Daydream

Hi everybody!

I'm new here and chances are high I'm going to put my foot in my mouth or post in the wrong section, or against the fight club rules or something.

I've been buying steelbooks for years but not really collecting them. I collect nice releases. Sometimes it's steelbooks, sometimes digipacks, sometimes it's Westworld and they can't decide how to have a uniform package. Then in the later part of this year I learned about premium steelbooks and a few other details about this collector’s world (and immediately became broke). However, for me it's never enough to join in some group, I need to understand its inner workings. It's history. I have some questions that keep buzzing in the back of my head, and at the risk of you having indulgent smiles at me banging my head against established truths inside the community... here I go:

- How did Scanavo came to own the world? How did they get a worldwide patent, and how are they enforcing it (they're not Apple to have a small army of lawyers)? There must be a million types of tin boxes around the world, made for anything from candy to tools, and somehow only Scanavo makes metal boxes for blurays?? (I know, I know, there are metal packs and other ideas but they are 1 in 1000 comparing to Steelbooks and none of them are available to be bought blank). The fact that nobody anywhere in the world manufactures a tin box that would fit a bluray (in some other design, without infringing on Scanavo's patent)... isn't that suspicious? There are a bunch of bluray normal plastic cases, blue, white, jewel, Viva elite and whatnot, but everybody and their friends, if they want a metal (premium) box - Scanavo is more or less the only option. I find this weird.

- Why do these premium steelbook boutiques retailers exist only in far away, exotic places? What makes China and South Korea so special? How come stores exists in Czech Republic and Italy but none in the bigger film markets of the world? Did the big chains (Best Buy, Fnac, even Zavvi) chased them out of the market or do they have a monopoly / exclusives rights in the respective markets? Why aren't there 5 EverythingBlu-like stores in UK? Why none in France, Germany, US (not counting outfits who released 10 titles in 3 years)? This led to an increasingly complex scaffolding system of group buys, sites that if they had a "show only available titles" filter would sell only white pixels, Funko Pops and air, long wait times, higher mail fees and so on. And this whole thing is accepted as universal truth and it doesn't give anybody pause? (I find it hard to believe I'm the first to raise an eyebrow, but tried as I can, I could not find any thoughts on these matters)

- The last thing I have a hard time to wrap my head around may not have a straight answer, or can be given an answer. People's business is their business and I'm not here to critique it. I just don't understand how these boutique retailers survive on releases up to 2000 items. There's only a few releases every year, and this just doesn't add up to support a business, one that somehow however, apparently, can have a dialog with a studio. I get it, it's a collector, premium, niche market. And while this will never rival normal releases from big vendors, is this really the correct size of a release, or it's the effect of lacking more proper/normal channels. Even in the form of sites that don't crash when 100 people order simultaneously. This leaves a lot of business to the mercy of eBay, driving the prices to $350 and above. Isn't that a sign that a certain potential market is never reached and therefore lost? Or is this steelbook adventure just a part of the business these boutique retailers do, at the tail end of some other activity of theirs?

Thanks for any insights! And... cue for laughs if I broke the naiveté scale.