Not a fan of funkos, the weird eyes kinda ruin them for me. Plus they dont all stand up straight, though my lads Bobby one has a nifty stand at least.
Watched a video of someone opening a bunch of unopened Garbage Pail Kid card packs, paid a small fortune for them. Turns out the gum had ruined all the cards inside and he tossed them all in the bin. More money than sense half of these collectors, very deep pockets.
The fun of collecting retro games has dwindled in recent years due to its popularity, mosly everything is overpriced. Long gone are the days of picking up an Atari 2600 with 10 boxed games for £2.50 at a car boot!
People largely don't even know what they've got their hands on and it goes one of two ways - they bin or give away for a song, or they completely misinterpret the level of demand and value and list it somewhere for silly money - see the amount of Charizard Pokemon cards on eBay for thousands - regardless of what gen, edition and condition they are. People have heard a rapper paid thousands for one and now think they have the holy grail, when in reality, the only ones with true value are high-quality condition, first edition base set cards from the 1997 run.
Emulators and remasters do harm the collectibles market for games, though some people will always want a physical game. The garbage pail cards were up with Pokemon card value for a time, but the above is a known issue now that has scared collectors off boxed versions.
Trading cards seem to have long held some kind of shared cultural fascination in Japan and the West - there is still a fairly robust market for all kinds of trading cards. In Pokemon, there were four 'Illustrator Cards' released that were contest prizes in Japan in 1999. One sold last year for £200,000 at auction and the same person is now ridiculously trying to flog it for over a million having apparently rejected offers of more than double what he paid. Michael Jordan's 86-87 Fleer Rookie Card, if in good condition is worth north of £250k, though there's scant few left out of the hands of collectors (I'm almost certain this is one of those that hundreds of American families will have sitting in an album in a box in their attic).
Still to this day the most expensive trading card ever sold was early 20th Century Pittsburgh Short-Stop Honus Wagner. An oddly good condition card went for £3 million at auction some years back.
PSA do a fairly interesting blog (for nerds like me) where they speculate on what the next trend in trading cards will be, whether the current pokemon market boom is a bubble etc. Part of why vintage baseball cards are worth so much is purely age, and as time goes on, good examples of rare cards dwindle, as you would imagine. This is driving the Pokemon card boom - the original base sets are now pushing 25 years old, with good condition cards rarer and rarer. Just having any base set card from the first edition run in a 9 or 10 grade will be worth a few hundred, however crap the card is itself. So whilst it seems a bubble currently, and will likely burst, give it another ten years and there will be another, larger bubble likely. Now people have cottoned onto the condition that cards need to be kept in, most people have them in protective sleeves, out of any light source and never touch them with their bare hands. Stuff like this will preserve the quality. This one has been driven by the fact that kids who grew up with Pokemon are now social media influencers chasing rare collectibles.
Note: If anyone has any base set (Base Set, Fossil, Team Rocket, Jungle, Gym Heroes) Pokemon Cards they either: Want valued, or want to sell, let me know.
