Are superhero Funko Pops the Beanie Babies of our generation? 4 4

[vheflin]

graded

sold for $8,657.00 

[davidtere]

I have a few of them...but then again I don't consider them any different than any other toy action figure that feature a certain character (I admit to having my fair share of toy figures mostly super hero). Most of mine are the figure with the vehicle (Batman sitting in Batmobile, Wonder Woman in her Invisible Jet, Ghost Rider on Motorcycle). I guess I like the vehicle more than I like the figure. I didn't buy them because they were a 'pop' or because of their (perceived) value. All of them I bought at a local swap meet, so I paid less than retail from 'pop' collectors that were getting rid of their collection, except for the invisible jet that my daughter gifted me for Christmas a few years ago. As far as being collectible...pffft!

[F For Fake]

I have a few, they're pretty cute. Jaws, Crow and Tom Servo from MST3k, a handful of others. What I like about the line is the sheer breadth of the licenses they acquire. It's cool to have so many movies, comics, tv shows, pop singers, etc represented in the same style. We haven't seen that sort of cross pollination of source material in a single toy line since the Mego days. They're fun, and fun is fun.

But I'd never pay more than retail for one, and I think that's the rub. Some of these things sell for hundreds, or even thousands of dollars, which seems INSANE to me personally. But perhaps those collectors feel that paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for deteriorating paper pamphlets featuring stories that are readily available digitally or in cheap collected editions to be an insane hobby as well.

There's no right or wrong way to spend your disposable income. Funkos, comics, etc none of them are necessary, so do what you like. Just don't spend more than you can afford to lose if the market falls out from beneath them tomorrow.

[bb8]

3 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

i guess its a harmless collectible as long as one doesn't get carried away,,..

it beats blowing your money on hookers and blow ...

Debatable.

[october]

The older I get, the more insane I think collectibles are in general. $15,000 for a sealed Sega Genesis game no one will ever play? Why not. $10,000 for a gross little dwarf plastic statue thing? Sure. $12,000 for a graded variant made 10 years ago with crappy art? Sign me up. 

We all need help. 

[1Cool]

I knew we had a new beanie baby on our hands when a couple local dealers where telling me they sell twice as much Pops as they do comics at local Cons.  They specialize in the limited edition Pops and people were clambering over each other to get the rare glow in the dark version or whatever.  Most of them are pretty ugly.  Seems like someone is mixing stuff together in the classic beanie baby craze cookbook to me.

[ADAMANTIUM]

For what it's worth 

There was a "Funko POP" documentary on Netflix last year....

It had Kevin Smith promoting it....

I watched maybe 30 minutes of it, enough to know that they've been around a long time..... 

[telerites]

4 hours ago, 1950's war comics said:

i guess its a harmless collectible as long as one doesn't get carried away,,..

it beats blowing your money on hookers and blow ...

You should have told me sooner.

[DavidTheDavid]

3 hours ago, Kon_Jelly said:

I have a few just for display purposes, but I don't collect them. They're good enough for cheap little figures that I can put out in my office. With the sheer quantity of Pops that exist I couldn't even imagine trying to collect them.

I think you mean Skottie Young. 

Yes, thanks. JSC is a modern pinup guy, right?

[Buzzetta]

There are a few that I have for 'me'.   I love the Robby the Robot one on my desk, as well as Momaw Nadon from Star Wars... I have a few others as well.  However I have also sold them when the money seems right.  I have no problem going and getting some convention exclusives to flip for ridiculous sums. 

I bought the Mandalorian convention exclusive for $15.  I sold it on eBay last month for $300.  My only regret was that I did not wait even longer because prices on it got soft as I sold it and then shot back up again as a few more sold at the $375-400 mark. 

To each their own.  Remember... all of us are collecting old newsprint for large sums of money that could be read at ease for $2 on an iPad.

[wombat]

I think I have 6 of them. Not superheroes though. I couldn't resist when I saw they had Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja. I think I added John Wick and a few others. I saw they just came out with some Dune ones that I will probably get. But I never paid more than $10 for one and I certainly would never consider it as some kind of investment. 

My daughter likes them and has quite a few Harry Potter and Stranger Things. But again, nothing more then $10 each .

