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What is the longest running Lego set, retired or still in production?

I remember seeing set 7239 Fire Truck in the Lego catalog for years. That fire truck out lived three fire stations (7240, 7945, 7208)!

I'm having trouble finding an end date for sets, is there any way to know how long a set was released?

For example Brickset lists the fire truck's availability at LEGO.com as Oct 2007 through Dec 2011, but I know the set ran longer then that (I got it in 2005).

So what is/was the longest running Lego set?

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    It's a little ambiguous to answer because sets go out of production at unspecified times before they actually become unavailable at varying times depending on location and vendor, and sets get re-released sometimes.
    – Alexander O'Mara
    Dec 17, 2019 at 23:47

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I'm going to stretch your definition of "set" and say "32x32 green baseplate". You could get set 745-1 in 1978...

box of set 745-1

...then 840-1 in 1980, then 813-1 in 1986, then 626-1 in 1996:

box of set 626-1

And since 2015 there's 10700-1, altough it seems that the shade of green is different than the previous iterations:

box of set 10700-1

Since those sets have exactly the same piece count (one) and each piece is functionally the same, I will argue that the green 32x32 baseplate set has been in production since 1978 until today (2019). That's over 40 years.

If you consider these to be different sets because they have different set numbers, then the record goes to 1996's 626-1, with 19 years.

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  • Good thinking, but I would say that a set consists of more than one piece :)
    – Ola Ström
    Dec 17, 2019 at 22:05
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    On the other hand, if it has a set number then it is a set :-P
    – IvanSanchez
    Dec 17, 2019 at 22:56
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    While I have no problem with a set having only one piece, you listed five different sets there. The longest of which ran for 19 years (626-1)
    – David
    Dec 24, 2019 at 5:17

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