Another almost year and a half...

...and, we're back, again! We'll try to actually stick around more this time, sorry again it's been so long to anyone who reads us.

A short note, we're getting ready to assist with Creations for Charity, a great annual cause to raise money for kids via the LEGO community. Check it out! Every year there are great MOC's, signed sets, and other wonderful LEGO items.

You should hear more from us soon.

Tracy

We've been absent too long!

So, we haven't posted since the summer of 2008? That is just INSANE! To start, I, Tracy, lost my job shortly after our last posting...that had a huge impact on things, and we moved ourselves and the business to the boonies in Florida - we now have a larger space for the business and more space for living - so all in all, it's all good. I've been out of a "real job" since then, and so has Chris, so we're still technically unemployed...going on 2 years.

That being said, we're still posting new product, trying to get things in order, and hope you'll come by and visit our shop! We will try to keep this more up to date. We're on Facebook (Brickathon Lego), on Twitter (Brickathon), and kind of all over, and don't forget http://www.brickathon.com/

:-) If you've actually read this and care to place an order, we'll give you an extra 10% off (through May 7th) if you just tell us in your order note "I just read your blog!" LOL (*New orders only - sorry folks!)

Thanks all!

Tracy
Brick-A-Thon

10 days is too long!

Okay folks, it's time I write something. It's been 10 days since Chris posted, and I really have been slacking, haven't I?

I wonder if anyone actually READS our blog sometimes... (LOL)

Anyhow - an update:

We will be leaving for a trip to Oregon (with a small side trip to San Francisco) on July 19th. We will not be returning until the wee hours of the morning on July 28th. Due to this, we WILL be raising our store minimum quite high, and I fully expect a slew of e-mails to my CrackBerry (er, Blackberry) asking me "why is your minimum so high?" - but, that's fine, I'll happily respond to all my new and not so new (but very loved) customers.

Make sure to read the splash page for the minimum order bypass code, please. We'll be processing again sometime towards the 30th, most likely.

IN OTHER IMPORTANT NEWS Chris, the I refer to as "the best packer of parts in the world", will be having surgery on her shoulder on August 21st. This will mean that I will be in charge of ALL the things that Chris does during the day PLUS all my duties (which includes a day job) - so, look for updates between now and then but we'll probably move our minimum up and allow people to place small (any $ amount with a bypass code) orders in the realm of 10 lots or less due to my limited time for working...but, if we have something you can't live without I want to make sure that you get your parts, people!

I hate it when I find a store that has ONE THING I need for say, $1.00, and their minimum is $20 - and it's like, "but all I want is THIS ONE THING!" :::sigh::: I do not have a problem with filling one or two lot tiny orders...just write and ask - it's the 3+ tiny lot orders for under a dollar or so that take a lot of extra time, thus the $5 minimum (but that's nowhere near $20, now is it? Surely in our huge collection of awesome bits you can find $5 of items you just can't live without, can't you? I know I can! :-D )

Anyway...I hope everyone out there is doing great, and I hope to get to meet some of you at the BrickWorld next year as well.

Oh, and we'll be in the Portland area, so if anyone is out there reading this that would like to meet us let us know and we'll see what we can schedule!

Best to all,

Tracy

Wow! You are amazing!

Our customers, new and returning, are FABULOUS!

Brick-A-Thon has been a featured store on BrickLink for (get this) 4 consecutive months!

I know I say this month after month, but it's true, without our customers and their orders this never would have happened! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

I'd personally would like to thank everyone for their original orders as well! I'm not usually too involved in the posting of inventory, just pulling, packing and shipping orders, so when I'm gathering up parts for orders placed I'm always amazed at what is found in our store. Sometimes I want to keep the stuff for myself (I kid, I kid), but Tracy is very skilled at listing a wide variety of parts, so kudos to her for that.

This shop is really a joint effort - between Tracy, our customers, friends, and myself we're getting the word out there that Lego IS a great thing.

You guys all rock! Thanks again for another month on the Featured list! :-)

All the best,

Chris

Around the corner - BrickWorld

BrickWorld is just around the corner: http://www.brickworld.us

We'll be there late Wednesday night through Sunday early afternoon. If you'll be attending please drop us a line and let us know as we'd love to see you!

We'll be processing/shipping through Wednesday of next week, but orders placed or paid after Tuesday night won't be shipped/invoiced until the following week (23rd of June).

