A few weeks ago we published the news that due to the passing of its founder, Brickshelf – and the two-and-a-half decades’ of Lego creations it stored – would cease to be available on March 1st 2025.

Unchanged since the turn of the millennium, Brickshelf was a time capsule for both the Online Lego Community and the internet itself, with both the site and the creations it housed being rather basic, right-angled, and unsophisticated. And it was excellent.

Admirably the estate handling Brickshelf’s cessation took the approach of alerting its users to the impending closure*, a message sites like this one could amplify (which we duly did on January 30th), allowing users to retrieve their images, and maybe even a new owner to be found.

Just two days on from our post, and Brickshelf’s alert was amended to include the following update;

“The initial notice generated many responses, including people interested in purchasing Brickshelf. Based on this response the estate will plan to keep Brickshelf online through mid April as discussions move forward with interested parties to purchase Brickshelf”

Whether or not new ownership is successfully established, this reprieve does provide users with a longer period to retrieve their images should they wish to, but of course we hope that this news means that the first (and last remaining) dedicated creation-sharing website may yet live on…

*See Sean Kenney, it’s not hard.

As of 1st March 2025, Brickshelf is dead.

Older than YouTube, Facebook, Amazon Prime, and some of you reading this, Brickshelf has served the Online Lego Community for two-and-a-half decades.

With almost five million files across 430,000 albums, countless creations are hosted on Brickshelf and nowhere else. In particular these date from decades past, giving a glimpse into a time before unlimited parts access, digital designer, high resolution photo editing, and even many LEGO piece types themselves.

Many creations on Brickshelf therefore look rather right-angled, basic, and poorly presented by today’s standards, but – dare we say it – they were probably more fun. There was no pressure to find the perfect pieces, pay an extortionate price for them on Bricklink, nor spend hours in a home studio getting the lighting just right. You built, you published, and that was it.

That really was it too, as Brickshelf had no comments function, no html, no messaging, no groups, and not even the ability to use the spacebar in folder titles. It was simply a giant library of creations, and has stayed that way over the last twenty-five years. If you’d like to see not just what Lego creations were like at the turn of the millennium, but websites too, take a look at Brickshelf!

Time to do so is short however. Sadly Brickshelf’s founder Kevin Loch passed away last year, and thus his estate has begun the process of closing the site. Unless a buyer offers to take it on, access to Brickshelf and the five million files within it will cease on March 1st 2025, whereupon it will join MOCpages in the graveyard of creation-sharing websites.

Unlike MOCpages however, Kevin Loch’s estate have notified Brickshelf users ahead of time, providing the opportunity to retrieve files, maybe find a buyer, and meaning that even a dead guy has managed to do a better job than Sean Kenney did.

For us here at The Lego Car Blog it means one fewer place to send our Elves in search of the best Lego vehicles the web has to offer, and that from 1st March 2025 any links to Brickshelf will no longer function, including those in this post.

Until then, we’d like to say a big posthumous thank you to Brickshelf’s creator Kevin Loch, and to his estate for handling its cessation with thoughtfulness and care. And to our readers; click here take a look at Lego-building circa-2000 whilst you still can!