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I'm an adult but have come to fall back in love with LEGO again after building the LEGO Apollo Rocket kit.

I wanted to buy a large set of just various LEGO bricks to build neat things. But what I am finding is a lot of the basic sets are filled with fluff pieces. Things like little men and accents and things like that. Is there a way to buy just a box of classic pieces like when I was a kid?

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    I'm a fan of the Saturn V also.
    – chicks
    Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 1:51
  • If you watch a few episodes of Lego Masters you'll see creative use of 'fluff' pieces. Admittedly this often requires bulk supplies of the fluff, so I see your point about wanting fewer of them in the sets you buy.
    – tgdavies
    Commented Jan 3, 2021 at 2:51

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While nearly all sets these days to include a certain number of parts that you may be referring to as "fluff", the Classic line has the highest ratio of more typical bricks and plates that you may be used to and has a number of sets at quite a few price points that may be useful to you and are available both direct from LEGO and from many retailers.

A note of caution over your classification of those "fluff" pieces though: You may find if you progress to more advanced building techniques that many of those pieces you currently disdain are absolutely indispensable to accomplish some very interesting effects that are simply not possible with standard bricks and plates. Don't discount the utility of a part simply because you may not be familiar with their usefulness or that they may not be immediately related to your current project. A fairly common term in the community is NPU which stands for New (or sometimes Novel) Parts Usage and stems from people being very creative with parts that might not immediately seem to have any other purpose than their basic form might suggest, and has led to very interesting and quite stunning results.

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  • Thank you @nathan-stohlmann. I didn't meany any offense. What would you recommend for somebody who is looking to make more technical things to get started?
    – Jacob Melon
    Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 0:05
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    You might like Yoshihito Isogawa's book "Simple Machines" (and/or some of his other books as well). That is a collection of hundreds of basic mechanisms built from Lego Technic. A great source for ideas when designing your own models. There are few words and lots of pictures. The point of the book is figuring out exactly how to build the mechanisms yourself, not copying detailed step-by-step instructions.
    – alephzero
    Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 1:28
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    No worries @JacobMelon! No offense was taken and sorry if my answer made it seem like I did. Specifically which set kind of depends a bit on your budget. If 50-60USD is doable than the new 11016 Creative Building Blocks or last year's 10717 are a pretty good start and have better ratio of bricks and plates to other types of parts than 10698 mentioned in the other answer. Also 10698 is the same price as 10717 but has almost half the parts because it comes with a storage bin which may or may not be useful to you.
    – Nathan Stohlmann
    Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 5:32
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While I really agree with Nathan's take on this, I'd like to point out another option. Why not just get a bucket of bricks like the 10698: Large Creative Brick Box? You even get a decent container to keep your collection of LEGO in:

10698 brick box

Another view:

what you can make

There aren't many instructions to get in your way. You get parts in a variety of colors. If you want more bricks you can save up and buy another bucket and be assured you'll get more of the same stuff.

Amazon in the US currently has this on sale even.

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You can buy individual bricks in any quantity you want on the Lego.com website using pick-a-brick. There are about 1400 bricks to choose from in that system. You buy just the bricks you want and nothing you don't. If you feel like you need 500 pink 2x4 bricks you can order that. Its usually somewhere around 10 cents each for the smaller bricks.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/page/static/pick-a-brick

You can also order individual bricks using Bricks & Pieces. Its meant as a way to order replacement parts, but there is nothing that prevents you from ordering whatever you want. Unfortunately you need to know the part numbers (or the part number of a set containing the brick) to be able to find anything (because there is no catalog for that system). If you want to just order a bunch of gears or something like that, this is the way to go.

https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/replacementparts/

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  • I forgot their name, but there's a brand of shops in Germany that will sell you a colour by weight.
    – Mast
    Commented Jan 1, 2021 at 12:55
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Anecdotally, I've had fantastic success with bulk, used LEGO, which is typically sold by weight on eBay et al. This is much more economical than buying new and tends to come in a more practical variety than kits if it's from an individual (rather than a larger re-seller).

If it's from an individual, remember that somebody loved that LEGO, so be excited, kind, and also wash it.

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