In other news - we have new Agents sets that I'm busy parting out and trying to post. If you want the minifigs from these sets I've got most of them listed, and will be putting up the new parts as soon as I am able. Lots of new dark blue parts in these sets, which is definitely exciting for the builder!

We'd love to hear from you so feel free to drop us a note here or on BrickLink! http://www.brickathon.com

Tracy

Oh yeah!

Well folks, it's June and Brick-A-Thon is "Featured" for the 3rd month in a row!

A HUGE thank you is owed to our customers and friends who have helped make this happen. Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU all very much!

Tracy and I are hitting BrickWorld in Chicago later this month, name tags and all, so if you see us don't hesitate to say hello! We're looking forward to chit-chatting with a lot of you!

Things are busy here on the order front, but I'm not complaining. I'm working on orders placed yesterday...today!

On another note, I'm really hungry. While Lego food looks yummy, I don't want to risk a trip to the ER. ;-)

Take care all!

-Chris!

LOTS going on!

First off, our post on the BrickLink Forum:

Hello all,Due to the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend, starting officially for me at 5PM tomorrow (Friday) night, we've moved our minimum in the store up to $1,000! Of course, we'll gladly accept orders from you during this time, but please be advised that NO NEW ORDERS WILL BE PROCESSED UNTIL EARLIEST MAY 27TH (TUESDAY).

To thank you in advance for your patience, you can still order from our store - the password is: holiday

If you place a NEW order of over $100 during this time (or add on $100+ to an existing order, through Monday night) we will give you an additional 5% off. If you have a coupon you can use that as well.

Thanks again for your continued patronage and friendship! We have a baseball game tomorrow night, and have many things to do in the house over the weekend so thought it best to hold up "rush" orders for now.

Best to you all,
Tracy & Chris
Brick-A-Thon
http://www.brickathon.com

NOW, on to other notes of interest:

We are putting a computer in the living room - it will probably not be up for another week or so. Why do you care? Honestly, some of you might find it interesting as to WHY I feel this is necessary. I handle pretty much all of the new, incoming product - I buy, sort, get items ready - it would be very, very nice to have a computer I can work on in the area that I am working the most - which is the living room, so we're setting one up on a larger screen so that when I'm sorting, say the new Indiana Jones sets, I can look at the "alternate parts" listing right then and there and not have to back-track 10 times to get it done right. I hate to list parts and then find out they're not the right ones (just as much as you'd hate hearing we have the alternate version) so this should assist us a lot. I'm also hoping to up my amount of verified inventories on sets with this new set-up.

I hope all of you have a lovely upcoming weekend!

Best,

Tracy

Chris-A-Thon here!

Hey all!

The arm/shoulder is doing better! I'd like to say thanks for all the well-wishes I have received. I went in for an MRI on on my shoulder this past Friday - the films I saw looked...interesting! Yeah. I have a follow-up appointment next week Tuesday and will find out then if I'm going to have to have surgery or not. I'm thinking I will since my shoulder comes out of joint wayyyy too easily. Thankfully I've never been pulling an order and had that happen, but there's always a first time for everything, right? ;-)

For now I'm able to keep up with orders fine, so no worries there. I pretty much insist that I use my arm the best I can after a dislocation since I don't want it to stiffen up and become even more useless, so no, Tracy isn't a slave driver. :-D

Anytime we feel that there will be a serious delay in order processing we try to let everyone ordering from us or thinking of ordering from us know ASAP so they can make the final decision on where to place their order. Thankfully that isn't the case now and hopefully won't be for awhile. *fingers crossed*

Just wanted to put in a quick update since I've been kinda silent on the blog front lately.

Read Tracy's blog entry below about BrickWorld if you haven't. It's a great event and I'm truely looking forward to going and meeting a bunch of people next month! :-)

-Chris

Getting Ready For BrickWorld!

If you don't know what BrickWorld is and you like LEGO, well, you should: http://www.brickworld.us/

We went to Wheeling, Illinois for the first annual BrickWorld Event last year (they've got them planned through 2010 right now). I like to dub these events a "BrickVention": A convention of other Lego fans converging in one spot for 2-4 days, showing off all the great things they created. What better for the Legoholic? Oh, being able to purchase more product via the Lego store(s) in the area while being amongst kindred souls. In the Chicagoland area there are THREE Lego stores and all registered attendees are invited to a discount night at one of them (of which we are informed of at the convention).

Chris and I arrive very late Wednesday night, June 18th, just in time for some of the excellent classes they have scheduled for Thursday, as seen here: http://www.brickworld.us/?m=events&date=2008-06-19 and yes, folks, ONLY registered attendees can partake. Registering for $50 gains you access to all events Thursday-Sunday, and it's well worth it. Take a gander at all the things planned on the site.