[camera73]

1 hour ago, october said:

The older I get, the more insane I think collectibles are in general. $15,000 for a sealed Sega Genesis game no one will ever play? Why not. $10,000 for a gross little dwarf plastic statue thing? Sure. $12,000 for a graded variant made 10 years ago with crappy art? Sign me up. 

We all need help. 

It's all relative. I would never pay more than $20K for a car or more than $300,000 for a house - even if I were a millionaire. But with unlimited funds....I just may consider picking up an FF #1 in 9.8

Ah! First world problems!

 

[camera73]

So, to give my :

My exGF (circa 2014-2018) used to join me on road trips as I roamed the country, scouring comic shops for deals. Eventually, she started to look around during those 5 hour stints and decided that some Funko pops were worth a gander. She began to buy some for coworkers and then grab all of the musical licences (Beatles, Hendrix, KISS, MJ, etc) and then every character that was meaningful to her. 

It didn't take long before she had a 100+ figure collection. Now, this was a grown woman, approaching 40yo, with TONS of disposable income, who had never collected anything her whole life. The flood gates were open!

It probably took about a year before her collection was pushing 1000 pops and I was getting into them. She quickly transitioned to selling her non-keepers on feebay and I started to pick up characters who were meaningful to me.

We broke up almost two years ago, but by then, she had a full online shop and was selling at cons. I now have a collection in the order of ~2000 pops. My current GF is selling them on feebay for me to supplement her income.

To address the Beanie Babies question...yes and no. Beanie Babies did not exist as a craze for more than five years. They flamed up, made it onto the news as grandmothers (and everyone else) hoarded them and then they were gone. Besides being cute and a 'great investment' I'm not sure if those people could have put into words why they were buying them. Funko pops, on the other hand, while they do share some characteristics, like cuteness, are demonstrably different. Funko has been around for almost exactly twice the duration of the BB frenzy. It was begun by collectors and for collectors around 2009/2010. Yes, Funko (a publicly traded company) will stoop to the odd gimick, now and then, but mostly they are making what the fans want. Their designers are geeks and they acquire licenses from any sector of society/culture, where there may be demand. Lastly, BBs were a largely pre-ebay phenom, while pops have existed alongside many of the submarkets that grew up as consequences of the online market (vintage video games and sneakers, knockoff handbags, Chinese drop shipments, A Painting A Day, etc). So, they are superficially alike, but largely dissimilar.

They are like any other collectible out there. They DO have quite a few features that make them good/bad or similar/unlike comics. Some are: 

1) Good - They are fun to look at. Not everyone wants to stare at nude statue or an AF15, but many do. Pops work the same way. There is enough of a market for their esthetic, that people want them in their homes, cars and workplaces.

2) Good - Pops make great display pieces. They show off the owners interests in a way that communicates their likes/ dislikes/ values/ interests/ affinities/ geekdom in ways that are difficult otherwise. A comic collector can wear t-shirts and display comics on the wall, but you have limited ways to do that on the job or in your car.

3) Good - They can appreciate in value in ways that comics cannot. Many pop licences target VERY underserved geekdoms. I won't list them, but there are movies, bands, video games and personalities, that will never get collectible attention EXCEPT as a Funko pop. If you're into that thing, then the market has just been cornered, my friends. A middle-aged fan of a video game, who doesn't collect anything and maybe lives in an apartment with little space, will not blink at the idea of spending $50-$1000 on a pop that can be displayed to show their love for a particular person or character. This is especially true, when a gamer strongly identifies with the character, who they've been playing for years, and then a pop is made of him/her/it.

4) Bad - The can be duds, too. Sometimes the designs, production or manufacture will turn out weaker than the norm. Also, they are oftentimes, so overproduced, that many never achieve scarcity. This results in no value appreciation and gluts of some figures that sit around forever. Many of the pops that I purchased for spec, because I thought the character was popular enough, turned out to be worthless, now that I'm selling them off. Funko does not report numbers when producing most pops (they do have limited, numbers editions), so, you often end up with a pop that may be common and have only sentimental value (not a bad thing, necessarily) forever.

5) Similar to comics - People buy what they like. Sometimes because you like how it looks or as an appropriate gift for a friend or you like its chances of appreciating in the aftermarket. All of the same rules apply.

