs and found the set information I was after. I used the Peeron site to find the building instructions and the set inventory. Happiness was restored.
