 Now that's pushing it too far. So I was fishing through my collection again, trying to look for more wintery puzzle sets. And I think I've mentioned this before, but I don't actually have that many. But I realized that I did have one from a brand that I have not tried before. And the brand that I'm talking about is Sherlock. Now I picked up a number of sets during one of my last trips to Dollar General. I think it was during their summer clearance sale and I picked up a whole bunch at an amazing price. And I almost forgot that one of the sets that I picked up was a snowy wintery scene. And the set that I am talking about is called A Village in Winter. The artist is Steve Crisp. It is 1,000 pieces and it's 27 by 19 inches when it's completed. Now originally I was just thinking about just completing this one puzzle set. But then I thought maybe we should go a little crazy here. As I said before, I did pick up a number of Sherlock sets. And one thing that I've noted since I started trying out different brands is that sometimes different puzzle counts from the same brand can have kind of different experiences. If that makes sense. I don't know what I just said. Or different levels of quality. I think that makes more sense. So why not try some of the lower count sets? So I also have here one of their 500 count sets. And this one is called By the Sea. The artist is Kathleen Dennis. And when it's completed it's 19 inches by 13 inches. And then we also have this very cute image here. And it's a 300 count set. And this one is called Barbecue at the Round Barn. Oh man, that sounds good. Anyways, this is an image from Heronym. And this one is also 19 inches by 13 inches when it's completed. And I absolutely love this image. I mean, I know it's winter and all that, but you know, there's been days where it's been so cold that I do anything for it to be nice and sunny and just to have a barbecue. And what's better than having a bunch of people over for some barbecue? Actually, now that I think about it, I prefer to have all the barbecue to myself. But anyways, here I am waving from my house, getting some food prep ready. And once I'm done with that, I'll head on over and join the party. There's a lot of people here. I hope we have enough food. I think this is gonna be a fun one to put together. I feel like I already know how I can go about sorting this. But in terms of challenge level, I don't think it'll be too hard. I mean, I say that now and watch me have a hard time with it, even with it only being 300 pieces. But we'll see, right? And then like that puzzle, I mean, By the Sea is another great image because who wouldn't want to be in a place like this when it's blistering cold outside? Sometimes you just wanna walk on the sand and dip your toes in the ocean. Nothing better than a beach to yourself. And of course, there's my beach house. And then our village and winter image here is another fantastic print. Obviously that's my house on the right because you know, all my lights are on. I don't know who that guy is though. I'm gonna have to shoe him away. But anyways, this town overall looks very peaceful and serene. And I don't know what it is about the wintertime, but for some reason, the sunsets just look so much more majestic. But anyways, in regards to the challenge level of this image, I kind of feel like this is gonna be a tough one for me. But anyways, my ultimate goal here, again, is to get through all three of these puzzles and do a comparison on the quality level. So you know what guys, we have a lot of work to do here. So let's get busy with this. All right, let's get these open and see what we got going on here. Now let's start with the 300 piece first. Yeah, I'm gonna be honest, I really don't like when puzzle boxes are sealed this way. I don't know why, it kind of feels like it takes too much work for me to figure out how to go about opening it without, you know, destroying it. But let me see, how am I gonna go about this? I mean, is there really an easy way to open these kind of seals? I don't know. Oh boy, I really screwed that up, didn't I? Yikes. So I pretty much destroyed one whole side of the box, but let's just move on. So I must say, so far the packaging I'm not thrilled with, but you know, then again, it's a cheap puzzle, what am I expecting? Let's open these up and let's see what we got here. All right, so so far, first impressions, they're pretty thin, but I'm gonna be honest, I'm quite impressed with the print. The colors are very sharp, the detail is very clear. I mean, look at the branches on this, that's a very clear image. And this is a very good piece size as well. Again, they're quite thin. Oh, I just bent that tab there with my beastly force. I gotta make note not to do that on the next set. We got a bit of glare there, as you can see, I have the light from the window on this side coming through. So, you know, depending on the angle where your light is coming from, that could be an issue for you, you know, depending on how you're working on the puzzle or it might not. I don't know, we shall see as I put this together how bad it affects me during the completion process. All right, that was the 300 count. Let's move on to the 500 count and let's see if there's any major differences with that one. All right, that one turned out a lot better than the first one. Let's get this one open. All right, again, we're dealing with pretty thin pieces. This is probably a little bit thinner than the 300 count set. As you