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Originally Posted by kylactus

I don't want to sound too old or anything, but... 20$ ain't what it was when I was a kid!

Welcome to the concept of inflation. Everything costs more and is worth less.

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my point is that a collectors market for action figures didn't really emerge until the late 80's to early 90's, before that old toys were dirt cheep in cardboard boxes at the flea market, not commanding five times there retail price on ebay, or your LCS.

And in the late 80's/early 90's is right around the time when the kids who grew up in the 70's and 80's became financially independent enough to buy back their childhoods. Hence the reason I say that our generation is still in the majority when it comes to toy collecting.

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I think ignoring the collectors market would be foolish, as I have not seen an actual child looking at action figures in years, and children do not have the buying power that I, a middle aged man do. If you think a disinterested parent will spend as much on something as a serious collector you're nuts!

Oh, there's no doubt an adult collector can (and does) throw a ton of money into building a collection. That's not my point. Yes, you are able to spend far more than a kid or parent will on toys. The trick is that there are still far more of them than there are people like you and me.

(technically, I'd fit in both categories. I'm a father and a collector).

Using my earlier example, if Hasbro gets 80-85% of its profits from kids/parents and the remaining 15-20% from collectors, guess who they're going to cater to the most?

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Originally Posted by kylactus

my point, Tech moves fast, and gets very simple, I doubt anyone here is putting code into a DOS program right now.

Yes, tech advances quite fast these days. But capitalism still takes its sweet time. It takes much longer for the pricing to drop to affordable levels for general consumers than it does for the next advancement to come out. In fact, a lot of the time it seems the only reason the price does go down on existing tech is because something better came out. Cell phones are a great example of this.