FanMerch and Collectibles used to be the same and everybody called themselves a collector. Today things are more differentiated and items that were Collectibles are now design, home decor, outfits and day-to-day items – like this home office, Hello Kitty watch, football BBQ or the Hot Wheels 50th Anniversary Camaro!
One in seven Americans is still a collector (and a slightly smaller number in most of the rest of the world) but now almost everybody else has joined in the fun and buys these items and many more. Last year the licensing industry which makes money when these items get sold grew again by 4.5% to a total of $292 billion!
Quite a lot of this will eventually end in Collections. We wrote about How Big are the Collectible Markets? Are we really spending $200 billion every year on them?, a study that we undertook in Early 2016. We estimate that that market has grown by about 3% per year to just around $230 billion. Now some of this will have sold into a collection directly and is now double-counted. We estimate that about $20 billion is included in both numbers. That makes FanMerch an annual $500 billion market!
Interesting note that almost all the money invested so far in 2021 has gone into one small segment, into Trading Cards (read details here)!
Enter your email address if you like to receive notifications of new posts by email.
Email Address
Subscribe
hobbyDB is a participant in Amazon, eBay, Entertainment Earth, and other affiliate advertising programs designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to other websites. While we also accept consideration from Brands or Retailers (which is then clearly marked as Sponsored Content) all editorial opinions are our own.