Yes, these are really fun!
Did you make any alterations to this Wand comm? I see the hubs don't look the same - black center on the left vs silver center on the right button. The speaker mesh looks slightly different, and the left jewel appears to be a bit different than the units I bought months ago.
Have there been any manufacturing changes I'm not aware of?
TOSfan1
I did not, and I don't plan to. I like to think of these replicas as having their own identity in TOS replica lore, so I just want to leave them as they are.
As for changes -- I don't think so, and it's kind of a funny story. I was unable to stop the ThinkGeek order after all, but I was able to reroute it for pickup. So now I had
two communicators! So, being the persnickety fella that I am, I took the ThinkGeek one out of its box and swapped in my original Best Buy one, and returned
that to Best Buy to get my original purchase back. The ThinkGeek one was slightly better quality (the knobs were straight, whereas the BB one had bent knobs), and the lid was slightly darker gold!
The Best Buy one could best be described as a champaigne gold, while the ThinkGeek one I kept was a regular (darker) gold. To my eye, the darker gold looks more like brass, so I'm very happy with it.
I think the things you're pointing out are just production variances, probably within whatever tolerances they have specified in their protocols. One batch of clear gold powder coat might be slightly darker than another, so these 150 comms are
slightly different from those 150 comms. That kind of thing.