Did media attention affect prices on the "pony market"?

[Cottononi]

I'm not sure about how this was in other countries, but in Finland we started getting media attention to ponies around the time FiM was released and started to gain recognition due to Brony culture. Many magazines (online and regular ones) were writing articles how original MLP line was now a popular thing to collect. Some of these articles obviously mentioned how collectors were paying hundreds of dollars for a pony, but forgot to tell that these prices are only for the rarer/most wanted ponies, and not for your common Lemon Drops and Peachys.

Of course there is nothing wrong with people outside the community knowing the real worth of their old ponies when they decide to clean their garages & sell whatever toys were buried in there. What I'm getting at is that media created an image that finding any retro pony would make you instantly rich. People wouldn't do the research and soon online auctions would be filled with ponies starting at the 20$ mark, no matter how poor condition or common one, because they read how these are "valuable items" nowadays.

So I'm asking, was this phenomena existing before media picked up on this community or were people overpricing even before this?
(Also I'd like to note that I know prices go up over time, since less and less ponies are on the market now, but it's obvious that many ponies are priced ridiculously, multiple times what's usually said pony's price when selling from collector to other)

[gemini_pony]

I always think there's been people that think everything vintage is worth outrageous prices. I think for a while there was peak in people trying overprice them. I wonder if the toys that made us upcoming episode will do the same, as I know it did for GI joe stuff.

[Ponyfan]

I think there have always been sellers that think any G1 ponies, even those that are in bait condition are worth a small fortune. I was looking on Ebay the other day and saw one pony that was priced 3-4x higher than other copies of the same pony and I couldn't figure out why. There are also some sellers who think any horse toy is a MLP and try to get outrageous prices for their fakie.


I think media has sometimes made a certain pony more desirable and that drives up prices. Was it Princess Sparkle/Princess Amethyst that was on the OC and for a while her prices went up above the usual price because of that?


Ponyfan

[Strawberrysweets]

I noticed that in Norway and I see so many bundles with 3-5 ponies where maybe one or two is a common G1 and the rest is fakies and the price is 50+$.

[Nemesis]

I wonder if the toys that made us upcoming episode will do the same, as I know it did for GI joe stuff.

Did that episode really cause such a surge in GI Joe prices? I’m not terribly knowledgable about Joe pricing (I only have a few), but that’s a scary thought... Have the prices tapered back down yet?

[Taffeta]

The OC definitely hiked up Amethyst's price for a bit.

I think this can happen in the short term. The papers that do this here are our tabloids and I haven't seen one yet that did a good job or was accurate in any of the information it gave to readers. They play on the sensationalism of x pony being really sought after, and then people think all their ponies are the same.

UK tabloids are quite notorious for cutting corners on the truth and going for the sensation so I guess it's not surprising they do it for this as well.

Whether this has had a long term impact on prices, not sure. Perhaps the greater awareness of MLP due to FIM has had some impact, but if so, you'd expect that interest to be all skewed around the new reboot stuff, whereas it isn't. Some G4 stuff does get higher prices, it's true, but fans of that franchise are less toy-centric in general, so some of the higher prices end up being around other non-toy items instead.

It has also gone the other way though.

Ponies like Mimic were always a bit more expensive than the rest, and the MOC Mimic prices happened almost certainly because of a section of the fandom making out like no MOC Mimic had survived, so when one did appear it went for a stupid price (with folk thinking it was the only one in existence. Of course it isn't, there are quite a few, but the price hasn't dropped because of that standard).

But when I first came online in 1997ish, ponies not sold in the US had a huge currency. At that point there were still a lot of ponies the US didn't know about, it was always changing. So you'd have the first examples of some ponies to appear on ebay - Baby AJ sold for $300 back then. It was great for those few of us from Europe or the UK who were online then because it meant everyone wanted to trade for the ponies we had, to avoid the ebay prices as much as anything else.

Since now there are many more people from those areas online, prices have dropped to more reasonable levels for a lot of those ponies. So it's also about supply and demand as well. I think that may be a bigger impact than media hype, because as more people from other places come online and realise there are ponies not sold in their area, some of the US ponies also go up in price. And then there are domestic fans vying for the same ponies as well...and so the prices go up.

I think we as a community and our gradual behaviours and buying habits over 20 years or so has had a greater impact on prices. I think media has brief flurries of impact but not enough to really take root. You will always get the greedy people who think that something is rare and don't do the research. Maybe the one big change is just that now more of those people are online and know how to use Ebay. The moment everyone could list an item with their smartphone with a three word description in ten seconds opened up many sales with sellers doing zero research but wanting top dollar. (In case you didn't realise, I'm really not impressed by ebay's attempts to suppress the description or make it irrelevant/replaced by "see pics".)

[LadyMoondancer]

I think it can cause temporary spikes.

Like, Princess Sparkle shot up in price when there was a character on the show "The OC" who had her, and the writers used her Princess Sparkle and her boyfriend's toy horse (Captain Oats?) as a metaphor for their relationship. 

But in the long run it didn't matter, Princess Sparkle settled back to being about the same price as her setmates.

I think the main reasons ponies have gone up in price are:

1. Age.  This is the biggie.  In the 90s you couldn't go to a thrift store without tripping over ten ponies, but the 90s are gone.

2.  Online fees.  Every time eBay or Paypal raises their fees, the sellers raise their prices to avoid taking a loss.  If a pony is worth $5, maybe they need to price it at $7 to actually profit $5 off it.  Over time the perception of the buyers changes so that they now think of that pony as being worth $7, because that is what they are willing to pay for it, because literally every eBay seller has the pony listed at $7 in order to earn $5.

3.  eBay's Buy It Now.  When eBay only had auctions, the listing prices usually started low and then were set communally by competing bidders.  These days, most listings on eBay are BINs.  They last for 30 days and the seller chooses the price.  Obviously the seller is not going to choose the lowest possible price because that is just bad business sense.  You only need ONE person, over a 30 day period, to decide your item is worth your price.  So BINs skew towards high prices more than auctions did.

4.  Disposable income.  In the early days of the online fandom, most people were teenagers with limited income.  These days more collectors have a steady income.  If someone is making more money and working full time, maybe they feel it's worth it to drop an extra $10 or $15 on a really nice example of [pony name] instead of waiting for a cheaper, equally good condition one to show up.

[Galactica]

I do think that the FIM show drew in more collectors and demand for vintage MLPs-  not just the "bronies" but also the existence of the show reminded others who maybe loved MLP as a kid that the ponies still exist- and thanks to ebay they could have them back plus more...

I also agree with LadyMoondancer that the fact that it is really truly hard to find vintage MLPs at the thrift store these days- is playing a part.  It used to be in the late 90s and early 2000s I would be able to find a pony here there and occasionally a BAG of ponies (maybe mixed in with some other cute vintage toys).

But now, such a find is pretty rare and special.  To find any 1980s toys.  Some of it is the passage of time and some of it is that the thrift stores themselves are doing a better job of screening toys and selling them themselves on ebay (or say on shopgoodwill,com) - 

Also I think that there are a decent number of people who comb through thriftstores and the like for the specific purpose of reselling the stuff on ebay.  It's their job.  It has made it harder for the casual thriftstore shopper who doesn't get there when the doors open to ever find the "good stuff."

So that in turn drives up the price on ebay.

[banditpony]

I think media can cause a spike, but not necessarily one that is ever lasting.

Someone selling a bunch of old ponies for $$-- didn't do any research and have the mentality "old = $$$". And in the end, those items won't sell. *shrug*