BrickWorld, as with any BrickVention, just wouldn't be the same if it weren't for the ability to let the rest of the world inside our not-so-little hobby. On Saturday and Sunday the world can gain attendance for a small fee of $12 (down to $8 for 10 and under) and see what it is that we all love and work towards.

Last year they had a huge attendance (I don't recall the actual numbers, but remember being impressed) and pulled in a lot of people who really enjoy Lego as a hobby, young and old, to come and sample a world through the builders eyes. If you're curious, you can see some really amazing pictures on the BrickWorld site via Flickr.com (here's a link to a pic I took: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bricktracy/940427899/ one of my faves, also below).


The talent that goes into some of these projects is just mind boggling.

This year, we're told they've got a whole conference room devoted to train layouts, which will be amazing. The above, that's a train layout. Seriously.

If you're headed to BrickWorld and would like to meet the gals of Brick-A-Thon, please let us know, as we'd love to meet you too!

Tracy

Update - Chris and the Store

Just a quick update:

Friday afternoon found me taking Chris to the ER for a dislocated shoulder. Chris will be fine, but is in a lot of pain and taking things very slowly. They put her shoulder back into place, but she's slow on pulling orders now. I worked on a lot of orders this weekend in order to try to get us caught up, and Chris INSISTED she do her share as she says, from history, if she doesn't use her shoulder then it will just get worse. (Yes, this has happened many times in the past, and it's happened at least once in the past year, but not an ER visit, thankfully).

Our minimum is set a bit high right now (down to $25 from $50) and will lower itself as we improve on our orders.

In other news - I've been a sorting freak and have managed to sort out 20 new Indiana Jones sets and have another 10 to do. These sets see new figures and some newer colors in parts, as well as brand new parts, so come and check out our newest additions. The other 10 should be done sometime this week (Temple of the Crystal Skull - nice set! Here's the inventory link: http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemInv.asp?S=7627-1 )

I'm also posting a Bionicle set by hand (slow process, but necessary for Bionicle) so you'll see some interesting parts from that. As well, I've just posted a TON OF HAIR and have more hair on the way! I noticed that our hair stock was getting thin and needed a boost (kind of like Rogain?).

Thanks again to everyone reading and all your support!

Best,

Tracy

Backed up!

Orders are backed up since I had a job over the weekend that prevented me from working on things here in Lego Central. Plus we've gotten quite a few larger lot orders that'll take me a bit to fill. If you're waiting on an invoice please be patient. I'm working as fast as my feet and hands will allow. :-)

Thanks!

-Chris

1,000,000 Order on BrickLink Coming Up!

Brickathon, Inc. (Brick-A-Thon) sells on BrickLink, a great site of ALL LEGO - tons of buyers and sellers - if you've happened across this blog and you're not familiar with this site, run now to check it out!

That being said, order 1,000,000 is upcoming on BrickLink and a LOT of fellow stores are participating in giveaways for certain order #'s related to this. We are too:

http://www.bricklink.com/message.asp?ID=273256

That's the thread with all the stores thus far, and what we're offering is:

Order 1000000 gets $25 off their order PLUS a batch of new parts PLUS free shipping PLUS a 15% off coupon good on your next order.

Order 999999 and order 1000001 get 15% off their order total, first batch ofcourse.

Hope that some of you stop on in!
(*OFFER ENDED, watch for next sale/reader discount!)

Tracy ((if you read Chris's post today, you'll know I'm looking forward to BeerBrats!))

Boring is good.

Orders have been moving along nicely lately. Nothing really to report!

I'm making beer brats for a BBQ Tracy and I are having with some friends tonight. They already smell yummy! You can take the girl out of Wisconsin but you...yeah, you know the rest. :-)

Tracy is in the process of sorting out sets so we can get some customers back into the store. Heck, if I was into LEGO like most of the folks here on Bricklink are, I'd be buying from Brick-A-Thon all the time! :-)

Ok, now that I've thoroughly bored everyone...bye!

Chris

New Payment Option

Hello to anyone who reads this blog! Revolution Money Exchange is a NEW payment option Brick-A-Thon is taking, and if you haven't done so yet, go sign up and you'll get $25 for your trouble in your account. NO FEES for you sellers out there, and it's easy to use. Several of us on BrickLink have tried it out and are using it now and so far it's great!

