The collectible market is irrational. It is all about trends.
Just to mention an example.. Beatles memorabilia. There is officially licensed vintage clothing made in the 60s as in hats, shirts etc, some of which the Beatles themselves promoted which does not fetch anywhere near what modern stuff gets you even when in completely brand new condition, but worn out t-shirts from the 90s from certain music groups is somehow hot stuff fetching high dollar amounts even though you can find them all day long on ebay.
I have a feeling that this example in itself says the most about the collectible market.. when its fanbase grows older then a price drop will follow. Other examples of this would be cars.. most collectors are into somewhat modern high-performance cars while negletcing historical pieces that are a thousandfold more rare and significant.
Another example i can mention is pins.. back in the early 90s before the winter olympics there was this crazy pins hype in Norway.. people went nuts, official price lists and everything, several companies dedicated solely to the distribution of pins etc.. some pins fetching thousands of dollars yet today you can fairly easy pick up the same pins for less than $100 on a regular basis. The common ones you can get for around 20 cents a piece, back in the day the same pins would have been around $4 to $10, take inflation into account and it looks even worse. I bought a bunch of them on auction recently because why not.. it is not as if there is a danger of them going down more in value.
Some things seem to be in a bubble while true gems are being ignored. I think that the boom we see with certain modern collectibles will crash hard. Pokemon cards, sports cards, magic the gathering, funko pop plastic figurines etc.. there is just too much of it and they pump out new stuff every day and surely with the economic conditions it will grind to a halt, probably in a spectacular fashion where every speculator out there suddenly wants to unload.
