The Adventures of Pat Pat Rocket & the Collectors Market

This is the Little Einsteins Pat Pat Rocket.
And it is a perfect example of how quickly a collectible market can change.

Pat Pat Rocket from Disney's Little Einsteins

As I write this it is the end of September 2013, I picked up the Pat Pat Rocket about a month ago. The day I bought it, I didn't know what it was? I thought it was a good toy I could sell in one of my Antique Mall booths, or put on eBay. I even thought it was neat enough that I might just add it to my personal collection. There was even some consideration put into repainting it as the Captain Cosmos Cruiser.

How would it look with Lighting Bolts and a Gun???

As with all the toys and collectibles I deal with, I put in the research. A toy is a lot harder to sell when you don't know what it is. With the manufacturing information printed on it's underbelly it didn't take long to find out what it was, and what it was going for. It did however prove to be an interesting example of what results the correct search terms could yield. In this case, in late August of 2013 The search "Little Einsteins Spaceship" yielded about 30 completed auctions that ended between $10 and $40. While the search "Little Einsteins Pat Pat Rocket" found about 150 listings, and brought the price up to the $30 to $150 range. And THAT was just for the loose ship with nothing else. If you wanted it complete with the 4 figures, you could pay up to $250.

That was a month ago . . . Times have changed.

Today, the same search finds over 1000 completed listings. Now they are not all for the same toy of course. The ship was made as a few different toys, and even appeared as a hat and a backpack. Never-the-less, a good portion of those 1000 plus listings were indeed this version of the Pat Pat Rocket in various degrees of completeness and condition. Considerably more than the 150 or so I was finding just one month ago.

So what happened? Why the change? Why did the market peak and flood in so short a time. For that matter why did it happen 4 years after the cartoon's original run ended?

One factor may have been a DVD release in June of 2013, the first in 3 years for the series. But what effect did it have on the market? Did seeing the DVD prompt parents to dig it out of their garage as something they simply wanted gone? Or was it the other way around? Did the DVD spark new interest and kids started screaming for toys again? Was it simply a coincidental rise in interest? Is it just the natural ebb and flow of the collectors market based on the age of the properties fans?

 

Could this have done it?
 

My gut tells me it was the DVD release. The DVD hit the market. That sparked interest from the kids. Parents set out to fill that demand. What little product was on the market suddenly shot up in value. Other Parents with older kids saw the prices skyrocket, and put their old toys up for sale. The market saturated. Demand fell back to normal levels. That seem's like the most likely explanation.

But is it the only explanation? Could age be a factor in toddler toys the same way it is in the action figure market? Though on a far more condensed scale? Could a 9 year old feel nostalgia for toys he played with at 4 the way a 27 year old yearns for the toys of his early teens? That doesn't seem likely, but that doesn't eliminate age as a factor does it? The other end of the age factor is that point when we discard the toys of our youth. Most toy collectors focus on the toys they had from about 12 to 16 years old. Somewhere in the 18 to 22 range we often purge those trappings of childhood, only to find we miss them by our late twenties. Perhaps that same cycle applies to a 4 year old? By age 8 they have moved on to more advanced toys, and those toddler toys are relegated to the next garage sale. Does that mean the 8 year old would want those toys back at 10? I don't think so, but the parents might? And that wave to purging would provide the opportunity for younger parents to buy those slightly out of date toys for their children. 

Hmmmm . . .
The cool Rocket Ship, or another Teddy Bear?
 

I suppose the idea I'm trying to get across is that there is always a point somewhere between the initial popularity of a toy, and it's nostalgic popularity years later where people are selling it, but no one is there to buy it. With most toy lines the nostalgia usually kicks in around 15 to 20 years after the original release, then begins to dwindled around 25 to 30 years. Which means that those first 10 years after a toy line ends, there's probably not going to be a lot of interest in it. But, as I mentioned above, the scale for toddler toys may be quite a bit shorter, simply because the parent's are more directly involved in the decision. Obviously the child influences a toy purchase at 4 years old, but how often do parent's simply buy the toy they like themselves, or the toy they thought they would like at that age. If that were not the case then the number of little girls that own a baseball glove would be far smaller. 

So what's the lesson we should take from this? The way I see it, there are 2 major lessons here. First, the collectible market is a volatile place. Factors that go into the value of an item can be wildly unpredictable, or remarkably steady. Recognizing those factors can be the key to success. Second, and more importantly, in today market one can no longer assume the research you've done in the past, is still valid. Doing 1 day of research is like looking into 1 window of a house and seeing a kitchen, and then assuming that every room of the house is a kitchen. Who know's? Maybe it IS a house full of kitchens, but that's unlikely. The point is that we only look once, we can't know if the market we see today is a steady one, or if it's currently trending up or down.

Sometimes information is only good for a few days. Other times you can rely on it for years to come.