Anime

Market Manipulation – This Week in Anime

Published

5 months ago

May 7, 2026

Coop and Lucas discuss the nature of greed-based “collectibles” and its impact on the anime and manga community.

The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.

Coop

You know how we occasionally look up and realize that the internet grifter hellscape has encroached on our neck of the woods, Lucas? Well, we’re doing that again today. A particularly petulant professional wrestler popped up in the news recently, bragging about how he’d nabbed a pair of key Shonen Jump issues and had them slabbed up.

Then, some guy who’s apparently relevant for running fast (but isn’t an Olympian or actual athlete) “ratio’d” said wrestler in an alleged backhanded attempt to raise the slabbed manga’s perceived value so they could allegedly collude on a pump-and-dump. We’re not mentioning the specific names of these people because it’ll just play into their nonsense—they want the attention. Geoff Thew and comics essayist Matt have gone deeper into the nasty specifics of this obvious grift, but we’re now finding ourselves in world where manga could become the next weird con-man scam—right alongside slabbed trading cards, VHS tapes, and copies of Kiss x sis on Blu-ray for some reason.

Lucas

Coop, I’m so glad we’re talking about this today. Mostly because it’s our obligation to use our platform to act as responsible stewards of this space, but also because I sold US$20,000 in Pokémon cards for my fiancée’s grandmother last year, and that experience nearly broke me psychologically and irreparably damaged my sense of nostalgic whimsy.

So you could say that you “psyducked around and found out”?

I did! I traveled to collectables conventions to source buyer information, cold called collectables content creators and resellers, let a strange man into my apartment so that he could weigh each pack individually, then drove an hour on a work day to buy some of the packs BACK from him after he had the gall to suggest that he overpaid when he was the one who made the offer that my partner and I agreed to and asked for a refund.

While the Pokémon brand, company, and fandom are too big to be entirely defined by one group of people, Pokémon TCG grifters are a blight upon this space and have turned a children’s card game into an exercise of the greater fool theory, while forever tainting a piece of media that’s deeply meaningful to me.

While we’re never going to be able to get these greedy sociopaths out of the Pokémon TCG scene, I wanna do everything in my power to keep these sweaty losers from running the same playbook in the anime/manga collectables community.

I’m right there with you. Addressing these topics is doubly important in our current “needy streamer overdose” of a world. Folks who’ve been around the block for a while know a thing or two about dealing with scalpers and con-artists, but that’s not always the case for people who are jumping into the hobby for the first time. Especially when one considers that anime and manga’s current run of mainstream dominance (and the accompanying audience) is still fairly new, having only bubbled up during the pandemic.

Oh, and while we’re here, let’s take the word “tourist” out of this discussion because I’ve seen it too much already. There’s so much gatekeep-y stink around that word, and pushing new people away from the hobby isn’t it, chief. Conflating new fans with grifters is just a recipe for unnecessary internet screaming, and we’ve got enough of that going around as it is.

Agreed. That kind of tribalism isn’t productive, and as anime has become more popular and ubiquitous, the idea of people being “tourists” is counterintuitive when, like, just about everyone under the age of 50 nowadays has heard of Dragon Ball, One Piece, Sailor Moon and other big titles.

Now, the big thing people need to know about internet grifters suddenly (supposedly) spending obscene amounts of money on “graded” vintage manga is that the high-end collectables scene has been equal parts a pump-and-dump and money laundering scam for a LONG time. The short of it is that the social popularity of an IP raises the hypothetical value of “rare” merchandise connected to it, meaning something like an old manga volume can both be sold for as much as someone is willing to pay for it while also being worthless for tax purposes. All it takes is one person famous enough saying that a collectable is worth X amount of money, and suddenly, a thing they bought is worth as much as a greater fool is willing to pay for it.

This has been happening in the world of high end art for generations, but recently cropped up in video games just before the pandemic when trusted voices and pundits noted how strange it was that fairly common retro games like Super Mario Bros were selling at auction for much more than what they should be. Pokémon cards and other TCGs were especially vulnerable to this grift as the blindbox nature of how they’re distributed creates even more speculation, and now we’re seeing people try to inflate the cost of fairly ubiquitous manga for their own gain.

That ubiquity makes the situation even more head-scratching—most titles can easily be found in bookstores, big box stores, and digitally. The slabbing and “we’ve got the most” nonsense is just another way to build up “value” to fleece people who don’t know better. And if any specific titles turn into a rat race, there’s always your friend and mine, “limit one item per customer.” Some Japanese retailers have allegedly turned to quizzing potential buyers before letting them purchase Pokémon cards, but that solution can be rather repellent to folks who get into a hobby on a whim. A whim is more or less how I got into Beyblade X a while back.

