Collectibles vs the stock market: 25-year scoreboard

Ever read a headline about someone selling a mint-condition first edition Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone or a Charizard for more than the price of a Ferrari and thought, "Maybe I should get into collectibles... just in case?"

It's tempting to imagine that a cheeky little diversifier for your portfolio – whether that be vintage toys, trading cards, or comic books – could one day make you rich.

In recent years, there's been hype around everything from Labubu designer dolls to NFTs of cartoon apes selling for eye-watering sums.

Whilst nobody can say where today’s collectibles will end up, casting an eye back to the year 2000 – and taking a quick look at some of today’s most-hyped treasures – might offer a few insights for anyone wondering if nostalgia really pays off.

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The flux capacitor portfolio

Picture this: it's the year 2000 and you've got £500 burning a hole in your pocket.

Instead of investing in an index tracker, you decide to splurge on pop-culture fads and "future collectibles" of the new millennium.

Fast forward to 2025: how did that decision pan out?

Let's explore two alternate realities:

1. You picked all the winners. With supernatural foresight, you spent your £500 on the right assortment of toys and trinkets that became gold dust for collectors. Think prized Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, rare first-edition books, limited-run football shirts, etc. In this case, you trounce the suits with their index trackers.
2. You picked the wrong stuff. You sunk your cash into the turn-of-the-millennium hypes that didn't stand the test of time: Furbies, Beanie Babies, Spice Girls dolls, Tamagotchis, and the like. This basket of "hot" collectibles would just accumulate dust in the loft and eventually be offloaded for a few quid at a car boot sale.

Let's zoom in on each scenario and calculate the returns.

Jackpot: if you'd bought the right collectibles in 2000

In the fantasy scenario where you chose only the biggest winners, a £500 spend in 2000 could have netted you a 60x return.

To put that into perspective, this dream basket would have outperformed a simple S&P 500 index fund with dividends reinvested over the same period by a factor of 10.

The table below shows an ideal "winner's basket" of items you could have snagged in 2000 and their estimated values today (assuming they were kept in pristine condition).

We've also worked out what each item would have cost in today's money using the Bank of England inflation calculator, so you can see the real profit you'd have made accounting for a quarter of a century of price rises.

Item (bought in 2000–01)	Cost (2000–01)	Inflation-adjusted cost (2025)	Value in 2025	Inflation-adjusted loss/gain (approx)
1st Edition Pokémon Base Set Booster Pack (sealed)	£3	£5.75	~£2,000–£5,000	+£4,994
Yu-Gi-Oh! “Legend of Blue Eyes White Dragon” Booster Pack (sealed)	£3	£5.75	~£200–£350	+£344
Harry Potter 1st-print Goblet of Fire (good condition)	£15	£28.76	~£1,000	+£971
Pokémon Red (Game Boy game, UK sealed PAL)	£30	£57.51	~£2,500 (sealed)	+£2,442
Final Fantasy VII (PS1 game, sealed copy)	£30	£57.51	~£250–£300 (sealed)	+£242
LEGO Star Wars 7140 X-Wing Fighter (sealed set)	£30	£57.51	~£220	+£162
England 1999–01 home (unworn)	£40	£76.68	~£350 (resale value)	+£273
Apple iPod 1st Generation (sealed, 2001)	£300	£575.12	~£22,000 (recent auction)	+£21,400
Tamagotchi Digital Pet (1997–2000 model) (unused)	~£15	£28.76	~£50–£100	+£71
Original Series Beyblades	~£10	£19.17	~£60–£600	+£580
TOTALS	~£500	~£855	~£30,000	~£29,145 gain

One slight cheat: the iPod didn't arrive until late 2001, but it's too good a comparison to leave out.

This dream portfolio would have left major stock indexes in the dust.

• Harry Potter first-edition book: The holy grail for Potterheads is the 1997 first print run of The Philosopher's Stone, with only 500 copies ever printed. These have gone for as much as £50,000 at recent auctions. But our thought experiment takes us back to the year 2000, at which time those were already collectors' items trading at hefty prices. We could, however, have quite easily got our hands on a first-edition copy of The Goblet of Fire, released on 8 July that year. Those copies sell for around £1,000 currently, which would be a 100x return on its RRP.
• Sealed Pokémon booster packs: Back in 1999, sealed Pokémon Base Set booster packs cost only a few quid at newsagents. Today, however, nostalgic millennials are willing to pay thousands of pounds for an unopened pack. It may seem absurd to pay that much for a stack of children's playing cards – but if you are lucky enough to pull a Charizard (an orange, dragon-type Pokémon for the uninitiated), the payoff can be enormous: rare Charizard cards in mint condition can fetch hundreds of thousands of pounds at auction.
• Apple iPod 1st Generation (sealed): Early tech can become collectable too. The original Apple iPod (2001) cost £299, which was a splurge at the time. Used iPods aren't worth much now, but a sealed, unopened first-generation iPod sold for £22,000 at auction in 2023 – a roughly 75x return.

