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Hobby Collectibles => Profit?
Trisaw
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Posted: Monday, October 24, 2016 - 10:43 PM UTC


With the Holidays approaching, instead of buying another unbuilt model kit to add to the growing stash, I am wondering if anyone pursued the hobby collectibles such as prepainted statues, Sideshow Collectibles, dolls, comics, trading cards, action figures, 1:1 props, resin statues, rare toys, Cosplay, etc. in the hopes that one day the product will be worth more than when initially purchased. Model kits' values are relative whereas hobby collectibles often have some inherent value attached to them with the hope that the value will grow over time.

We've all seen modelers sell their stash kits for a fraction of what they paid for. Some kits sell, some don't. I'm looking for a hobby (collectible) object that is the opposite of selling it for a fraction of what I paid for. But I have no idea what it should be.

If so, what is the best approach and topic to start with? Action figures are mass produced in the tens of thousands so they're not really rare, Sideshow Collectibles cost close to half a grand (~$500 USD and is there a demand for them in the future?), comics are worth more unopened and unread, and trading cards...well...one has to know what they have for it to be valuable.

Some resin statues are limited to 500 produced worldwide, but they're often so expensive that I wonder if many of them will still be sitting on a store shelf in the future.

Is it easy to sell these collectible items to a shop? Is the rule that one should NOT open the box to preserve the value? Is there even a demand for these collectibles?

I don't intend to spend much, but I am looking to buy something a bit more valuable in the future than another model kit.


I don't intend to start a business to flip my purchases for profit, but I am looking for one item that I can sell in the future that would be worth more than when I bought it.

Comments, feedback, and suggestions welcome. Thanks!
Maki
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Posted: Monday, October 24, 2016 - 11:46 PM UTC
One word: Lego.

Mario
MikeyBugs95
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 12:11 AM UTC
I've collected hockey trading cards for a while. Collected a total of over 1,550 of them. I'm now trying to sell them all. Having a hard time doing it though.
Thirian24
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 12:17 AM UTC
You shouldn't collect things because they are "valuable" because at the time they may be, but in the future when you're ready to sell, they may be worthless.
sherb
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 12:37 AM UTC

Quoted Text

One word: Lego.

Mario


I was going to say the same exact word!

I've sold some of the larger Lego sets (especially trains) for double, even triple of what I've paid for the them. Sealed in the box, you can get even more....but what fun is that?
RobinNilsson
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 12:42 AM UTC
1. Predicting the future value of one type of collectible based on the historical records of some other collectible is near impossible.

2. The history of collectibles (which I would guess were not sold as collectibles from the start) is usually that few of them have survived the brutal and dangerous existence in the hands of a child. The few that survive can therefore be considered "rare items" and the value may increase when "collectors" start outbidding each other.

3. The current "collectibles industry" is trying to make a buck out of the customers hopes that their limited edition collectible will sometime in the future become valuable.
The problem with this is that most (not all, accidents do happen, house burns down et.c.) of these not so rare collectibles will still be around and up for sale in the future. If there more items for sale than collectors wanting to buy them there will not be any outbidding at all.
The trick is to collect something that will become extremely rare in the future and that is probably not something that is for sale as a "collectible" today.

4. Pick something that will stay valuable and in demand in the future. Gold has had a good track record so far
Make sure that you terminate all alchemists because if they succeed then gold will loose most of it's value, it will be down to production and handling costs.

/ Robin

I read a fantasy story once (by Terry Pratchett ???) about two girls in a poor cottage somewhere out in the woods who met a fairy/witch. One of the girls was lazy and rude, the other worked hard and was polite. The fairy/witch rewarded the polite girl with the gift that every word the girl spoke turned into jewels, the lazy b-tch got the punishment that her words turned into lumps of coal. So far it's fairly standard as fairy tales go, BUT, one day the king and his grand vizier was out in the woods for some strange reason and came to the poor cottage. The king fell in in love with the polite girl (or maybe the jewellery popping out of her mouth) and asked her to marry him. The grand vizier who was a shrewd and calculating s.o.b. figured out that the price of jewellery would start dropping rapidly if the polite girl didn't keep her mouth shut, the demand for lumps of coal would be steady (gets burned when it's cold outside) and the price wouldn't drop so he asked the lazy girl to marry him. That way he knew he could keep his own household warm and cozy and soon he would be able to trade lumps of coal for jewellery (probably on a pound for pound exchange rate).
barkingdigger
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 12:43 AM UTC
We've all seen so-called "collectables" come and go as fads, with an initial spike in value soon reduced to a loss when nobody wants the stuff. If you know the market and can wheel/deal sharply then maybe, but for me at least that's too much like hard work. I'd rather pile up the kits so I can ogle the plastic and dream of how I will build mine - if I really wanted an investment to make money over time I'd buy land. After all, they aren't making much more, so it's always in short supply!
GulfWarrior
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 12:47 AM UTC

Quoted Text

I've collected hockey trading cards for a while. Collected a total of over 1,550 of them. I'm now trying to sell them all. Having a hard time doing it though.




