As something of an authority on building large, LEGO Millennium Falcons, I have to say, this is the coolest one ever.
All Images: Mike Marrocco
What you see above is a homemade version of the 2007 Ultimate Collectors Series LEGO Millennium Falcon. It was made by Mike Marrocco of Bethesda, Maryland back in 2015. Like many collectors (myself included), Marrocco coveted the 2007 set, but after it went out of print, he couldn’t justify the rising costs. So he built his own version.
“The process went something like this,” Marrocco told us via email. “First I found the parts list online and counted up how many of each piece I’d need. Then I went on bricklink.com and bought everything while trying to select the brightest colours I could (cost permitting). I needed to buy from five or six sellers to get everything. Then I sorted all the pieces into containers and started building based off of the official instructions.”
The results are simply stunning. Here are a few more photos.
The whole set cost Marrocco $US500 ($621), which is exactly what he could have purchased the original set for back in 2007. Of course, most people thought that was way too expensive at the time, and didn’t realise that once it went out of print some would be willing to pay 10 times that. So Marrocco got to work, and after the two months spent tracking all the pieces down, the build itself took him 25 hours.
“I just did my best to buy the cheapest bright colours,” he said. “Some people online have suggested painting it.” (He joked, “That’s out of the question” about that last bit of advice.)
Sets such as the 2007 Falcon usually come with very specific pieces that are very rare, so usually doing your own reconstruction can become insanely expensive. To combat that, Marrocco substituted some of those pieces with cheaper alternatives. That means this isn’t a perfect, brick-by-brick recreation, but it’s pretty damn close. Besides, once you start using pink and green pieces, does it even matter?
Marrocco originally posted photos of his build on Reddit in 2015. However, since then, it’s been reposted a bunch of times, including this viral tweet from someone else, which is what brought it to our attention.
“I just like creating original things,” Marrocco said. “I’ve always been fairly artistic and I had made a few multicolored builds before this. I found them much more interesting to look at and to build… This just seemed like it would be a very cool looking and impressive build once it was done.”
See more LEGO Millennium Falcon images below, and more of Marrocco’s work on his Instagram.
[Imgur]