Because of the new resources, I believe this changes our short term and long term plans where displays are concerned:
The unsorted lots in my mind become the long term priority, and even more than has been suggested. Assuming we fully sort out one box per meeting and we meet every month, it will take almost two years to know what we have in LUG brick. Even if we fully sort two boxes per meeting as a group (and this would take a LOT of each meeting to accomplish), it will still take a full year to finish. And this is assuming we receive no more LUG brick during this time. My proposal is to divide the boxes now, send two or more home with each attending LUGer (those with tenure and earned trust) on the 26th with the expectation that the parts not pulled for the Greenburg event are to be sorted according to SCLUG standard and returned at the next meeting… minus one large PaB cup per box sorted as reward for the trouble. We’ll NEVER get the boxes sorted if they’re available only at central meetings where we’re obviously going to do other things with our time.
Even if we manage do this quickly, here is our short term answer. We’re better off simply building the sets we’ve been given and then integrating them into our displays as best we can, perhaps MOCing them into a unified theme where necessary, as is the case here. This is our best short term priority.
First, this is also obviously a major intention of TLG: to have LUGs indirectly plug sets that are available on the shelves. These sets were not intended to be MOC fodder. That’s what the boxes are for.
Second, it answers the question “What do we do with all these sets?”
Third, it takes some pressure off for now.
Fourth, we’re already using sets in the trains and ships we’ve displayed, modified or otherwise. So the originality concern has already flown the coop.
Fifth, only the other LUGs or LEGO hobbyists will care that we displayed some sets instead of all MOCs. And quite frankly, we’re not in competition with PennLUG or anyone else, especially since we’re being paid on relatively short notice to cover a very large space that is a multiple in size of any other display we’ve done before.
At this time, using the sets sure beats scrambling to fill giant spaces solely with high quality MOCs as we are attempting to do now. Expecting LUGers to produce high quality themed MOCs within eight weeks that cover nine baseplates… a bit much to ask of anybody, even someone who has LEGO as their only hobby.
Finally, over the longer term, we can’t build well if we don’t know what we have. Twenty-two unsorted boxes is far too much brick to lie fallow considering that the size of our individual and collaborative MOCs are growing quickly. That and the time crunch we are in now for Greenburg is why the unsorted boxes should be a longer term issue while we should make best use of sets right now.