I think I've got a little over 10,000 baseball cards...
sherb
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 01:02 AM UTC

Quoted Text

:[]--
If so, what is the best approach and topic to start with? Action figures are mass produced in the tens of thousands so they're not really rare, Sideshow Collectibles cost close to half a grand (~$500 USD and is there a demand for them in the future?), comics are worth more unopened and unread, and trading cards...well...one has to know what they have for it to be valuable.


I used to be big into 1/6 (12") action figures before I got back into 1/35. There are companies that do more limited run and highly detailed figures, Hot Toys and Toy Soldier come to mind. You'll pay at least $100-150 or more. Once they're out of production, they usually increase in value. It's tough trying to figure out what might be in demand. I did pretty well purging a big portion of my 1/6 collection a while back. I was looking more for free space than money and was happily surprised with how well I did.

Like Dustin said, something valuable now may not be so later.

As for where to sell them, I'd join various forums and go to their buy/sell/trade section. Seems there are groups for everything these days.

With a few exceptions, the comics I collected when I was a kid are most likely worth less than I paid for the them but I was never really into it for the money.

My advice, collect something you enjoy. If 5, 10, 15 years down the road you can sell it at a huge profit, great! If you can break even, good. Should the worst case happen and you lost your money on it, at least you enjoyed looking at them.
tankmodeler
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 01:42 AM UTC
The short answer is that there is no such thing.

Anyone who has watched a couple of those "antique Roadshow" programs where they go back and look again at items from 15+ years ago will know that there is no intrinsic value in anything. It's all worth only what people are willing to pay today and for collectable items you are always at the whim of what is in vogue tomorrow versus today.

There's no way to tell the future and no way to know what, if anything, will appreciate in value.

The other thing one learns is that anything marketed as "collectable" most certainly isn't, no matter how few of them were made. The 500 copies of Deadpool made as collectables will all be snapped up by, go figure, collectors. And they will remain in their boxes, pristine and untouched so that when anyone goes to look for one, they can find it for nearly the original asking price, because that's what the market will bear for the 500 units that are almost all still in existence.

In 200 years, there might be fewer of them but by that time, no one will care about a statuette of a forgotten and ephemeral comic book character. And their value will be next to nil because modern popular culture has assured us a never-ending supply of "limited edition" ephemeral character statuettes.

And, lastly, if there were a "collectable" that was pretty much guaranteed to increase in value, don't you think that every savvy business person on the planet would have bought them up already?

There's no such thing as a sure thing.

Paul
GaryKato
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 02:45 AM UTC
I would also suggest Lego kits, especially the fancier pricier ones. Technics seems to be a good line. However, it would be best to store it as sealed in box kits are the best.

However, most things that sell well were bought with no mind to collecting them. You really can't predict it. How do you know when what you are buying will be rare later?
obg153
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 03:03 AM UTC
As Mr. Cromwell said,, it's land. Or, as once posited by the famous Lex Luthor, "Railroads and utilities can crumble, banks and stocks can fail, and people are no damn good. But they will always need land and will pay through the nose to get it."
darthpanzer
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 05:04 AM UTC
Hi. I think I can ad 2 cents worth of true advice on this one. I worked for seven years on a comic book shop. I can not remember how many thousands of comics,hot wheels,star wars figures, trading cards ,etc I sold in that period. I would say that 50% of the people who got them thought that they would make thousands if not millions out of them.A Boba Fett figure brand new that i sold for $4.99 yesterday resold for $50 the next day. For a $100 in a month. Today is worth about one dollar. Many of my former clients try to sell those collectibles and they simply can not. The market is flodded why exclusive collectors sfuff. And with ebay now is far easier to get something cheaper.
In other words my friend. Buy what you like because you love it. You enjoy it. It represents somehow who you are. Nobody can tell you that something is going to go up in value. Nobody.
Bravo1102
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 07:23 AM UTC
If you want to make a collectible, get autographs. A Star Trek Scotty action figure isn't worth much, but one signed by James Doohan would be.

