So this past Saturday I went to Wondercon, mostly on a whim and because I was bored. Among the many things competing for the Nerd/Otaku/Fanboy/Fangirl dollar were these high-end collectible figures depicting Mugen from the anime series Samurai Champloo.
(For those of you not aware of this series, it’s an oddly cool mix of samurai stories set way back when, combined with a really great hip hop soundtrack. The story is interesting and there’s not a lot of that wide eyes bullsh*t fanservice crap I can’t stand in most anime. Go watch some and you’ll see what I mean).
Anyway, so they had these pricey, very nicely crafted “collectible figures” with movable eyes, detailing that was to the extreme, and so on. They were selling for $125, I think, a discount off the normal price.
However, after talking to the guy at the booth, I realized that this could be an actual investment. He noted that the run of these “Mugen” figures were limited to 500, with no chance of them ever coming out again. I made some comment about how I should buy some and put ’em in a safe and he said “Hey – that’s no joke. Buy two and we’ll cut the price some more, put ’em in a safe, and in about 2-4 years you could ebay them for at LEAST $500 a piece, if not more.”
Now, that’s assuming a lot, but I’ve met some of these collector types and they can get pretty competitive over something they really want. With the fact that there are only $500 of these worldwide, it’s forseeable one could make 4x-6x their money back in a few years.
Figure it this way – anyone who got a crippling ARM mortgage and bought some big McMansion with a toy cave isn’t faring too well on that investment. But anyone buying a few collectible toys and keeping them in the box for a few years will probably do a lot better!