But there’s a related social media trend that ties into this topic—one I’ve been keeping tabs on over the past couple of years. It seems that a good handful of folks are hunting down certain items solely for their perceived financial value. Not because they’re a huge fan of a title, are interested in it, or just want it, but rather, a potential cash out. It’s as if a growing number of folks see their collections as a measuring stick for their wealth and success—something Chris mentioned to me while talking about his recent TFCon excursion. For example, I didn’t hunt down the entire Raijin Comics run of Slam Dunk because the latter volumes are usually expensive. I did it because I love the series, and I’m a freak who likes to compare approaches in localization.

On a similar note, I’ve come across quite a few manga collection and haul videos that focus squarely on the money aspect of it. These videos often feature titles like “US$10,000 Manga Collection” and “US$1,000 Manga Haul”, so it’s clear that the emphasis isn’t really on the titles or the joy of collecting itself. Again, it’s about the money and having “the most” of something. A video with cold, hard numbers makes perfect sense for insurance purposes, but it’s unnecessary otherwise.

Listen, I bailed on TikTok after the company flipped its servers off for half a day and then thanked the current admin when they flipped them back on in a shameless attempt to curry favor with a wannabe autocrat. However, even just a couple of years ago, I remember how put off I was by the manga tokers showing off their collections that filled entire rooms of their house. There’s nothing enviable about that level of excess, and it kind of cheapens the work in that kind of collection in my eyes.

© 2018 by Tatsuki Fujimoto/SHUEISHA Inc.

As someone who has read A LOT of manga, having “the most” of something doesn’t make you any kind of authority on it. It’s way more important and rewarding to actually engage with the community around this media, or turn your familiarity with it into analysis or other kinds of experiences and insights that can help you grow as a person. Having a personal library filled with manga can be a consequence of being active in and caring deeply about this space, but it shouldn’t be anyone’s principal goal.

This applies more to anime Blu-rays than it does manga in my case, but I’m a big fan of trimming my collection hedges from time to time. I keep what I truly love or appreciate, and say goodbye to anything that no longer sparks joy. And if I really want to reacquire something, it’ll be around. For reference, these were some hard-learned lessons from my Transformers collecting days as a teen in the late aughts.

If I’m a collector of anything, I think it’s video games. Though that’s not really a thing I’m doing with any kind of intention, and more a consequence of how I grew up with the medium. While anime and manga were largely mediums I got into through the internet, as there was no way for me to purchase either in my incredibly small hometown, there was a GameStop one town over, and it was fairly easy for me to get physical discs/cartridges there. Between that habit-forming opportunity and me having WAY more friends inclined to borrow a game than anime or manga, I accidentally ended up with a bit of a collection over time.

I know this statement might come across as contradictory, considering how often you and I preach anti-piracy sentiments in this column, but folks need to engage with hobbies and art through a lens other than consumerism. I know how cool it can be to own a piece of history or how good it can feel to have people praise your collection, but hobbies need to be more than just a way to spend your money or, in the case of the grifters who motivated this column, a way to make a quick buck.

Indulging in a hobby could mean joining a community, making lifelong friends, or potentially backing into a life-changing opportunity. Contrary to popular belief, money can’t buy you any of that.

That’s a contradiction that I’ve always found funny in our community. With all of this media being imported to us in the US, the growing availability of Japanese entertainment here is a clear consequence of people thinking it’s profitable to release these works here. However, basically all of the communal infrastructure that the current anime fandom is built on was made back when this market was nearly nonexistent, and those involved had to be in this space for the love of the game.

The fact that the anime fan community existed well before anyone could make big bucks off of it makes me hopeful that we can resist these opportunistic grifters. Just about anyone in a position of authority in this space is acutely aware of this industry’s financial realities, and a scam like this can only go so far without buy-in from established and beloved voices.

And you know what, I’m not seeing any of those folks putting in with this wretched lot. This is most assuredly a situation that we’ll have to keep an eye on, but I have a feeling that the wrestler, wannabe Sonic the Hedgehog, and their ilk have no real grasp of the industry they’re stepping into. Have fun with your slabbed pieces of crumby newsprint that were designed to be tossed aside after reading, boys.

They’ll never know how good this week’s chapter was.

The thing about the greater fool theory that powered the NFT bubble and countless other meritless markets is that, if no one else is buying, the people who tried to get this off the ground end up as the clowns. Anyone can put a manga that people have heard of in a plastic case, slap an arbitrary number on it to say that it’s valuable, and then claim it’s worth something like twenty or forty grand, but it’s only actually worth that much once someone cuts them a check.

Everyone I know in this space with that kind of money to burn is doing WAY cooler stuff with it, which makes me hopeful that this is going to be a fad adjacent to the anime community for a minute, but never reach the impressive and vibrant heights of the actual anime community.

They’re never climbing that summit. Greed rarely stands a chance against those who do it for the love of the game.

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Market Manipulation – This Week in Anime

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