Over the last few years we have seen one of the biggest and most aggressive pop culture collectible lines ever find its way into the shelves of just about every store out there. The Funko Pop Figures really are everywhere right now.
For those of you who are living under a rock, and you really would have to be hiding away to not be exposed to them, Funko Pop Figures are vinyl figurines with over-sized ‘cute’ heads that cover more pop culture franchises than can be kept track of. I’ve made the joke about how if they are not doing a franchise, just wait a few weeks and so far they keep proving me right. I would challenge you to go and find a list of their products, which keeps expanding, and look. There is a real good chance they have already put out figures for all your favorite franchises and if not, just wait.
I originally was not collecting any Pop Figures. As R2-D2 is one of the main characters I collect, I picked up one of the R2s they put out. The I went after a few other characters and now there ae a few dozen Pop Figures in my collection from the various franchise I’m a fan of.
All the big name collectible stores and standard chain stores have jumped in and gotten their own exclusive Pop Figures or special packs of Pop Figure related collectibles. The market for these figures has just kept growing with some stores have full on walls of them.
And not surprisingly at all the secondary market prices for some of these figures have risen to impressive levels.
Of course anyone who knows how collectibles work have to look at such numbers with rational skepticism. I have seen the Pop Figures get compared to Beanie Babies, which was one of the most famous collapsing of a collectible line that has insanely inflated secondary market prices when the hype of them was everywhere. Lots of people invested thousands of dollars in Beanie Babies to end up with a bunch of worthless little stuffed animals.
Of course I will give my regular advice on collecting here. DO NOT collect anything purely as an investment. Collect something you enjoy collecting and want to own. If you then get to the point where they are so worthless you can’t give them away, if you are enjoying having them the value doesn’t matter.
The collecting market can be crazy to navigate at times. One general rules seems to be that the secondary market prices are NOT going to be stable for anything only a few years old. The supply and demand for newer collectibles is not set and gets inflated by assumed ideas of unverified rarity or artificial demand. This is what killed the Beanie Babies values. Everyone thought these new pieces coming out where going to be rare and sought after, and then once it all settled down, everyone who wanted one had them as well as thousands of people who did not really want them, who also spent ten to twenty or more times the value for them being convinced it would be a good investment. So many people do NOT understand why the toys of the 70s and 80s became so valuable, so they jump on the idea that all collectibles that get hyped will be valuable in the future.
As a rule it seems like it takes about two decades for collectibles to settle into their real level of demand and popularity.
My advice about collecting Pop Figures for value is to just not. It is highly risky to make actual investments on such collectibles in hopes of long term profits as there really is no way to know the long term demand.
With that being said, I would think chances are that the Pop Figure will stay a highly collectible line and has a good chance of maintaining their value.
As I said, they are producing figures for so many different franchise, some of which do not have that much it the way of collectibles out there. This means that audience for Pop Figures is huge, far larger than Beanie Babies was and really bigger than just about all other collectible lines out there. I cannot think of a another series that has gotten the rights to so many different diverse product licensing. Pez might be the only real competitor in that regards, and Pez have been able to stay highly collectible and valuable. Pop Figures are able to appeal to several different levels of fans and that does play a huge role in creating long term value and collectability. Beanie Babies tried to do that, but fell short, just not being able to get that bigger level of appeal.
While fair comparisons can be made between Pop Figures and Beanie Babies, especially when someone is thinking about the idea of long term investments, and there is a valuable lesson of caution to be found in doing such, there really is a noticeable difference between the two. Of course in the end it still should all come down to a personal desire to collect above the concern over the value or the idea it is an investment. The first priority of collection should always be the enjoyment of collecting above all else.
I’ve been enjoying collecting Pop Figures and plan to keep picking up the ones I like with no real concern about their value.
Now I need to get my own creations popular enough to warrant Pop Figures getting made of them. How cool would it be to have Georgie and Armand’s Place Pop Figures out there?
And if you have not yet picked up any of my writings, this might be a good time to check them out.
For the month of March I will be donating all my earnings from book sales to the Red Cross efforts in the Ukraine.
Go to http://tinyurl.com/IBCauthor to support me and the people of the Ukraine at the same time.
Help make the dream of Georgie and Armand Pop Figures become a reality and tell all your friends.
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