I brought this information up inititally on the other board. Because after talking with Clay Moore last year, I found out that there are in fact different grades companies can instruct their factories to give to each piece in terms of the quality they expect on each statue. I don't know if they are A to F, or 1 to 5, etc. What I know is that he explained, in great detail, how each piece can be assigned a certain grade of quality by the company, and based upon that information, they expect to receive X number of dollars. So, basically the higher the quality, the more a factory gets paid. The lesser the grade, the less they get paid.
This completely explains why Sideshow can bring us flawless pieces like Joker, Skaar and Vampirella PF, and then sub par pieces like Rogue, Psylocke and Spider Woman. Obviously, Joker, Skaar and Vampi were given much better quality grades than pieces like Rogue or SW.
Made complete sense to me after talking with him.