I made that desicion 3 years back. I was poisioned by my uni mate who collects every single BT and also has every Takara book reissue plus other G1 reissues. All items are MISB and of C9 condition.

The joker even brings his own bag sometimes when buying stuff as he claims that the plastic bags will damage the sharpness of the edges of the boxes. Also, he'll check if the window has any scratches, and he usually gets it fresh out of the case. Very very detailed collector. Even he doesn't open the window much for fear of damaging the velcro, lol.

Then at that time, another close friend of mine bought a Shockwave from GT. The alt then was packaged in the infamous red box with no front window and you could see it stacked up in TRU. He was disappointed and sold me for a cheap RM30.

Voila, that was the start of a new obsession. I chose Alt. over BT for the most simple reason, it was economical.

I bought most of my hauls to uni for show off and I in turn poisoned the crazed collector to pry open some of his BT as he couldn't tahan anymore.

Retail price, RM350.