>>8059355>Expect to wait not weeks, not months, but years for your grails.It's funny, I got my first grail on the next week after starting the hunt and my second grail on the third day. Since then they never showed up in stock ever again even though there were multiple sold listings before me. I feel like I've exhausted my lifetime's worth of luck.
>>8059350>Japanese vinyl is expensive to produce.I recall seeing a price list of a company that makes molds and painting masks for sofubi artists, the total for everything needed to make a full figure runs about 200 000k yen. Explains why artists depend on whoring out the same mold for dozens of recolors. You can actually make the molds yourself, for soft vinyl it's a pretty basic process of electroforming, it's just that workshops that specialize in this can do it better. The masks are really expensive though since it's not easy to make them, which is why vast majority of sofubi are predominantly spray painted and have gradient transitions between colors, masks are usually relegated to the bare minimum of face, eyes and fine details that can't be efficiently done by hand. The rare few sofubi that are painted with masks only like this pic are quite nice, though I really think the gradient spray paint is what gives them the art toy feel rather than the factory mass production feel.
