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Eventually all collectibles will either decrease severely in value or increase severely in value, depending on the market.The problem with ponies right now is that the big market probably just passed us - most of the folks who grew up in the G1 era are somewhere in their late 20s / 30s / maybe 40s and may have less disposable incomes. I tend to think G1 will have this weird issue of not a lot of demand but a lot of value for at least a little whlie. G3's... give it another 10 or 20 years and we'll see, but I don't think they'll ever go as high as G1.G4 will burn quick - I think the prices are high now but it's not going to last. What happened with Beanie Babies is that everyone said they would be valuable and worth money in several years... meaning everyone bought them. Meaning there's still plenty to go around but no demand whatsoever. Hence why they're so inexpensive. G1 ponies had the advantage of no one thinking that in 20 years' time people would want to pay tons of money for a cute plastic horse.
No, I don't think Greek ponies and the like will ever devalue like Beanie Babies, although their prices may fluctuate a bit. Since the late 90s, when I started collecting, G1 values have increased across the board.G3s did devalue rather dramatically, but I think the key there is that lots of collectors wanted every single G3, so they bought them without feeling a connection to them. This made them easy to let go later. And since a lot of people were buying them to keep mint, this pushed down the value of a mint G3. I think they will rebound once more of the people who had them as little kids start collecting.As for G4, I think they will not be very valuable in the future. Partly because they release the Main Six characters a billion times, so there will be plenty of them to go around. Partly because when the show ends, as it will someday, I think a lot of the "brony" demographic will drift away, selling their figurines as they go.
Its an interesting thought...and I think to a certain extent it is something we have already seen with G3. A lot of people purchased and kept ponies from this gen in the expectation they would be worth more in the future but with the advent of G4 at the moment the market on them has bottomed to such an extend that sometimes selling MIB G3s for more than retail is impossible. I think G4 will suffer a similar fate when the generation comes to an end simply due to how much larger the collecting community is now than ever before - there are probably more MIB G4 Pinkies out there than any other pony in any previous generation! Yes, "collectables" will always only be worth what collectors are willing to pay and you need a large and thriving collecting community to keep prices high. However the pony collecting community has survived through a lack of new ponies [the bore 7??] so I think even if HB were to finish the line now the vast majority of us would still all be here logging on, selling/buying ponies and talking about random pony things. But I think as time passes because there are not as many of them about as there are later gens, G1s will probably pretty much hold value [or decrease a little] - they are still very much retro but they will get to vintage eventually. "Toy collectors" of any type of toy or manufacturer have been around as long as there have been toys and I suspect the same will continue! I dont think Beanies fit into the same category as they were very much a "fad" - MLP has never been that [ok maybe a little teeny bit with G4 but certainly not with the previous generations]. Beanies were produced in staggering quantities and so many people purchased them in the thinking that they would have future value that by the time the market levelled off to "core collectors" there were more Beanies than there was demand. The odd Beanie such as that linked above is an example of the few which were early enough or not released widely enough that people will still pay.