General > Collector's Corner

Playmobil: a poor investment?

(1/5) > >>

Bolingbroke:
As some of you may know, Playmobil is only a part (albeit a sizeable one!) of my extensive toy collection. I started collecting toys as an adult around 15 years ago, when I finished my studies and became gainfully employed. It started slowly at first - you all know how it goes.

Eventually I ended up collecting dozens of toy lines from different intellectual properties. I guess the idea was always that eventually I’d own a big enough house to display everything. But it didn’t turn out that way: long story short and fast forward 15 years later, I started culling my collection.

Locally, at first. Then on vinted. Many of my action figures went first: Dragon Ball, Star Wars. Many of them had appreciated nicely since I had bought them, some of them doubling or tripling in price. I rarely sold anything at a loss. Then my Lego sets, many of them still in their sealed boxes. Those too were sold for double the initial price and more.

Now it’s the turn of my PM collection. Although I’ve always been quite focused with my PM collecting, buying only ‘historical’ sets, I still find I have way too many doubles and triples, or sets from production periods I no longer have an interest in (I tend to favour the mid-90s ‘Golden Age’). And here’s the thing: I’m looking up listings on ebay and vinted (including sold listings, of course), and I’m finding that prices have kept incredibly stable for the past decade or so, when I first started collecting Playmobil. Essentially, if I were to sell it, it would be at almost the same price I had bought it for originally, and that includes many sets that were/are quite sought after.

Why do you think that is? I guess part of it must be the fact that the adult PM collector market is tiny compared to other toy lines, since it is usually adult buyers who drive up the prices. I doubt it could simply be dismissed as an overabundance of PM toys: not sure that many more PM toys were produced compared to Lego etc.

Of course, one silver lining is that for a new collector, it is quite cheap to get a good collection going … at least compared to other toy lines!

Macruran:
They're certainly not a goldmine here in the States. Occasionally I delude myself into getting copies since "they'll be worth more" but apart from a couple key sets that hasn't really happened. I'd've thought they'd be worth more in Europe, where there's a large and established collectors market, but I guess not  :'(

Bolingbroke:
You guess right. And as I said, I’m not sure what the reason is except that the adult market is tiny. It could also be that - thankfully - PM has re-released some very sought after sets like the Steck houses in recent years, which has helped with supply.

I mean with Lego sets it’s quite normal to buy a 150 euro-ish set and flip it for double the price a mere two years later if it has been discontinued in the meantime, but with PM I was looking at sets like the classic castles (3666 etc) and they’re still quite cheap compared to other toys.

As I said, it’s great for new collectors if nothing else.

Tiermann:
It does seem to still follow the rule that what you have extra of hasn't gone up much, but whatever you still want goes for crazy high prices. At the moment trains are really high, with people asking hundreds for incomplete unboxed sets. Victorian houses are up there too. Some sets used to be available for years before being retired. Now nothing lasts longer than 2 years and many sets go away in one year. So more recent sets can go for higher prices if you can even find them.

Bolingbroke:
Were trains more expensive than normal sets originally? Such a pity they were never re-released, but then again I imagine train sets in general are extremely unfashionable among kids.

As for the Victorian theme, I agree. That one should be an evergreen!

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page