Capitalism has truly made us believe some unbelievable stuff. The reason Action Comics #1 ended up worth millions is because of the confluence of Superman becoming a huge pop-culture phenomenon and the original comic only having a limited printing on fragile/disposable paper - Funkos are mass produced with modern materials, and if the market for them runs out they will have zero lasting cultural impact that makes them collectable.
Maybe after all the oil runs out and we start feeding plastic into recycling machines to turn it back into oil (which will be preferable to switching to renewables under capitalism), the ones that survive will find some value as museum pieces.
There must be hundreds of thousands of tons of shitty little ceramic angel figures and commemorative plates choking the landfills after the boomers left all their weird kitsch to millennials who wanted none of it.
Another factor was the war effort. There was a huge campaign to gather and donate as much waste paper as possible because it could be used to make cardboard for moving supplies. Some of the first things that would get tossed out were old comic books.
Also just in general: collector's markets overall kinda seem to largely either be a grift or a way to do money laundering. I saw a breakdown on the "classic videogame" collectible market a while back and the rattings agencies who judge them and apparently a lot of the figures from that were also involved in the comic collectors market before the crash in the late 90s.
The short version is: most of the big sales events that happen where something like Action Comics #1 sells for a million dollars are essentially sales back and forth between a closely knit group that artificially inflates the selling point of the actual comic. That in turn creates a knock on effect where suddenly you have a huge people rushing into the market to figure out what their stuff is worth and it creates a huge bubble in the market. All the while the people who started the initial grift are making out early and everyone else is left holding the bag when the value collapses.
That wasn't the video game market, that was a company that started grading old games like MTG cards and then claiming they were worth six figures, which they weren't. It was creating something out of whole cloth and ruining it for everyone.
Capitalism has truly made us believe some unbelievable stuff. The reason Action Comics #1 ended up worth millions is because of the confluence of Superman becoming a huge pop-culture phenomenon and the original comic only having a limited printing on fragile/disposable paper - Funkos are mass produced with modern materials, and if the market for them runs out they will have zero lasting cultural impact that makes them collectable.
Maybe after all the oil runs out and we start feeding plastic into recycling machines to turn it back into oil (which will be preferable to switching to renewables under capitalism), the ones that survive will find some value as museum pieces.
There must be hundreds of thousands of tons of shitty little ceramic angel figures and commemorative plates choking the landfills after the boomers left all their weird kitsch to millennials who wanted none of it.
Another factor was the war effort. There was a huge campaign to gather and donate as much waste paper as possible because it could be used to make cardboard for moving supplies. Some of the first things that would get tossed out were old comic books.
Also just in general: collector's markets overall kinda seem to largely either be a grift or a way to do money laundering. I saw a breakdown on the "classic videogame" collectible market a while back and the rattings agencies who judge them and apparently a lot of the figures from that were also involved in the comic collectors market before the crash in the late 90s.
The short version is: most of the big sales events that happen where something like Action Comics #1 sells for a million dollars are essentially sales back and forth between a closely knit group that artificially inflates the selling point of the actual comic. That in turn creates a knock on effect where suddenly you have a huge people rushing into the market to figure out what their stuff is worth and it creates a huge bubble in the market. All the while the people who started the initial grift are making out early and everyone else is left holding the bag when the value collapses.
That wasn't the video game market, that was a company that started grading old games like MTG cards and then claiming they were worth six figures, which they weren't. It was creating something out of whole cloth and ruining it for everyone.
I'm sure they did it for trading cards also, but they've absolutely been doing it for classic videogames also:
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/grading-firm-wata-is-facing-a-lawsuit-for-allegedly-manipulating-the-retro-game-market/
And comics were a kid thing, so not a lot of intact versions that weren't also covered in leaded sugar/fucked up cus child
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