January 28 was international Lego day, with enthusiasts around the world celebrating the creative hobby. DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA catches up with Thames’ own Lego enthusiast to find out more
When Edwin Booth and his family shifted to New Zealand from South Africa in 2016, the only pieces of Lego he owned fit inside a medium-sized storage box. It was the Lego from his childhood.
As I look around the Lego enthusiasts’ garage some 10 years later, I see how small beginnings have flourished into full-blown passion. There’s a medieval village scene to my right, a favourite of Edwin’s on par with an impressive Lego city along the back wall.
The city has modular buildings, which are a series of building sets released annually – busy with buses, trains, cars, taxis, cafes, people on motorcycles, people on foot, dogs, skateboards and that’s only touching the surface.
There’s a pool table with helicopters in front of me, and down one side of the room there are all sorts of scenes from carnival rides and rollercoasters, a spooky haunted house to trains and construction. A tier above hosts a vast collection of pieces that make up the vintage space, or classic space section: rockets, spacecrafts, astronauts and aliens.
My eyes can’t sit still, there’s something to marvel at in every direction.
It’s clear Edwin, who is also an engineer at A&G Price, takes pride in the details and intricacies of the Lego worlds he creates.
The nice thing about Lego was that it’s creative: “you know, it brings out the creativity in an individual”, he told The Profile. “It’s a cool hobby. I really enjoy it.”
When asked how many Lego pieces he has, the enthusiast just said “lots”. “I like trains as well. I’ve got a lot of trains.”
Edwin said the vintage Lego railway lines used to be blue, but the modern ones were now grey.
“I only had one set, which was just an oval. And I thought, shit, I need more track now because I want to go bigger.”
That’s when Edwin discovered Trade Me and said “it hooked me”.
“So, what I do is I buy your old Lego. So, if you’re selling your old Lego, I will go buy a whole tub.”
He buys Lego from the sellers, takes it home and sorts it all into colours, then pulls out all the minifigures and all the obvious pieces, which are pieces that have a number or code on them that correlates to the set number.
“I Google the set number, and then you can get the parts list. So, then you can go look in that bulk lot that you bought, and you can go see how much of that [you have]. If I’ve got more than 70 per cent of the parts there, then I’ll put it back together. And then I resell,” he said. “So, I buy and sell and that’s what feeds the hobby.”
“I’m not a free builder. I can’t just take some bricks and build something. Being an engineer, I’ve got to work to a plan.”
Something Edwin said he learned from Lego was the ability to wait. “In everyday life, I don’t have patience. But obviously when it comes to this, I do have a bit of patience.
“When it comes to sorting and, and having something there that’s incomplete, a lot of people go, ‘oh, I need to complete it’.”
Edwin shows me an incomplete vehicle, it’s missing one wheel.
“I’ve got patience because I know I’m going to buy somebody else’s Lego next week or next month or 12 months down the line and that piece might be in there.”
Edwin also built display cases made out of wood and acrylic to house Lego minifigures, and he also 3D printed keyrings and stands to hold things such as a Lego Dolorean car.
He also made Lego brick shaped glow in the dark keyrings and Lego minifigures out of resin. “So, I drilled a hole in the [minifigure] head, and you just pop them on your Christmas lights. And now, it glows the color of the light.”
His creativity led to other hobbies too such as competitive barbecuing as The Firestarters with his brother in law.
It was evident that Edwin’s interests led him to “his tribe”.
The “best part” about it was that he would spend time with like-minded people. When he saw the amount of people who paid to go through the doors and look at the displays at the Auckland and Hamilton Brick Shows, he realised: “in every one of those people, there’s a person that loves Lego”.
“It’s my tribe, you know? I’ve found my tribe”.
DETAILS: For more info, email Edwin at iamedwinbooth@gmail.com.
By DAVIDDA HIKATANGATA
