best places to buy lego (in 80s)

Above from https://danniebspeaks.com/2016/09/02/columbus-history-graceland-shopping-center-named-after-well-known-madame-i-live/

Photo below from google photos 5122020 Mark Davis@Digg.com on pinterest

Photo from wothpoint.com catalog picture 1985-86 found 5122020 on google

Thank you to the people who took these photos as there are few records on internet of these places!

If I could go back in time, I'd go back to when classic space sets were on the shelves 1980-83...in my opinion the best lego sets ever.  I actually never liked classic space until going to a friends house in 7th grade and he had an entire room at his grandma's with every lego set from classic space...the radar dishes were so cool, and essentially unlimited.  Another friend had the Galaxy explorer...I had the mobile transport set from a gift and on one birthday 1982 I went to kiddie corner in columbus and got the surface explorer and space baseplates with the cool yellow stripes lining the road to make a base...then I got the mobile transport set...those were really the main sets I had.  Then I got the people pack of extra minifigs at gold circle...there was even a mistake on the price on the last one on the shelf..1.99 for 6 minifigs.  I did get some other small sets from lawn mowing $ but that was the majority of space legos I had.  I think the thing I loved was actually having  one color...gray to make models with..they looked so real compared to red white blue black hodgepodge bricks put together as a model.  The only thing you could make without 1 color that looked real was the partridge family bus :(. 

The best places to buy legos as a kid were Kmart, harts, gold circle, kiddie korner, service merchandise, kb toys and jc penny.  Until I got the classic castle and knights tournament, going to the mall while parents shopped was me staring at the castle on then 2nd floor of jc penny followed by 15nmins of staring at the same thing at kay bee toys...the dollar price difference made the castle look so much.more affordable at jc penny!

So my early collection ended up with space gray and eventually yellow from the yellow castle....then a bunch of other colored bricks

and mini figs, some with no arms and some with arms after 1978!

Legos were so much cheaper in that era!

But no matter how exciting, I'd get home and play but then catalog would always have the massive chassis models on the last page that kept me wanting more!