Another suggestion is to use min094 for a future variant of Steve (009) or
Alex (017), like when they appear with legs or helmets in a new colour.
My understanding is that Catalog numbers are not reusable. If a minifig or part
needed to be deleted for some reason, it is skipped permanently.
~Jen
That would be a nightmare for numberphiles like me! However, I always get happy
to receive a response from you since you are a Minecraft aficionado/catalogue
expert.
Nevertheless similar things happened before.
I think that in 2021 randyf decided that Iron Golems should be considered
a minifig and not a mob, so he added it to the catalogue in 2021 as min093. This
also meant that set 21128-1 from 2016 was updated with a new minifig. (I'm
assuming this rather than knowing because there are no detailed change
logs about set inventory changes.)
If you view the list of minecraft minifigs sorted by date you will see that min093
appears in 2016 while the numbering was still in the 040 range.
My question remains: where was 094 used for initially? If it only briefly entered
the catalogue but was sold never then it could be reused. Basically: if one would
be able to search the entire database of Bricklink - a question only the owner
of the database can answer - would it bring up a result for min094?
Netherlands, Overijssel
USA, Illinois
Germany, Niedersachsen