I picked up a SaberForge Luke ROTJ second-hand that was missing a few parts last year. I contacted SaberForge and the response I got was "I gave those parts away in a box of scraps, you basically got trash"
This doesn't surprise me one bit.
That is true. He had a bunch of ROTJ sabers that had either missing parts, dings and scrapes, etc. He
gave those away to a forum member on IRA. That member then in turn fixed up most of them as best he could and
then he gave those away to members of the forum. I know, I got one. It was a little dinged but it was in really good shape, free, oh, and it was free! Saberforge made it quite clear that these sabers were rejects and would not sell them. That was pretty cool.
Now this last issue with the recasting, that's just sad. The saber world/community has become a mockery of its once former self. Years ago people helped one another with discoveries, how to build, what to use, where to get, new technologies, etc. Now, it's all about who can create the biggest monopoly, who can sell (oops "
auction") the most expensive saber nowadays. Oh, and Heaven forbid, don't rock the boat on some forums, that will get you beat down and banned in a heartbeat! I know what it was like in the old'n days as I used to be an FX-Sabers forum Moderator. I jumped ship when I started seeing the backstabbing and the beginnings of the monopoly of "cornering the market" on high end sabers. Tried to get back into it again and found some really great people that I worked with, they devoted a lot of time and effort on my last saber.
It will be interesting in the coming years with 'Smiths doing sabers from the new movies. Uncle George was pretty laid back even though there were "official" replicas out there. I wonder how Mickey will see it...