There was one guy who did a basic build on an old AMT enterprise and got all surviving cast members to sign it. It auctioned for a few thousand dollars. Same guy did a build of a B-25 and got some Doolittle raid survivors to sign it. Another thousand dollar auction.

Autographs. It ain't the piece, but who signs it.
clovis899
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 09:02 AM UTC
Hey Peter,
If your criteria is a collectible that will go up in value you might want to think about mutual funds or even just straight up stocks. OK, not as much fun as comics or baseball cards but almost certain not to leave you wondering what you were thinking in the first place!
Cheers,
Rick
Kevlar06
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 09:28 AM UTC
I used to work in a LHS, we sold a lot of "limited edition" die cast cars in 1/18 scale, and some of the Dragon / DiD figures in 1/6 scale. Some of these cars and figures really did bring in big money on the collector market, and some rare plastic kits also brought in some good prices. We dealt in a lot of OOP kits from the 50s and 60s. Frankly, if you want to make a small investment in these things, I recommend you look for a relatively quick turnaround though, as these kinds of "limited collectors edition" items tend to go in and out of vogue fairly quickly. We would frequently buy collections of stuff, and get one or two in demand items and quickly put it on eBay-- often making 200 or 300% profit-- but again, you rally need to be careful, do your research, and look at sites like eBay to see how sales are going.
VR, Russ
Biggles2
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 07:38 PM UTC
Sometimes "rare" kits, action figures, die-cast, etc. from 20 30 yrs ago are re-issued, killing the originals' value.
ironelf
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 09:03 PM UTC
Collecting models is the worst savings account ever.
ziggyfoos
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 10:10 PM UTC

Quoted Text

I used to be big into 1/6 (12") action figures before I got back into 1/35. There are companies that do more limited run and highly detailed figures, Hot Toys and Toy Soldier come to mind. You'll pay at least $100-150 or more. Once they're out of production, they usually increase in value.


You've been out of the 1/6 hobby for a while! New Hot Toys and sideshow figures are $220+.

Some consistent 1/6 figure lines that gain value (especially new condition) that are pretty sure bets would anything/all Star Wars related and also the comic based movie figures (Batman, Avengers, etc) especially since the movies are still coming out for the foreseeable future. Trying to find figures released from Avengers 1 now will cost you arm/leg for the big players.
Trisaw
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 11:07 PM UTC
Interesting insights, thanks for sharing!

I agree and the replies here and on another forum seem to be pretty consistent...that it's hard to even "break even" with the paid price of an item.

Even (collecting) gold is hard to get the paid (coin) price since mints often charge much more than the precious metal's spot price (weight), so much so that even with the rising cost of gold, the spot price is still like 75% of what the mint charges for the coin. That 25% is a lot of catching up to do over time to the paid (coin) price to even break even, let alone make a profit.

I'm not a gambling man, but I might try my luck at a box of Legos and store it for a few years . Legos age well and I don't see myself opening the box and building it.

What the replies have told me is what NOT to do, and that is to get involved in the collectibles at the comic book store (comic book stores don't sell Legos).

Thanks!
vettejack
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Posted: Tuesday, October 25, 2016 - 11:26 PM UTC
Sold a few 1/35 kits here and there. The Tamiya T-55 back from the mid to late 70s' was one of those sellers for me: $200. Currently have the oddest if not the rarest left: the Italeri M-7 Priest packaged/boxed/sold in Japan and with the Tamiya logo on it. In the past year alone, I donated over 200 kits to military charities of which I'll deduct $5000 from taxes. Comes out to $25 a kit...which I think is pretty conservative/generous.
KurtLaughlin
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Posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 08:46 PM UTC

Quoted Text

S.In the past year alone, I donated over 200 kits to military charities of which I'll deduct $5000 from taxes. Comes out to $25 a kit...which I think is pretty conservative/generous.


Having sold a like number of kits recently (on line, Ebay, and at shows) I would say that the average market price for a 1/35 kit is much closer to $20. You might want to consider what the IRS thinks about the subject.

KL
Kevlar06
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Posted: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 - 11:02 PM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text

S.In the past year alone, I donated over 200 kits to military charities of which I'll deduct $5000 from taxes. Comes out to $25 a kit...which I think is pretty conservative/generous.


Having sold a like number of kits recently (on line, Ebay, and at shows) I would say that the average market price for a 1/35 kit is much closer to $20. You might want to consider what the IRS thinks about the subject.

