First off if you think people are holding onto decals to make a profit. . . well they are. Is there anything wrong with that? The bike industry has amazingly low margins and very limited potential for profit. People who do full restorations like Dale, Jim, and Brian have two sources of decals. The first are originals and as I'm sure you all can guess they are very limited. Adding the the fact that they deteriorate quickly and become rarer each moment. Because of their scarcity I'm sure we all agree that they should be used for special projects only, like full period restorations.
The second way is to recreate new decals from images of old ones. This takes a lot of time to start. Breaking it down Lets say to photograph, scan, and photoshop just one decal (not a whole bikes worth) is at least a 3 hour process. A really cheap rate for doing this is $50/hr, so we're now at $150. If you look at the archives for the Framebuilders listserve and you'll find that the small run printers will make about 10 decals for $50. For $200 the restorer has 10 decals. So if they were to sell them at cost that's $40 for new DT decals. Are you willing to pay that for two decals? I doubt it, and where is that "big profit" for the restorer. Remember these are also cheap prices for having these made. If you doubt that roll your bike into the office of the local commercial artist and ask how much they would charge to make the copies.
There are a bunch of ways to make your own decals and they'll all work to greater or lesser extents. It all depends on how much work you want to put into it. One other thing to take into account is that back in the 70s there was quite a bit fraud happening since many companies would sell their decal sets. This was particularly bad with Reynolds 531 tubing stickers.. I remember UO-8s and Huffys with 531 decals plastered on. This has made most bike companies really gun shy about selling their decals. Companies like Bianchi who has a long heritage and is still at the top could slap a cease and desist order on the use of reproduction decals if they felt they were being misused. The only reason they don't do it is the firm agreements from the restorers that they will only put them on the real thing during restoration. This is a real grey area (see last weeks thread on Campagnolo gum hoods) and the fact that you can get the decals for restoration at all is lucky.
Enjoy,
Brandon"monkeylad"Ives
Santa Barbara