Yes.
There are very few factories that can produce at the "tier" collectors demand. Look at how many manufacturers there are. Sideshow, Hot Toys, Enterbay, DAM, Blitzway, Star Ace, threezero, QMX, Soldier Story, DID, Big Chief Studios, Mondo, DreamEx, Asmus, Phicen, Magic Cube, and then you start getting out into the weeds with all the off-shoot brands.
And the thing that bakes your noodle is that those 4 or 5 factories make ALL of these figures, but the quality amongst all of them varies.
Basically the way it works is that there will be one factory that does the heads, one that molds all the body parts, one that does the clothing, and you've got your packaging factory as well, then another factory that assembles everything. So, you've got lots of moving parts, you just estimate it will take 8 months, then whoops, your clothing factory is backed up and now that adds another two months.
It takes so long, because there are more manufacturers now, and less manufacturing capacity to go around, so the demand for manufacturing goes up, and when supply is low. . . whoops, that means the cost of manufacturing goes up. And now you're paying more than you were 5 years ago, simply because Star Ace and QMX want a piece of the pie too.
