Do you consider Funko Pops as Toys or as simple cash grab?
>>11218694I feel sorry for anyone who saw them as investments. Everything from yard sales to flea markets to conventions are floor-to-ceiling with that shit, and no one's buying. I still remember last year when Funko dumped millions of dollars worth of them into landfills due to being unsellable.
>>11218778Biggest question to me is how so many soijak millennials believed the investment hype when funkos were so obviously mass-produced shit. Collectibles usually have something going for them, be it scarcity, artwork/design, or cultural significance. They have none of those things.
>>11218787The average person is a mindless consumer who doesn't think. They were the "it thing" to get, so the people who want to be the "alpha cool consumers" hoarded up as much as they could while others bought just so they could "fit in" by owning the stuff the other "cool consumers" had.
Anyone else still randomly see people scanning upcs to see the resell price? What gets me is just how many damn variations of pops there are, who wants a bitty pop?
>>11218793Perhaps, but I never perceived funkos as having had some big cultural hype behind them that would induce collector mania a la beanie babies. When were Funkos an “it” thing? Seems to be a phenomenon confined to the kinds of guys who browse Reddit.
>>11218694Some of them look neat and they always look far better without the packaging, but I wouldn’t consider them very good.>>11218837I’ve actually used bitty pops as props for my actual toys before, lel
>>11218694Funkos are bad for everyone.They aren’t really “toys”, they aren’t designed for play. On an aesthetic level the only reason people like them is their bastardised resemblance to pop culture characters. Compare them to Lego minifigures for comparison, which are in some ways similar in how people collect them but are smaller with significantly more character and capacity for actual play. Funkos are statues, they’re as unfun as anime figures but at least those actually look like who they’re meant to.People are talking about “investment” delusion but I think this gives funko buyers too much credit, claims of investment are I think usually insincere, just an excuse to justify buying more crap, when really those irl basedjaks are buying them because they recognise the thing and it makes the part of their brains that recognise the pop culture reference tingle
I like some of them. The monsters, robots, and weird stuff is pretty good. I don't think, in general, 95% of them have any appeal to me. The ones that do stand out.In fact, I recently got the The Thing head crab and the Blair monster ones. They are pretty cool.
>>11218694
>>11219517Pedothena
>>11218694B-But they're going to be worth MILLIONS someday!!! Just wait!Each new Funko is an investment! I'm going to be rich and all you assholes are going to wish you were me!!!!!
>>11218778>>11218787>>11220986The early 90s comic speculation boom just fucked everything up. The general public saw Action Comics and Detective Comics #1 selling for millions. And their first reaction is >Holy shit! This means EVERYTHING remotely geeky is worth billions upon billions!They assumed anything childhood nostalgia based like comics, toys, video games, whatever is a fucking golden ticket to wealth and power. All...mass produced shit that already has lots and lots of people collecting and hording. Totally ignoring that no one collected shit in the 1930s so yeah that Action comics is fucking rare. Nothing mass produced i the 90s will ever be rare. And especially not so when the toy and video game companies keep re-re-re-releasing the 80s stuff forever and ever. Fast Forward to today and we have >Scalpers with garages full of 2017 SNES mini consoles assuming they are going to be rich some day.>Scalpers buying up all mass produced rerelease figs like the 2019 80s Ghostbusters or 2021 80s TMNT reproductions. >Scalpers with garages full of NES, SNES, and N64 cartridges screeching every day about roms and flashcarts are evil terrified their investment is in jeopardyIf it's kiddy nostalgia related, then the vast legions of autistic retarded scalpers will be funneling all of the mass produced shit into their storage lockers in hopes of buying that mega yacht some day.
