For parts

Your transformers collection is almost complete, if it wasn't for that one thing. Maybe it's that missing Fortress Maximus gun, or maybe your Skyquake has finally fallen prey to the dreaded GPS and he needs a new scope, perhaps you just love Devastator, but the only piece you're missing is his left leg, maybe you just wish Optimus Primal could have missiles in his arm cannon as well as his shoulder cannons at the same time... If only there was a way to purchase missing/broken/spare pieces somewhere... But who wants to pay full price for a figure when you only need one or two pieces? If only there was a way to buy a figure just "for parts".

“	Need parts. Kill ze little one!	”
—Scalpel needed pieces to complete his Megatron. Luckily he brought some with him.

Non-Fiction

A figure being sold or bought for parts is essentially a figures that's missing one or several pieces, is broken, has chipped paint, missing stickers, etc. On their own, from a collector's view, these are pretty worthless but combined with another figure that is also missing pieces, we have the potential for a complete figure... and another figure to be sold for parts. This practice has become increasingly popular with the rise of the internet and particularly because of eBay. Before being able to post incomplete figures on the web for the whole world to see, the idea of selling these seemed pretty ridiculous. What were the odds that someone in your town would have that one yellow clip you were missing for your Omega Supreme? But what are the odds that someone in the world has one of these for sale?

Due to the sudden rise in interested for the original G1 series figures, a new form of shop has appeared on the web, Transformer chop shops. This basically consists of individuals buying complete figures of rare and valuable characters (say Fortress Maximus) and gutting them for parts, knowing that the individual pieces will sell for substantial amounts of money and that someone out there is bound to end up buying the gutted body because theirs got broken.

Buying a figure for parts is an easy and affordable solution for collectors that are missing pieces. Many figures are very expensive to get on the secondary market and buying an entirely new figure just to get a missing missile for your Swoop would be outrageous. This also gives hope to all the sellers out that there someone, somewhere will need that Rhinox you're selling, despite him missing arms, legs, weapons and the left half of his mutant head.

Fiction

Beast Era

Megatron essentially used this process to create Dinobot II. The protoform used was missing a spark, but thankfully he had half of one to spare. Feral Scream Part 1

Live Action Movie

When Scalpel realized that Megatron would need a significant amount of repairs before being able to function again, he used pieces of Scrapmetal (and a shard of the AllSpark) to bring his leader back to life. Revenge of the Fallen

Figures commonly sold For Parts

Generation 1

• Devastator, Fortress Maximus, Omega Supreme and any of the combiners. Their pieces tend to go missing very easily.

Beast Era

• Magnaboss, large amount of accessories, one figure being made of gold plastic and the fact that this figure is a combiner makes for a figure that often ends up for sale missing X amount of pieces.