can see, the tabs are pretty weak, but again, you know, you don't want to put Beastly Force anyways on it. Let's check out this print quality. It's kind of hard for me to tell how clear the details are in this print here because I'm trying to compare it with the actual box image. And, you know, and this is a case with a lot of puzzles in general. Sometimes your print doesn't seem like it's very clear, but you know, you have to think, what does the actual image look like? Is that just the nature of the image? Is it meant to look that way? And comparing the piece print and the print on the box, this looks pretty darn close. And the colors seem to be pretty true to the box image as well. So I would say so far we got some good color prints going on with these two sets. And quick note, we also have pretty much the same amount of gloss compared to the 300 piece. But you know what, this is pretty interesting. Let's open up the 1000 piece and let's see what that's all about. I keep getting better and better with cutting these boxes open. I spoke too soon. Oh well. I must say, looking at the box image and the print on these pieces, I feel like this print is quite blurry because this looks really, really sharp. But honestly, these do not. This doesn't seem very clear at all to me. I mean, look at these people's faces. They look a little bit like blobs. I'm hoping this is coming out clear here, but I think that's supposed to be someone else's face. And I think at least, but it also looks like a blob. So I don't know. I kind of feel like the print quality, this 1000 piece set is kind of off really, at least compared to the 500 and the 300 count set. Again, they are on the thin side and again, the same amount of glare. And really the colors as well aren't as vibrant or sharp in my opinion. I mean, the only thing that's standing out to me are these little holly berries here. But I mean, I don't know. The rest of it, I'm not feeling it. And it's also giving me a sense like this particular one because the piece print is on the blurry side. I feel like this is gonna be quite challenging, more challenging than I expected. So I don't know, I guess we'll see, right? This is quite interesting. You see, this is why I like to try different piece counts from the same brand because really you do get kind of a different experience or level of quality with each of them. So you know what guys, I think enough of that. Let's start with the 300 count set, then we'll move on to the 500 and then the 1000. And then we'll do a comparison between all three of them and see which one I like best or I might not like any of them. I don't know, we shall see. Anyways, let's move on. All right, this sort was a real quickie. I didn't drive myself too crazy because it is only 300 pieces. But anyways, the first tray of course is the edges. I did the next one here with just like water pieces. This tray has anything with the grassy areas and flowers. Next tray is anything with the buildings. And then the last tray is any pieces that had people in them. Yeah, pretty simple, nothing too crazy, nothing too detailed, just simple sorting. So we can just move on with this now. Let's go. So I started working on the edges and pretty much started getting a really good idea on what kind of experience I was going to be dealing with here. And I must say, I was quite surprised in a good way though. In the beginning, I wasn't too sure what to expect considering the pieces seemed to be quite thin to me, but the fit was just right. And the hold, what a fantastic hold these had. And it didn't matter how big or small the sections were. I was able to slide them around my table, pick them up, drop them. It was great. And you know, I'd love to be able to do that kind of stuff. So I was really happy working on this. And I did have some issues with glare, but it wasn't too much to drive me crazy. These pieces were great size and the print was solid. So I was able to see the details very well anyways. I love this image. And I didn't find it at all challenging. You get like three different piece shapes here in some slightly different variations. So it was some quick and easy fun. This puzzle took me about an hour to complete. And as soon as I was done with it, I gave it a quick pickup test and it passed. But when I moved on to see if it would pass my storage test, I don't know, something came over me and I did something I shouldn't have done and I destroyed it. But that's okay. I did test a small area of what was left of it and it looked like it would have been able to be separated into sections and saved in the box quite easily. But I'll make sure to be more careful next time. But anyways, let's pay a visit to my beach house with the 500 count set. All right, again, another quick sort. So first tray, we have edge pieces. Second tray, I did anything with house details and the bike. This tray here is kind of like a lot of plant life in here with nothing much else going on in there. This tray is sand pieces with some plant life. So you kind of have some sand with detail in there. That's sand. I thought that was water, but it's actually the sand which from this little area right here. Next tray, we have water and plant details. So it's going to be anything kind of like in this area here where you have some of the fencing but there's the water in the background. And then you also have this area with the sky and the water pieces as well as you can see there. This tray mainly is just plain sand pieces. There