The dark side of the brick

Today's build was the whole planet of Alderaan... or at least the 2013 planet set of the Tantive IV and Alderaan ( 75011 ). This set has been remarkably hard to get my hands on.  In the end, I purchased a new copy from Germany via Bricklink (just head of them starting to charge UK VAT!) though this disappointingly arrived with water damage to the box and instructions.  I've been keeping an eye out on ebay for weeks with no sign of anyone selling at anything approaching a reasonable price. The build was nice and short (10 mins or so) but it's 8pm and I need to write one more paper before I can stop work.  I prefer the version that came with the 10030 UCS star destroyer but this is a nice enough little set.  Nothing amazing to justify its price apart from, presumably, rarity.

Friday night and back to the Lego... today I finished off the Tantive IV aka Blockade Runner ( 10019 ) from way back in 2001, which arrived courtesy yesterday of an ebay deal.  I've learned to set my expectations low for older sets on ebay and this one was clearly a rebuild as it was missing instructions and box.  However, that helped with the price and what I ended up with was a set in pretty much perfect condition - barely even any dust and minimal yellowing!   To be fair, the stickers are new replacements but everything else is colour perfect so whoever got this must have picked up a near-complete bargain and then finished it off.  It took me about 2.5 hours to build - less time than I expected.  It's clearly a set of its time but has some really nice design features.  It is also massive.  I was expecting it to be bigger than the other two more recent versions of this ship but not quite so much bigger.   And here's a comparison to the...