KL


Not sure what tax code he's going by either-- you can declare cash donations up to full value, but donations of 2nd hand goods is only $500 for private citizens, more for businesses for Federal Tax-- maybe that's what he means. As a person who has done a lot of model trading over the years (2nd hand trading is the only way I "buy" a new kit anymore), I can tell you nobody in sales is going to give you more than wholesale price on any kit-- and a rule of thumb is wholesale is anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 the MSRP. I agree Kurt, about $20 for a run of the mill 1/35 kit is more like it-- there are a few exceptions, and for those I suggest going on eBay. I've seen one or two folks get away with outrageous dollar amounts for certain kits there, but that's not the normal case. It always ticks me off at shows when someone brings up eBay to "quote" a price. Just because it's on eBay at $XX.XX dollar amount doesn't mean that's what it will sell for. Most smart shoppers walk away from people that do that. When I worked in a LHS, about 1/3 of our monthly sale base was on eBay-- we were able to keep doing that because we offered fair prices, not outrageous ones. Occasionally we'd get really rare pricey kits in trades that went for higher prices (Model Hiro and Pocher car kits or Gunze Armor kits for example) and we could ask a lot more for them, but if we wanted to sell them we tried to stay reasonable.
VR, Russ
oliver
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Posted: Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 12:33 AM UTC
Sold all my double original 1977 Star Wars A New Hope figures and made nearly 50 000 dollars US on them,maybe I was just lucky.
vettejack
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Posted: Thursday, October 27, 2016 - 05:24 PM UTC

Quoted Text


Quoted Text


Quoted Text

S.In the past year alone, I donated over 200 kits to military charities of which I'll deduct $5000 from taxes. Comes out to $25 a kit...which I think is pretty conservative/generous.


Having sold a like number of kits recently (on line, Ebay, and at shows) I would say that the average market price for a 1/35 kit is much closer to $20. You might want to consider what the IRS thinks about the subject.

KL


Not sure what tax code he's going by either-- you can declare cash donations up to full value, but donations of 2nd hand goods is only $500 for private citizens, more for businesses for Federal Tax-- maybe that's what he means. As a person who has done a lot of model trading over the years (2nd hand trading is the only way I "buy" a new kit anymore), I can tell you nobody in sales is going to give you more than wholesale price on any kit-- and a rule of thumb is wholesale is anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 the MSRP. I agree Kurt, about $20 for a run of the mill 1/35 kit is more like it-- there are a few exceptions, and for those I suggest going on eBay. I've seen one or two folks get away with outrageous dollar amounts for certain kits there, but that's not the normal case. It always ticks me off at shows when someone brings up eBay to "quote" a price. Just because it's on eBay at $XX.XX dollar amount doesn't mean that's what it will sell for. Most smart shoppers walk away from people that do that. When I worked in a LHS, about 1/3 of our monthly sale base was on eBay-- we were able to keep doing that because we offered fair prices, not outrageous ones. Occasionally we'd get really rare pricey kits in trades that went for higher prices (Model Hiro and Pocher car kits or Gunze Armor kits for example) and we could ask a lot more for them, but if we wanted to sell them we tried to stay reasonable.
VR, Russ


My intentions in having the charities provide me with receipts for the donations is to take full advantage of maximum deductions when donating 2nd hand goods. The $5000 worth of kits donated take up the entire spectrum of pricing: from the $125 for a BR52, all the way down to a $10 accessories kit. I simply took an average of the over 200 1/35 kits donated. The 2 organizations I sent kits to (for military vets in Iraq and Afghanistan) are in Arizona and Virginia and are well aware of limitations. In fact they both responded that I should value the kits higher. The tax code allows a percentage of that $5000 I will declare. I know cash donations can be fully valued/deducted: the wife and I do that when we pay 'donations' for classic car/Corvette shows that are 501 (c) (3) organizations. Those receipts are kept as well and add up quickly when tons of car shows ask at a minimum $25 to enter. Doing 10 shows adds up quickly. While I understand and appreciate your concerns when it comes to the Tax Man, rest assured I've done this a time or two. There is no excessive exploitation, just simple math when donating. I'm a 22 year retired military Veteran and only donate to military related organizations. Cash donations also go to military organizations, and since my step daughter and myself have diabetes, we donate cash to those organizations. More recently, I found out I have aggressive prostate cancer as a result of Agent Orange, so now I add those organizations to my list of cash donations. I think I explained myself enough, eh?
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