are a few details here and there but it's very minor, but again, mostly plain. We have an empty one. And then this one is all sky pieces which are pretty much all plain except for a few pieces here which have some birdies on them. Pretty simple. I thought this was going to be harder but it was actually pretty straightforward and easy. So let's continue. So because I thought this image was going to be a bit challenging, I didn't really know what to start with. So after piecing together the edge pieces, I figured the easiest thing would be to start with the tray with the least amount of pieces which was the one with the water details. And that actually worked out really well. I got that tray quickly done then naturally went on to piecing the rest of the bottom right corner with the sand and plant pieces. The plants were a bit tricky but whenever I got stuck, I went on to the next easiest thing I could make out from the trays and that ended up being my bike and my sun hat. And that's a little tip for you. Don't let yourself get stuck in one area to a point where it can get frustrating trying to make out how to piece certain areas together. Move on to a different section and if you get stuck there too, think about different ways you can simplify the process so that you are always in the mindset that you're making progress. And that's very important. It's kind of like you have to make your mind feel like you're always doing something to get closer to the end. You kind of have to keep that momentum, that motivation and excitement going because the end goal at least for me with this image is to finally jump into the finished scene, lay my towel on the sand and just take in the ocean air. Sorry, but anyways, I'm trying to get more into the habit of re-sorting trays whenever I find myself stuck. All right, I'm down to the house now and surprisingly it's actually quite difficult but I'm getting through it as best I can, trying to separate window pieces and like siding pieces and hopefully that'll help a bit but this is the only tray I have with house pieces. So hopefully it won't take me too long. So as I've said many times before, there are many different ways you can go about re-sorting. In this instance with the house, I separated the pieces by detail. So for example, here I made two piles, one for the windows and one for the house siding and honestly even after doing that, it still was a little bit tricky because the pieces in each pile looked very similar to each other but at least I was able to focus my mind on one pile at a time instead of one bigger pile with everything all jumbled together. And once I got that done, I moved on to the sand tray which was all plain pieces. They all looked the same and in the end did the same for the sky. So in these type of situations, you're probably gonna wanna sort these pieces by shape. At least I think that's the best way to attack these kind of areas. And the great thing about this particular Sherlock set is that there's more of a variety of piece shapes compared to the 300 count set. There was about five different piece shapes which honestly was something I really liked about the 500 piece set but I did find this one to be a little bit more on the crumbly side. Not excessively. It did have a good hold in some areas I was able to pick up and move small sections around my table. Just don't go trying to aggressively slide the whole puzzle across the table. Well, small sections do have a good hold but if you try sliding it and you're not too careful, in other words, you're being too beastly, this will happen very easily. So yeah, don't move it too quickly or don't be brutal with it. This puzzle took me about four hours to complete. I honestly thought this image was gonna be a lot harder but it turned out to be another session of good quick fun. Quick for me at least. Now I was surprised when this one stood up to the pickup test for the most part. I mean, now as I look at this footage, I can see it's starting to come apart. As I said before, I did find it to be more on the crumbly side so I wasn't too surprised that it didn't make the trip back down. Eh, it is what it is. Still fun though and with this second Sherlock experience behind me, I still found it to be an overall better experience than the 300 counts set, even though the hold wasn't as solid but we'll talk more about that later on. Let's finally move on to the last set which is my wintery village. All right, now I already knew this was gonna be a challenge in terms of sorting and especially so after seeing how blurry some of the pieces looked to me. So here's what I did. I have the edge pieces. This tray here is pretty much just plain pieces. There's not really much on any of these and if there is anything on them, it's very little but as you can see, these are like yellows, whites, blues but for the most part plain. Next tray, this was difficult. I kind of put pieces that I knew had snow in it and I know that doesn't really make much sense considering this is a snowy scenery so there's a lot of snow everywhere but I mean, to be honest, I don't know how else to explain it but as you can see, there's snow with like bits of detail here and there that are for the most part blurry but yeah, anyways, next one. We have pieces for any of the buildings, at least what I can make out were buildings. Next tray is anything with people. This tray is, I kind of felt like blue had to be separated. So I kind of did anything with like this dark blue