6) Unlike comics - The comic book market is largely homogeneous and continues to produce work based on the same characters in the same way. Diverging from that model meets limited success. Funko has found some success in diversity. While they did experience a collector/spec spike, when I first got into them, around four years ago, they have levelled out and now most of the demand is returning to brand new releases, that are purchased by fans. There is an aftermarket, but I find that most of the pricier sales still go to that one person who just has to have a little embodiment of one of their favorite things/people/characters. Which is so very different from many comic book collectors, who tend to hoard many books for many different reasons (fave character, spec, run/story, art, nostalgia, etc).

I am not the end-all-be-all pro on the Funko pop! market, but I've been in the game long enough to know a couple things. Feel free to correct my descriptions of the way things are or please ask questions about the pop! phenomenon, if you're interested in continuing the discussion. 

[Robot Man]

Just modern money grab, "created collectible" dust catchers to me. But, I'm an old geezer who has a house full of vintage and antique toys, advertising signs, comic books and other junk.

These were the Funkos and Beanie Babies of my generation. They wern't created as collectibles and the sets are very finite. Dusting them consist of drunking them in the kitchen sink after my wife complains enough...

[camera73]

11 minutes ago, Robot Man said:

Just modern money grab, "created collectible" dust catchers to me. But, I'm an old geezer who has a house full of vintage and antique toys, advertising signs, comic books and other junk.

These were the Funkos and Beanie Babies of my generation. They wern't created as collectibles and the sets are very finite. Dusting them consist of drunking them in the kitchen sink after my wife complains enough...

I don't know about these particular figures, but any such toys or cards that are/were sold in individual "blind bags" or packs are created as collectibles. They are made and designed with the express purpose of getting kids to buy as many as possible, at the highest possible markup, to "collect them all" and trade the doubles with friends, who will then also get hooked. That's how the thousands of fads have been manufactured for the last 100 years. Even tulips in the 1600s, art in the early 1900s and stocks in the 1990s followed the model, somewhat.

[valiantman]

Here's my favorite Funko - from back when Funko bobble heads still had the bobble, years before the "craze".

If it wasn't for that "dot com" on the top, you could easily guess this thing was from 1963 instead of 2003.

 

[Hudson]

When I saw the title, I had to do a google search to figure out what everyone was talking about.

Guess, I am not in the Funko boat,

[valiantman]

Just now, Hudson said:

When I saw the title, I had to do a google search to figure out what everyone was talking about.

Guess, I am not in the Funko boat,

You've got a great focus if you haven't noticed a 40 foot of wall of Funko boxes in just about every store for the past ten years. 

[kav]

We cannot get around one major fact tho-THEY ARE MANUFACTURED COLLECTIBLES.  manipulated 'print runs' and 'variant covers'.  They may have outlived beanie babies so far-but manufactured collectibles have no history of long term value.
If the manufacturer determines value, by making limited #'s, that is not sustainable.  Action #1 is not valuable because they purposely did a small print run to boost value.

Edited June 19, 2020 by kav

[Buzzetta]

6 minutes ago, kav said:

We cannot get around one major fact tho-THEY ARE MANUFACTURED COLLECTIBLES.  manipulated 'print runs' and 'variant covers'.  They may have outlived beanie babies so far-but manufactured collectibles have no history of long term value.
If the manufacturer determines value, by making limited #'s, that is not sustainable.  Action #1 is not valuable because they purposely did a small print run to boost value.

Maaaaaaaaaybe.... I said the same thing as well until it was pointed out that there are many regular releases that have value because they are retired. They were also smart enough to go for pop culture licenses to sustain their desirability.  So while, Beanie Babies focused on different pattern frogs of their own design or unicorns or bears or whatever, Funko focuses on Star Wars, Star Trek, Comic Book characters... all of which already have a collector base.    They took on properties like Harry Potter and Stranger things and Rick and Morty where people were hungry for merchandise.   The only thing that Funko is really making on their own is Freddy Funko.  All of their other products are licensed and are of properties that people were already collecting.  

So... if you were unto Beanie Babies you tried to get all the bears or all of a release or anything that was said to be valuable. If you were into Funko then you wanted the entire LOST set.  I missed the boat on Baloo the Bear which was one of the favorite Disney characters.  Funko only made one of those and the aftermarket price has increased because it is a desired piece of merchandise of a desired Disney character.  

Same as comic books in a way when you think of it.