So, I don’t know if any of you know... but anime figures (those by the likes of Megahouse, Alter, Good Smile, Max Factory, Flare and evening Kotobukiya) have just absolutely skyrocketed in price over the years.
I remember when I initially started collecting them. My first one was around $50 or $60 and I thought that was kinda high at the time. It crept up to $80 after a while and then $90 became the norm. Suddenly, I turn around and these things jumped to $120, then $150 and now they seem to be at around $200, bare minimum. They’ve been trying to match Hot Toys prices, I suppose.
However, prize figures haven’t seen that same type of trend. Prize figures, in many cases haven’t really gone up that much at all. Maybe by about ten dollars on average. There are tons of outliers though. The Ichiban Kuji line is roughly $40, compared to $25 for a regular figure. Some even go as high as $50 or $60, but that’s it. And that’s usually due to the size and scale of the figure.
Prize figures were a sub $20 purchase some 12 years ago. That varies, obviously, as I’ve illustrated. However, the quality on a lot of the stuff I’ve seen the past few years has grown leaps and bounds. Dare I say, it’s even comparable to what would have been a high-end anime figure less than ten years ago.
Collectors are getting bent over and taken to the bank. I’ve almost entirely stopped supporting Hot Toys and anime figure companies that continue to gouge. And toy lines like Mafex just keep going up. They’re raising prices every other quarter. How do you justify buying this stuff anymore? Especially if something breaks? With the amount of people out of work right now, you’d think stabilizing costs would be a priority, instead of jacking up rates even higher.