STARWARS ACTION FIGURES The Unofficial Collector's Guide to Star Wars Action Figures

Collecting Modern Star Wars Figures – Is There Value In It?

You may have noticed if you’ve been in a comic store or Toys’R'Us within the last few years that there are a staggering number of modern Star Wars toys avilable for potential collectors to spend their cash on. One question I’ve been asked multiple times though is whether or not there is actually value in doing so. Afterall, so the question normally goes, you can go out and pick up these figures in mint condition, shove them away somewhere and in 20 years reap the rewards of having mint condition action figures and vehicles in original packaging. Star Wars will probably be popular forever, so in theory, there should be buyers and collectors looking for them then just like there are people now looking for the originals. Right?

Not quite. In fact, it may be downright wrong and for one major reason. Supply.

I’ve mentioned before what makes original Star Wars action figures worth money, and it’s supply. Rarity. Rarity drives price. The less there is of something, the more it’s worth. It’s the same with just about anything that can be bought and sold. If there is a shortage of something, the people who want it will pay a premium. So how does that apply to action figures and toys? Easy.

When you were a kid and you got your Luke Skywalker action figure after seeing Star Wars on the big screen in the 70s, did you run up to your room and put it in a humidity controlled box for safe keeping so that you could pull it out in thirty years in the same condition it was in then? Of course not! You tore that thing open and wore it out faster than you can spell R2-D2. Afterall, it’s a TOY and that’s what toys are for, amusing children, NOT collecting for sale in the future at a profit! At least that’s how it was then! The people who did put their toys away in the original packages, for whatever reason it was, made a pretty penny! The figure that cost 1.99 in 1978 is now likely worth many hundreds of dollars, or possibly thousands, but the number of people who actually did that was tiny. Instead, the vast majority of toys were opened, played with, smashed and scraped. That’s why now loose figures are far more common than carded figures, and loose figures with noticeable wear are far more common than loose figures in mint condition. Because of this, a vintage carded figure in very good condition is something very rare today, and the price reflects that,

Unfortunately these days it doesn’t work that way. Toys, well some toys, aren’t a kids game anymore, they’re a huge secondary market dominated by collectors. Now when a figure hits the market, if there’s even a hint of evidence that it’s a lower production run or has the potential to be rare, collectors and shop owners will rush the toy stores and hoard them all up, most kids won’t ever even see one. Collectors will buy up all figures though, regardless of potential rarity, and store them away, hoping to one day make a penny or two off of them. The problem with this is that this new attitude towards collecting toys is self-destructive to their market value. In 20 years there will be so many of todays figures floating around in mint condition and mint packaging that the value will be little more than what the figures cost at the toy store to begin with.

The exact same trend happened with sports cards. Up until the mid-80s, people didn’t collect sports cards as an industry. Then when the price of older cards started to increase, collectors bought up everything. Mint condition cards became worthless because they were everywhere. It took the card companies introducing extremely limited run cards to push the prices back up. Don’t believe me? Pick up any beckett and look at the value of rookie cards of the star players. From the 50’s through to the mid 80’s, you’ll see significant prices in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. From about 1989 through 1995, you’ll see almost NO cards of serious value, in fact many stars rookie cards from that era can be had for a dollar or less. Then in the late 90’s and the 2000s the prices start to go up, but only for exceptionally rare cards that were intentionally issued in scarce numbers.

The same thing is currently happening with toys, and anyone who think that 20 years down the road their carded figures will enjoy prices similar to the prices vintage figures enjoy now are set to be sorely dissapointed, much like the guys who had hundreds of Donruss Ken Griffy Jr. rookies and Score Eric Lindros rookies.

It’s all just simple economics. A matter of supply and demand.