Ok fellas, here are more answers to your questions........
DS1FSE; John will make as many of a set as the dealers indicate their club member customers want. In other words, if he shows a release as coming next month and the dealers poll their customers and come back with a total of 200, then 200 will be made, that is it. Not sure what minimum quantity would be the magic number for production; my assumption is with as popular as the JJD figures are, I cannot forsee a situation where 20 or 30 requests would come in on a particular release, his figures are just to popular for that to happen.
Mark; no fee is required, all you have to do is order the first figure from your dealer of choice and you are automatically a member of the club.
General question about "prepaying"; what is meant by that is if someone wants to buy more than one of any release, it may be a good idea for that person to "prepay" for the additional sets, especially considering that the sets are being "made to order" if that makes sense.
As a dealer, I never require customers to prepay for anything; I guess my concern is if there is a delay in production and an item that has been prepaid for does not come when announced, the customer will get upset that I have been holding his money for say a month and now the item will be delayed and not be here for say two more months, then the customer get annoyed at me.
To be blunt, this has happened to me in the past where a customer paid via Paypal because "he had the funds in there and wanted to use them"; I did not want to take the money, he insisted and right as rain, the product was delayed. He ended up getting torked off at me and demanded I refund his money, which I did. That was THE last time I took a prepay.
This has never, ever happened with Johns products (production delays); I guess the issue is when the goods are delivered and the dealer contacts the customer and says your order is ready to go and he gets "Oh well, yeah, you see, my transmission fell out of my car/dog died/lawn needed to be reseeded/kids needed new shoes/I changed my mind and don't want five of those now, I only want one", now the dealer is stuck with club sets that he cannot sell outside of the club.
Bottom line is when you preorder something, the dealer assumes when it comes in you'll step up, pay the man and take delivery of the product, which happens 99.9999999% of the time anyway......................