Midway Games West shut down one of their facilities in 2003 and they had tons of ATARI material to offload. I was right there when it happened! I ended up with a huge amount of tooling (dies, molds, jigs, etc), components, reel to reel tapes, file cabinets full of paperwork, etc. Now this material would most likely resemble a pile of junk to most people, but me being in the manufacturing business, I immediately recognized what it was! I almost couldn't contain my excitement when the opportunity was presented to me.
Anyhow, that's what I grabbed up in the first trip. I had planned to go back for a second run, but the place was cleared out by the time I was ready to run back up. Come to find out, Scott Evans ended up with most of the films.

At least, I assume these are the same films that Scott ended up with. LOL
It's all good - we're making the most of our hauls.
In fact, if it were not for the fact that I have this tooling, many of the items I'm reproducing probably wouldn't happen as making new molds/dies can be quite expensive. Since I can avoid the majority of those costs up front, all I typically need to worry about is the material cost and, sometimes, minor cost to repair said molds.
Interesting note: the tooling was not stored very well during their stay with Midway Games (possibly during their stay with Atari at some point in time as well) and some of the molds suffered damage. Simple precautions could have been taken to avoid it, but I believe that the tooling was considered to be obsolete garbage which would explain how it was treated. I know how to store this kind of material correctly so no NEW damage has been inflicted upon them since 2003.
Watch for more reproduction items this year. 2010 is going to be exciting, that's for sure!
Dave