>>11221013In a weird way, they are making a self fulfilling prophecy by hoarding them and then claiming they are rare. I remember before covid there was a decent amount of gamecube games at my local used store. And then almost overnight, all sold out. That game I was thinking about buying for $25 suddenly became $150 online only. Recently I have been looking for an anime bluray that was readily available for $60, and now its only available for $200 because the freaking company changed their minds on repressing it. It is a fickle economy. I guess my point is, the scalpers usually 'win' because they force such an environment onto us. However, they will probably waste a lot of money and resources trying to gain a small profit. Thus is the nature of it all.
>>11221189Americans really are retarded
>>11221194And you are a pedo Athena
>>11221013Americans always ruining everything, where is it never the case
>>11221013i'll never forget my dad taking his sealed copy of Death of Superman to the local comic shop in ~2012 thinking it'd be worth hundreds only for the guy at the counter to tell him as politely as possible that even his $5 offer was only being given out of the kindness of his heart.
>>11221189They created their own little bubble where the same few things shift around from second hand dealer to second hand dealer.If anyone really and truly wanted to see a hard to find movie, they would download it. If there was a game they really wanted to play, they would grab the rom. No normal person or mildly interested party is going to pay outrageous collector prices for some movie or game. Only other moron dealers who think this is their ticket to wealth will attempt it.
>>11221357>They created their own little bubble where the same few things shift around from second hand dealer to second hand dealer.That is interesting. I never thought about that. It makes me think of graded cards, like how many times will that card get passed between other graded collectors? No sane person will spend (hypothetically) $500 on a graded PSA 10 Red-Eyes Black Dragon card from Joey's Structure deck, except those that think there is that much value in it. You can just buy one for $50 or whatever in good condition, or another reprint, or just make a proxy or look at it online in high-def.>If anyone really and truly wanted to see a hard to find movie, they would download it.I partially agree. I personally find it better to own the movie physically and have a digital copy. There's no way I'd pay a lot of money for said movie/tv show, unless it was already expensive for MSRP. Like I wanted to watch the first two Zoids anime shows, but the DVDs are stupid expensive now. I found them online and watched them that way (thanks to whoever that amazing person is who uploaded them).Anyways, back to what you said: Probably other collectors are passing off 'rare' collectibles to each other increasing the price artificially until the last person is left with a major profit loss realizing no one wants that SDCC exclusive glow in the dark 80s Batman graded Funko POP.
>>11221391Very likely true. But the one thing I have seen this happen is with Hotwheels and other 1/64 scale cars. And those guys have their own diecast cons, but are also found dealing at every carshow, drag race, Nascar event, monster truck show. Every one of them. The collectors have lists of what is being manufactured and all the variants. They then go pour over toy aisles everywhere looking for rare packs and accidental variants. (Anything painted the wrong color or with the wrong decals) They grab up the irregulars, jack the price from $4 to $50-$100 easily. Sell them to other collectors who think this irregular car will somehow equal hundreds of thousands. Sell that to another dealer at a car show somewhere, And eventually it tops off with some dealer who cannot make back what they paid and they have to cut the price to get rid of it. Then the process begins all over again. Add in the casuals who think anything non- normal MUST be some ultra rare find, like a Batmobile, Knight rider car or any movie related toy (which are commonly made all the time) and you have a whole microcosm of dealers selling the same few cars to each other. Keeping it entirely out of the hands of fans and people who just like a toy car.
>>11222150I wonder how much of that is the funkos selling and doing well for that second guy, or the fact that someone got their hands on a small warehouse full of merch to unload for pennies. I imagine someone who paid a premium price for whatever happened to be sitting in a closeout sale like that would turn a profit for even below retail price. Just selling collected funkos for $10 each is good enough for them.
>>11218694They're junk. That being said, I do like making Custom Funko Pops.
>>11233201
>>11233203
>>11221013The whole market is based on ill-advised gambling. You can only get rich by riding the wave of whatever scam artists are pushing at the time and it's usually too late to get in by the time they've pumped and dumped.The best case scenario is that you buy a rare shiny thing to put on your shelf that you actually enjoying looking at, then 10-20 years later you sell it at a slight loss.
