Yakuza reprinting Sapphire is more believable than Hudson.
By the way, a new thought occurred to me this morning. Let's suppose for a moment that it actually would cost the unrealistically high price of $20 grand to press 1000 Sapphire's. (That's the cost you provided.) Again, this is a rather small amount that could be paid for from one person's pocket, and a group of four could EASILY pay for it. (So don't say a word about "broke-ass bootleggers".) If each Sapphire disc was sold for a mere forty dollars, then that would be a total of $40 grand. In other words, $20 grand of profit. Since "real" Sapphire is so expensive, it would be easy to sell each one for $40, because most people wouldn't even care if they're fake or not at that price.
Really, for bootleggers, printing Sapphire is like printing money. It probably wasn't the Yakuza, but that sounds like the kind of win-win deal they'd be interested in. Whereas Hudson -- by their own admission -- isn't interested at all.
But what am I thinking -- it was crazy for me to even consider the possibility that the Yakuza could be funding illegal bootlegging activities in Japan.
Anyways, now that I've said that (I thought you weren't going to "lower yourself" to my standard?), I'm ditching this flame war in progress. So now you're free to insult reasonable people like GUTS if that makes you feel better, and I won't say another word about it!