tone and it's gonna have details in it too. That's pretty much the best way I could describe it. This tray here, we got two things going on. We have here anything that looked like to be the water and then this tray, I don't know, this stood out to me the most and these are actually the most clear looking in terms of image print. It doesn't look quite blurry so I know it's any of this area here with these hollies and flowers and greens and then the last tray here, I don't know. This will most likely be the last tray that I work on but as you can see, it's just snow and branches. They all look the same. Some have different color tones in the background but for the most part, it's branches and they're flying everywhere now but it's gonna be most obviously this tree here. We got some of these. That's probably more of the blue tray over there but this looks like it's gonna be a nightmare. I'm gonna be honest. I almost feel like this is gonna be super challenging and I'm not quite sure at this moment if I'm going to enjoy it or not but we'll see, right? So anyways, let's just continue with this. All right, so that wasn't too terrible actually. What I basically did was I did the most obvious areas first and then from there, just kind of like resorted it on the board by shape just to kind of help get through these really difficult areas like the snow and the sky and whatnot and after doing that, it was pretty straightforward. Much easier than I expected but I don't expect that for the rest of this puzzle image. So you know what? I think I'm gonna make sure I stick with the resorting method in order to, you know, figure out where this madness goes. In terms of next tray, I don't know. I'll probably just do this one here since there's only a few pieces but it looks pretty easy, I hope. So, you know what? Let's just move on. So I did go after the tray with the least amount of pieces which was the one with the water in the holly and that went okay. Then the next section I figured would be best was the buildings. So I separated piles by details and colors and then piece those together. Still a bit tricky at times but I got through it slowly but gosh, looking at this footage I wish I would stop making a mess on my table with piles and pieces everywhere. And I always say I'm not gonna do it and I end up with a mess anyways. But anyways, it always feels good when you get those little piles pieced together and set in the areas they're supposed to sit at. It's very satisfying, especially when it starts to clear up the mess on the table. Right, so just as I had suspected this is quite challenging. Now I'm probably gonna have to start again with the whole resorting by shape but at the same time I'm not really sure how that's gonna work exactly cause there's really from what I'm seeing only two different P shapes in this set. And sometimes it's a little challenging to figure out which way they go. But you know what, we're gonna do it anyways and hope for the best because as you can see here this is a lot of cuckoo-ness. I don't know, looking at a pile like this kind of like place tricks on your eyes or place tricks on your mind. I don't know, one of those things. But anyways, you know what, we're gonna do that anyways because you know, what else am I gonna do with this? I'm pretty sure if the print was a little more clear this would have been a lot easier but you know what, I'm gonna stop complaining. Let's move on with this. And at that point I still didn't really do much in terms of resorting that tray because to be quite honest this image was really starting to overwhelm me and I still don't know what did that to me more. Whether it was the image itself, the lack of shape variety, the blurriness of the print, I don't know. I had spent a lot of time in some areas and I guess I struggled to get myself to resort because again, there were only like two piece shapes and even they looked similar to each other. I couldn't figure out how they were meant to sit and I also dealt with a lot of false fits. All right, so I got most of this done. For the rest of this puzzle I think what we have now, we got the rest of the sky and some more, you know, like thicker branches. So I think what I'm gonna do is probably separate those pieces and kind of try to sort them by shape even though there's like only two shapes in this puzzle which is kind of grating on me a bit but we shall see. I'm hoping the rest of this doesn't take me extremely long even though it probably will because I'm down to like the really, really hard bits now but anyways, you know what, enough of that. Let's just move on with this and get this done. So I resorted the rest of the puzzle as best as I could in the end. It wasn't easy and this last stretch really took me the longest time to complete. I feel like this one dragged a bit and I think it was because of all the reasons I mentioned or complained about before but I never gave up. This puzzle took me about nine and a half hours to complete. Yeah, I feel like it took me longer than it should have but whatever, I can happily say that it's done now. Now, even though it had several issues it did hold up well to the pickup test and if you really wanted to it's possible to break this up into sections so that you can store it in the box but very carefully though, there were a few casualties. The overall hold was better with this set. It sure does lock together and I was able to fold it up, which was interesting but I crumbled it up in the end which