What Action Figures Are Collectible?

What's Collectible? How do you know which action figures are collectible or will be collectible? Much of it is guess work or gut feeling. Part of it is an educated guess. A big part is knowing your market and target audience. So...

What added guidance and help can I give you? In short this simple guide is to help YOU make the decision based on my 15 years in the business.The simplest, easiest and biggest piece of advice I can give you is to remember:

"Today's toys are tomorrow's collectibles" Let me clarify that statement a little more. What are the kids into NOW? What drives their imagination? What games, cartoons, and comic books do they want? Which toys, games etc. will be the number one on this years Christmas lists?

These are the thing that are likely to be the collectibles of the future, the things that will be selling good money in another 10-20 years.

Why? Simply, because the collectors market is basically driven by nostalgia. Look at today's most valuable and collectible items. They're generally what were popular when we were kids (or at least when I was a kid!).

Good examples of this are they huge market for Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and Chucky collectibles. All of these are huge cult movies from the 80's.

Then there are the Star Wars toys and Pokemon collectibles. G.I. Joes, Action Man, He-Man, Masters of the Universe and Thunderbirds.

It's the memories attached to these toys and programs that makes them collectible now, as well as the desire to have what we couldn't have as kids.

So, what do I think will be tomorrow's hot collectibles?

Looking at today's markets I would think that the anime/manga series Naruto and Bleach will become more popular and collectible over the coming years as well as other popular anime series such as Ghost in the Shell.

Also popular video games such as Gears of War, Warcraft, Halo and Guitar Hero have a considerable amount of merchandise available, many of which are highly collectible and are likely to remain popular for many years yet.

Oh... And I nearly forgot about Ben 10. Ben 10 is another TV animation series that seems to have become popular recently and captured kids' imaginations.

And don't forget about normal, everyday items. Many of these are likely to become highly sought after and collectible as well.

A prime example of this phenomenon is the old Robinson jam jar labels. These featured a golliwog and were on EVERY jar produced back in the 70's.Thousands upon thousands were produced every year.

Now they sell for about $500 simply because they were banned. But who saved or collected them? Virtually no-one, because they were so common, an everyday item. Again it's the nostalgia and memories associated with them that drives' the market and demand.

Do you remember any of the toys you had? Do you still have any of them? Where are they now? By our very nature, as kids we want to play with our toys, we aren't interested in keeping them safe and undamaged or even collecting them.

They were there to be played with. They were banged and bashed about, thrown around and mostly destroyed, broken and thrown out over the ensuing years. It's only now that we look back to them with the fondness of memories and a longing for our lost childhood.

So again it's often these things that become collectible and valuable. OK, so what about limited editions, low production runs or chase and variant action figures, cards, stamps, toys or whatever that are produced today?

Again these are generally targeted at today's collectors so are often based on past or vintage subjects, e.g. Star Wars, Thunderbirds, Elvis Presley, Battlestar Galactica etc.

Some will target new toys, games, current trends or popular items such as Gears of War, Halo or even movies such as Hellboy.

These items will often be highly collectible initially due to their current popularity and high demand but will general see a dip in value after a few years and as new trends take their place, but...

If they became a popular part of our culture and, or childhood experiences they will generally gain in value again in the long term.

A very good example of this is the Pokemon cards. In the mid 90's they were HUGE, so big in fact that I would say that every child in the world ever knew or had heard about them. Even kids in the poorest parts of Brazil were trading the cards.

But eventually, something else came along. The kids grew up and its popularity dwindled.

But now after ten years it is regularly back in the top 30 searches each month. Prices of the cards are selling at a brisk rate on the auction sites and the demand for the old stuff is increasing. So, if you have an old Pokemon collection tucked away, maybe its time to dust it down!

This is because the kids who collected and bought it then are now "grown up" and look back at the fun days of collecting them and maybe getting some of them back again.

I know I certainly do. At the time I was BIG on Pokemon. I had them ALL! I even had an Illustrator Pikachu and a Secret Mewto, two of THE rarest cards.

But alas, being a trader I sold them all of, but now...

I often wish I had saved a few.

Another piece of advice is to look for niche markets. A niche market is a specialist market. If you can find a small "niche" that has a loyal following then again these are likely to become highly collectible simple because although there is a lot less demand the supply or amount of product available will also be a lot scarcer and therefore more likely to become collectible or valuable.

In the long term, if you "invest" in the right things, the return in 10-20 years can be huge. Certainly better than the average return on your bank savings.

So, in order to decide what will hold it's value or increase in value you should consider:

What's popular now.
Check the top comics, cartoons, TV programmes, films etc and look for the common themes.
What are popular household items?
What games or toys do your kids and friends want and trash?
What are the popular niche markets?
What has become part of our everyday lives, a part of our culture, our language (an excellent example here would be Google, even the term "to Google" something has become common) ?
Consider the answers to these questions, these are the things that are likely to hold their prices and increase in value over the years.