... I would have waited an eternity for these...

[heroic_decepticon]

heroic_decepticon: before applying the stickers, may I suggest that you do hi-res scans of them and donate them to reprolabels? Maybe you can ask if they'd be willing to give you a set of those reprolabels at a discount price in return for your services.

That way you'd still be able to apply the stickers, and keep the originals unapplied too. Or if you really want to go ahead and apply the originals, at least reprolabels would have a set of them for other collectors.

Just a suggestion.

Hey Gok, I thought about this a lot. And have also talked to other 'holy grail' type collectors (for lack of a better term), to get their view.

* What I'm going to say might sound controversial or even evil. I'm not trying to be obnoxious, but have for a week or 2 discussed these issues with other fellow collectors who have the 'rare' Jap stuff and lots of unused sticker sheets which Reprolabels do not have *

No, I won't be 'donating' scans to Reprolabels. However, if I were to donate, I also won't be interested in getting back a 'repro' sheet based on what I donated - it'd be of very little value to me, and frankly borders on insulting. If I were to donate, I won't be expecting anything back from them.

These are my reasons for not donating:

1. If I have the genuine thing (which in Battle Gaia's case I do), I don't want or need the genuine articles to be stickered with repros. If I were to sticker them, I'd sticker them with the real stuff.

2. A good few collectors from TFW and myself really loathe the Gen-Y type sense of entitlement - ie: why are Transformers so expensive, they should be accessible, I am entitled to own it. There is an expectation from them that the community owes them the right to own 'rare' Transformers and that its the community that is at fault if Transformers are too expensive for them to buy. I (and a good many collectors) have no inclination of facilitating this (unjustified) sense of self entitlement - eg: I don't wish to provide a scanned Minelba sticker sheet to be repro-ed so people out there can repaint their Nightbeats into Minelba and have the stickers for it because 'everybody is entitled to a Minelba'.

3. I have no desire to help KO producers along. Imagine if Reprolabels have some of the rarer sticker sheets in stock (eg: Minelba, Battle Gaia, Guard City, etc). What's to prevent KO-ers from just buying from Reprolabels and then putting the sheets in KOs of Defensor and Bruticus (which they have the molds for) and repainting them in GC, BG colours and sell them as KO GCs and BGs. It'd be a cold day in hell before I facilitate this sort of thing.

4. For the amount of money that Reprolabels will make off it, they are terribly stingy when it comes to rewarding contributors - a sticker sheet here and there, some rub-sign stickers etc. It's such an insult, I don't even want it.

I dunno about unlimited freebies, but I think at least asking for free or discounted samples of the ones he's scanned would be within reason. And even without freebies or discounted, I would scan them as a service to the fandom anyway - as I said, there may be other collectors with these toys who might be adverse to applying the original stickers who would appreciate having repros to use.

Like I mentioned above, I think it'd actually be a disservice to the fandom.

I also don't see the point of buying a thousand dollar toy only to apply repros on it? What would I do with the original sticker sheet then? Don't see the sense in it.

I agree with the fandom part but when you have a rare item the least a business like reprolables could do is give HD a full set of the repro labels + X amount of sets of his chosing for providing them with this rare scan. I was joking about the unlimited freebies of course.

Reprolabels is a business & they make money from it. Out of their sale price they would be making at least 100% markup & likely 200% due to the cost of producing lables being relatively cheap. These guys don't do this out of kindness they do it for money.

Prowl, I completely agree with you. I have businesses myself and its a general rule that if you don't make at least 100% on any product that you are selling, its not a worthwhile business to do. I completely agree with you.

I can bet my bottom dollar that with economies of scale and it being an infinitely replicable product, once someone donates a scan to Reprolabels, that they are making a killing on each sheet. Any sticker sheet they are selling is unlikely to cost more than US$2 to make - hell, they could even outsource printing to India or China and get a bulk discount.

As the Joker said in the Dark Knight, "if you are good at doing something, never do it for free".

Sticker sheets are not like products that have to be put together or have multiple parts or other forms of intellectual property attached to them, they just print them off.

In once sent Reprolabels scans of Thunderclash stickers well over a year ago - They are yet to use them

Another reason for not donating.