felt very satisfying and I don't know if that had to do with the way it felt in my hands or the fact that I was just happy to be done with it. But anyways, what are my overall thoughts to the Sherlock brand? All right, so I did some looking up on this brand and they don't have their own website. They're actually under a company called TCG and there it states that Sherlock puzzles are known for their precision cut pieces that fit together seamlessly. I think I can agree with that. I thought they were all cut pretty well and they fit really nicely together. They are made from high quality materials. Now that's pushing it too far. I can't for the life of me say these felt like high quality pieces and as for the rest of the stuff it says here, well, look, the pieces are thin and you even saw early on in the video their strength or lack thereof I should say and the website even states that the puzzle thickness is 1.8 millimeters and when I saw that, you know I had to grab the calipers and find out for myself and what do you know? It's not even close. I had issues with glare with all of these sets really and they did have quite a bit of puzzle dust to them and as I just said, they are well cut and have a good fit. But really each puzzle count has differences and offer very different experiences when it comes to the completion process. Now they did all stand up to the pickup test but in terms of the hold during the completion process the 300 count was the best. Not to say that the others didn't hold up well but they did have some crumbliness to them. The print was sharp and the colors were great on the 300 and the 500 count sets but my goodness, that 1000 count set needed some serious help. It was very blurry and made the whole completion process more challenging. What also made the process more challenging for the 1000 count set was the lack of P shapes. I think there were only like two different pieces. You couldn't even tell them apart. I didn't like it. The 300 count set had like three different pieces but that piece size was great. You can see everything. The 500 count set had the biggest variety with about six shapes I think. It was fantastic. And if I had to pick a favorite experience out of the three, it would have to be the 500 count set. My beach house. And that's mainly because of the variety of P shapes, the print quality, the fit and the overall hold was okay. It certainly was my most enjoyable experience but after coming to terms with all of this I realized something. I picked up these sets from Dollar General and they were priced at $5 each. Now, if you look up other online stores I think I saw some of them at Walmart. There's some on Amazon. But there, there's quite a difference in the price. And if you study the images closely and I'm talking about the images of the packaging it looks very different. Not like what I have here. The packaging honestly for these sets suck. I don't like them. But it looks like what we have here. How do you say? We have different versions of the Sherlock puzzles that has different quality levels. And I guess that just depends where you buy them. And of course, you know, what they are at regular price. Obviously what I have here are the much cheaper versions of the brand which makes perfect sense because hello, I picked them up at Dollar General and I didn't even pay the full price, five bucks for them. I actually took advantage of the sale they had. They only cost me like $2 and 50 cents each which for my budget is absolutely fantastic. But anyways, would I pay the $5 at Dollar General again? Um, I think so. But it would probably only be for the 500 count sets and it would have to be an image that I just can't refuse which by the way, my Dollar General location seemed to have quite a nice variety of images. What kind of selection does your Dollar General have? Let me know down below. I don't think I would get another 1000 count set but you know, that's just my preference. At the end of the day, take all this information that I've spewed out to you and think about what is more important to you because we all have different preferences when it comes to puzzling. But I would for sure take advantage if they were having another super sale like the last time because at $250, even $5, you can't really go wrong with, you know, what you're getting here because then again, you can't expect much. You get what you pay for, right? So who knows, maybe I do need to pick up a more expensive Sherlock set and do a comparison to kind of see if better versions or ones with better quality actually do exist. But I'm super curious now. So let me know down below, what have your experiences been with this puzzle brand? And if there are really other better versions out there with much better quality levels? Anyways guys, it's practically one million years later and this video actually turned out to be way longer than I would have liked. So I'm gonna get moving on to my next puzzle now because I am super excited about it and it just so happens to be the one that you guys voted on. And if you're new here and you wanna find out what puzzle that is and what I have to say about that brand, be sure to subscribe. And if you're looking for a place to share your own puzzling experiences and make new puzzle friends, I do have a community that you can join. And I'll leave a link down below so that you could look more into it. And finally, thank you all so much for watching. Hope all is well and I will see you in the next one.