Gold Sticker vs Non-Gold Sticker. Quality difference?

"A widespread rumor says that Japanese producers reserve the best batches of their production to their domestic market and then export their lesser polished products to the remaining world.

While this rumor probably started because of all the bootlegs found in remaining Asia and maybe maintains by some resellers thinking of making bigger profits, those who understands how the merchandising industry works and the costs involved in the production process would find this rumor to be unlikely true.

For any kind of industry, the key to make big revenues is to be able to manufacture high volumes with homogeneous defined quality. High-scale production allows to reduce costs, reliable automation is search after to reduce the percentage of defects that cannot be sold. Setting up a specialized quality grading process in manufacturing plants completely defeats the purpose of mounting an industry. For instance, in the case of figures, the criteria this figure is more refined than this one cannot be automated, so the related quality check would inefficiently require to hire more people, leading to a waste of space and time, inconsistency and reduced profits. Moreover, most of the goods are made in the same Chinese factories.

The only differences can come from distribution circuits used and conditioning during shipping. To save costs, goods can be not wrapped in tissue paper, or the wrapping can partially be ripped off after putting distributor stickers on. Those stickers, like the Toei stickers used by Bandai subsidiaries, aren't put in Chinese factories but in stores and distributors warehouses. Stickers aren't meant for quality differences but meant to denote regional distribution rights. So, it's basically possible to have genuine goods without any sticker applied on them."