Got Original Brown? WE DO!

It's been awhile since we've updated - we've been very busy with many things, specifically finalizing books for Uncle Sam. Never a fun chore, but something that must be done.

In new news, we're open for orders, the minimum is back to $5.00, things are running very smoothly and we miss your orders!

(SALE HAS SINCE ENDED - NO LONGER APPLIES) SALE: If you stop in and decide you just can't live without many of our amazing items let us know in the comments of your order and we'll give you a "Blog Reader Discount" (just mention the blog). WHAT is the discount you ask? Well, if you order up to $100 you'll get 5% off your order total, and if you order $100-$500 you'll get 10% off your order total (both of these include sets, so if you want an expensive set this is a good deal!). Want to place an order OVER $500 and make our day? We'll give you 15% up to $750 and 20% off on orders of $1,000 (DOES NOT INCLUDE SETS, SORRY)! Seriously! Yes, we would like some new orders so come and buy!

We DO have lot considerations (extra charges), but that only affects you if your order is not equal to 1 lot per $1 or more (i.e. - order 50 lots, your order needs to be $50 or over).

Any questions? Let us know!

Now...

BROWN : We've just added a TON of new original brown parts. Come see what we've got - these are all NEW. I should also be uploading more parts from sets and minifigs coming shortly. I'm hoping things get a bit calmer now that tax season is almost over (for the bookkeeping end of things).

BRICKWORLD: Going to BrickWorld in the Chicago-land area in June? (www.brickworld.us) If so, and you'd like to meet the Brick-A-Thon team, let us know, as we'd LOVE to meet some of our customers and associates! We'll be coming in for the full Thursday-Saturday and leaving on Sunday afternoon.

OREGON in JULY: We'll be in Portland, Oregon in July during the 2nd half of the month (for a little over a week) and would love to meet you there! Our schedule will be a bit hectic, but if you're in the area and would like to meet us please let us know.

Now, with all that said, come by and place an order with us at Brick-A-Thon! (www.brickathon.com)

Tracy

Featured!

Tracy and I were so excited to see that Brick-A-Thon made the "Featured" catagory in the store listings this month. It wouldn't be possible, of course, without our customers giving us lots and lots of work to do! Thanks so much to all our customers old and new for the continued business and support!

-Tracy and Chris

Brickathon, Inc.

Happy Monday?

Hey all!

If you've placed an order with us, it'll take a few days to get an invoice to you as we're working on orders from Friday afternoon today.

Hopefully we'll be caught up sooner than later.

-Chris

Has it really been over a week?!

Hello all!

Unfortunately we've been slacking on the blog lately. Last week was fairly busy here in Lego Zentral so there was not much time to write. Boooooo!

This week orders have been coming in, getting filled, and going out the door - just the way I like it. :-) Tracy has been adding some pretty sweet items in the store, and I think she has a ton more goodies to post over the next few days or so. You never ever know what'll end up in the store, so please keep checking back before someone else snags the item you're looking for!

Yes, it's true, we've implemented a "Lot Limit" on all orders. While we appreciate all orders that we receive, pulling a 100+ lot order for a small amount of dough is a little discouraging. This will definitely assist in processing and delivery times of all orders that we receive. We haven't had to use the Lot Limit yet, but hopefully it won't hinder too many of you from ordering in our shop. It'll be enforced, but I do believe there will be some head room here, depending on what types of parts are ordered, quantity, etc. Like Tracy said, we're not doing this to scare away customers, it's just that something needed to be done to justify larger lot orders full of penny parts.

Tracy and I are gearing up for BrickWorld 2008. We attended last year, but this year Brick-A-Thon will be getting more involved with auctions, sponsorship, and getting out there to meet as many people as we can! We're really looking forward to meeting some of the nice folks that we deal with on Bricklink.

That all being said...on to orders!

-Chris

Happy St. Patty's Day!

It's the day of shamrocks and green beer!

And order pulling for me! At least until tonight anyway!

Yes, orders are caught up, YAY! It was a crazy week last week, but I'd like to thank all of our customers for their patience while we were working on getting caught up. THANK YA!

If you're Irish like myself and enjoy St. Patty's Day like I do I hope it's a fun and safe one!

-Chris

Still at it!

I've been working through the stack and am now on orders from the 11th. Hopefully by tomorrow, depending on what happens tonight, I'll be caught up for the most part. If you're still waiting on an invoice just hang tight. They're getting out, I promise!

Have a good evening everyone!

-Chris