I'm not really a Lego person, but I was when I was a kid. My family was too poor to really afford any of the medium to largish size sets, and we were definitely too poor to buy a discontinued set from a scalper.

I wish I had heard about this way back then, but apparently there was a high quality Lego knockoff company in China. It was called Lepin. They made discontinued Lego sets and sold them for around the same price Lego sold them before discontinuation. And I think they also sold non-discontinued sets for prices well below Lego's price.

The people in r/Lego absolutely fucking SEETHE when they hear about Lepin. It gets them so pissed off. I think I remember them banning any positive mention of Lepin. It wasn't because of the product quality, from what I've read Lepin was nearly indistinguishable from Lego besides not having the trademark on every stud. They're just extremely emotionally invested in protecting Lego's honor or some shit. I swear, the strain of brain worms that makes these redditors hate Lepin so much must be heavily related to the strain of brain worms that makes people believe pirating is a moral outrage. Same exact energy.

Eventually Lego put enough pressure on the situation to force Lepin shut down and to get Chinese authorities to close their factories. But since then a multitude of other companies in China have popped up under the same model.