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pastadude wrote:

Pure speculation, but I'd break it down in to 3 things:

1) Facebook. I've never been on it, but I understand that it seems the world rotates around it, and as a result, it's not too surprising that groups would gravitate in that direction. I'm sure there are many, MANY Super Powers groups on there.

2) Completion. I think many of us, over the years, have relatively completed our collections. Shy of something like a Shockwave prototype popping up to send shockwaves through the community (see what I did there?!), we've all mostly got what we were after... so there's less reason to trade/swap/sell excess.

3) Age/Competition. As the years go by, many people have locked down their collections, meaning that there's fewer and fewer examples of any given thing on the market at any time. It's more likely for things to get damaged/tossed/permanently collected, and thus there's less available - and when they do pop up, the rarity drives the price up. Every year that goes by makes it harder/more expensive to find one of the examples of whatever piece you may be after. It's very unlikely that anything "new" or "astonishing" to pop up... and even less likely for a large quantity of anything suddenly become available.

Let's take that Shockwave example a bit more seriously, since it's an easy one: Let's say there were, at some point, maybe 10 of them at Kenner. Super Powers production shuts down, so the wax (probably) gets melted down and reused, the molds (probably) get tossed, as do maybe 5 of the 10 existing examples. We're down to 50%. Now let's say 1 or 2 of those might've been kept by somebody at Kenner for sentimental seasons, and 2 or 3 of them might've been given to the kids of employees, or whomever else. 1 or 2 get destroyed as playthings, or just forgotten as the years go by. Now we're down to 2 or 3. But 1 of those 3 is probably in the private collection of somebody who sculpted it, or who molded it, and isn't likely to ever sell it - again, sentimental reasons. That means that there's 2 examples, 25 years later, that *might* still be bopping around... but more likely, they've ended up with a serious collector more than a decade ago who has no intention of EVER selling them. Things get lost, things get destroyed, and things get locked down. Add decades to that, and it makes for an increasingly challenging market to "sustain."

I'm sorry if I'm a bit nihilistic about the whole endeavor, but I think it has merit to analyze... I can't remember the last time I really "found" something I was looking for, and the stuff I was looking for wasn't even that expensive/rare/desirable! (Darkseid of the Moon on vinyl? The Burger King Darkseid Minicomic?) Though there was a great time when many people would share and showcase and help one another, I fear the golden age (Superman pun) of collecting Super Powers will have to wait until (gasp!) we start to die off, thus "unlocking" some of the vaults we've built up.

I'd hope I can spark some discussion, because maybe I'm wrong? But I think a lot of us are thinking the same thing these days.

-M

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