A problem I have (among countless others) is that I am not above getting a knockoff product, but if I know that a legitimate version of it exists, I’m going to want the official thing.
As my blet collection continued to grow, at one point, I picked up a Ring of Honor tag team blet, because I had an Amazon gift card that I had no idea what the fuck to use it on, and when one of my friends suggested putting it towards a blet, I countered with that all the blets available on Amazon were mostly all Pakistani knockoffs. But then I went down the rabbit hole of double-checking, and lo-and-behold, there was some merchant selling official, Figures Toy Company replicas of Ring of Honor tag team blets, and with the gift card, it knocked it down to a far more reasonable price that I was willing to bite on.
But with a ROH tag blet in my collection, naturally I would want a ROH World championship blet. However, little did I know that the version that I wanted, official versions of it were not only no longer produced, but the ones that existed were now considered somewhat of collectors items, because there was some sort of legal background involving designer and distributor fighting over rights and royalties, with it ultimately ending with the ceasing of production of the blets, and Ring of Honor being forced to redesign the World title in order to produce replicas.
Naturally, the things that I want are the ones that end up being rare and expensive. Sure, I could’ve paid under $150 and gotten one of the countless reproductions made in Pakistan; all three of my New Japan IWGP blets are, but I justify those because official replicas are upwards of $2,000 and only like 1,000 are ever produced in typical Japanese short-selling. But the thing is, I knew that official ROH World titles were out there and occasionally available on the secondary, and I had hoped to get my hands on one.
Worst part is, on two separate occasions, I went to ROH shows, once in Baltimore, and once in Dallas, and I saw the blet available at the merch stands. But I’m rarely in the mood to plunk down $300 on the spot, so I passed in both instances, so it’s almost karmic that I would eventually be in this position later on down the road.
A little while back, I found an eBay listing for a ROH World championship. The buy it now on it was $600, which was appalling, but not something I wasn’t willing to go to, seeing as how I had a nice little cache of blet money saved up from doing surveys for the last year. But in true Danny fashion, I decided to test the waters of the Make Offer button, and in fairly quick succession, made two, probably insultingly low-ball offers, seeing if I could get the guy to ultimately bite when I went up to $500. But before I could get to that point, someone actually swooped in and did the buy it now for $600, and I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that I didn’t have to drop $600 on it, or feel sad that I missed out on an opportunity to get what I was now referring to as my Unicorn Blet.
