Market Manipulation – Anime of the Week

Coop, I’m glad we’re talking about this today. Mainly because we have an obligation to use our platform as responsible stewards of this space, but also because I’m Pokémon Last year I wrote a card to my fiancée’s grandmother, an experience that nearly broke my spirit and irreparably damaged my sense of nostalgic whimsy.

I did it! I went to collectible shows to find buyer information, called collectible content creators and dealers, let a stranger into my apartment so he could individually weigh each bag, and then drove an hour on a weekday to buy some bags back from him because he had the audacity to imply that he overpaid because he was the one who quoted the price my partner and I agreed to and asked for a refund.

Although Pokémon Brands, companies, and fandoms are too big to be entirely defined by one group of people, Pokémon TCG scammers are a scourge on the field, turning a children’s card game into an exercise in the Big Idiot Theory while forever tainting a medium that means so much to me.

While we can never get these greedy sociopaths out of the woods Pokémon TCG scene, I want to do my best to stop these sweaty losers from repeating the same script in the anime/manga collectibles community.

agree. This kind of tribalism is unproductive, and as anime becomes more popular and ubiquitous, the idea of ​​people becoming “tourists” like almost everyone under 50 has heard of it now is counterintuitive dragon ball, one piece, Sailor Moon and other headlines.

Now, the big thing people need to know about internet scammers suddenly (allegedly) spending tons of money on “graded” vintage comics is that the high-end collectibles scene has long been part of pump-and-dump and money-laundering scams. In short, the social popularity of an IP increases the presumed value of the “rare” goods associated with it, meaning that something like an old comic can be sold for a price someone is willing to pay while being worthless in tax terms. All it takes is someone famous enough to say a collectible is worth X amount of money, and suddenly the thing they’re buying is worth as much as a bigger fool would pay.

This has happened in The world of high-end art passed down from generation to generationbut recently popped up in video games before the pandemic A voice you can trust and expert Notice how weird it is to see a fairly common retro game like this super mario bros. Sold at auction for much more than it should have. Pokémon Cards and other TCGs are particularly susceptible to this kind of deception because the blind-box nature of how they are distributed creates more speculation, and now we’re seeing people trying to drive up the cost of fairly common comics for their own gain.

Look, I give up. Tik Tok The company shut down the server for half a day and then thanked the current administrator when it turned it back on, in a shameless attempt to curry favor with a would-be dictator. However, just a few years ago, I remember how put off I felt by those comic dealers showing off their collections that filled entire rooms of their houses. There is nothing enviable about this level of excess, and in my opinion it somewhat detracts from the works in this type of collection.

As someone who reads a lot of comics, having the “most” of something doesn’t give you any authority over it. Actual interaction with the community around that medium, or turning your familiarity with it into analysis or other types of experiences and insights, can help you grow as a person, which is far more important and valuable. Having a personal library full of comics may be the result of being actively involved in and caring deeply about the field, but it shouldn’t be anyone’s primary goal.

If I were a collector, I guess it would be video games. It’s not something I do with any intention though, it’s more a result of growing up with the medium. While anime and manga are primarily mediums I engage with online, since I can’t purchase them in my small hometown, there is a GameStop in a small town where I can easily obtain physical discs/cassettes. In the midst of this habit-forming opportunity and the fact that I have more friends who tend to borrow games than anime or manga, I’ve accidentally collected a few things over time.

I know this statement may feel contradictory, considering how often you and I promote anti-piracy sentiments in this column, but people need to engage with hobbies and art through a lens other than consumerism. I understand how cool it is to own a piece of history, or to have people compliment your collection, but a hobby is more than just a way to spend money, or in the case of the scammers pushing this column, a way to make a quick buck.

I’ve always found this an interesting contradiction in our community. As all of this media was imported into the United States, the availability of Japanese entertainment programs in the United States continued to increase, apparently as a result of the perceived profitability of distributing these productions in the United States. However, essentially all of the current public infrastructure created by anime fans was made at a time when this market barely existed, and those involved had to be in it for the love of the game.

The fact that the anime fan community has been around long before anyone could make a ton of money from it makes me wish we could stand up to these opportunistic scammers. Just about anyone in a position of authority in this space is acutely aware of the financial realities of this industry, and scams like this can only go so far without the backing of established and well-liked voices.

One thing that drives the “big fool” theory driving the NFT bubble and countless other worthless markets is that if no one else buys, those who try to get the project off the ground will end up being clowns. Anyone can put a comic that people have heard of in a plastic box, put any number on it to indicate its value, and claim it’s worth twenty or forty pounds, but it’s only really worth that much when someone writes them a check.

Everyone I know in the space is doing cooler things with the money, which makes me hope this will become a fad adjacent to the anime community for a minute, but will never reach the impressive and vibrant heights of the actual anime community.