What'd we do, you ask? Well, a copy of Hasbro's catalog for the 1986 Toy Fair showed up on Ebay, which includes several photos of pre-production Transformers figures from that year's line. There are several colour and mold variants pictured, and the catalog offers a neat look at what some figures might've looked like back in the day.
But with a $500 asking price, it wasn't too likely any fan would end up buying the book. So the membership at the 'Spark - including Jim Sorensen - pooled their resources, kicked in a few bucks each, and placed an offer on the book... and got it!
The plan is to have the Transformers pages from the catalog scanned at high resolution to be posted for everyone to enjoy at TFWiki.net, then the book will be re-auctioned with the proceeds either going to charity or to maintain the Wiki. That last part's still up in the air.
Neat, hey?
http://www.allspark.com/content/view/6744/20/