Now let's look at the alternate reality where we came back from the turn of the millennium with collectibles that aged like milk.

Bust: if you'd bought the wrong collectibles in 2000

The loser's basket is filled with items that, at the time, arguably seemed just as trendy and promising – yet 25 years later auction houses and hobby sites regard them with a tepid indifference.

If you'd spread your £500 across the items in this list, you'd be looking at pretty dismal returns.

Again, we've calculated the real loss, adjusted for inflation.

Item (bought in 2000)	Cost (2000)	Inflation-adjusted cost (2025)	Value in 2025	Inflation-adjusted loss/gain (approx)
10 x Furbys (1998–2000, original Tiger Electronics)	~£300	~£575	~£300	-£275
10 x Ty Beanie Babies	~£100	~£191.71	£100 (common ones)	-£91.71
Spice Girls Doll (1997 merchandise)	~£15 each	~£28.76 each	~£30 (if boxed mint)	+£1.25
50 x Pokémon Tazos/Pogs (free in Walkers crisps)	~£5	~£9.59	~£1	-£8.59
Star Wars Ep. I Action Figure (1999)	~£10–£15	~£19.17-£28.76	~£15	-£13.76
“Millennium” Commemorative £5 Coin (2000) (uncirculated)	~£10–£20 (bought second-hand)	~£19.17-£38.34	£13	+£3.41
WWF Wrestling T-Shirt (late ’90s Attitude Era)	~£20	~£38.34	~£35 (if common design)	-£3.35
Britney Spears Poster (2000 pop merchandise)	~£15	~28.76	~£35	+£6.24
TOTALS	~£500	~£940	~£580	~£360 loss

This sad assortment illustrates the harsh truth: many fad collectibles just don't hold their value. Prices vary, and there's always the chance you'll find someone gullible or fanatical enough to overpay, but chances are that you'd have a difficult time just recouping your original spend on this haul.

After 25 years, this basket results in a massive loss once you factor in inflation, let alone storage space, and most importantly the opportunity cost – you could have turned that £500 into ~£3,000 just by leaving it in an S&P 500 tracker fund over the same period.

And one more thing to keep in mind: at least in these examples, you could find a buyer – even if it was only for a few pounds. But in reality, plenty of failed collectibles are so unwanted that you’d struggle to sell them at any price.

For a lot of the worst flops, the true value isn’t just low, it’s literally nothing, because nobody’s even willing to take them off your hands.

A few observations from the loser's basket:

• Furbies: the animatronic furball was a Christmas must-have in 1998, but with 40 million of them churned out worldwide between 1998–2001, even pristine boxed examples aren't scarce enough to fetch bids that deliver anything close to an inflation-beating return on the imaginary £300 we sank into them in this thought experiment.

Random fact: the American National Security Agency once deemed Furbies dangerous enough to ban them from its offices, fearing they might overhear and repeat State secrets – because the toys gradually swapped "Furbish" for English, creating the illusion they were learning from people. In reality, it was just a pre-programmed progression in their babbling. This message has been approved by the Furbish Spy Association.

• Beanie Babies: Perhaps the most infamous collectibles bubble. In the late '90s people truly believed their £5 Princess Diana bear or Britannia the bear would be worth thousands. In reality, the vast majority go for very cheap prices even in mint condition. You'd need an extremely rare variant to fetch serious money, the kind that would have been hard to get your hands on even back in the day (like the royal-blue version of Peanut the Elephant or "Fine-Mane" Derby).
• Pogs/Tazos: This playground craze died fast. Most '90s Pogs are basically worthless now, though at least collectors of the Walkers crisp promos got a salty snack out of the deal.
• Millennium commemoratives: The turn of the millennium had everyone producing souvenir coins, plates, magazines – you name it. A quarter of a century later, and the market is still oversaturated with around 2.75 million £5 Millennium Crown coins minted. Not only did the coin fail to significantly climb above its face value, it's also too shiny and guilt-inducing to casually hand over at the pub for a pint.

Collectibles vs stocks vs savings: which came out on top?

Let's take a look at exactly how each basket of our collectibles performed compared to a £500 investment in the S&P 500, and also compared to leaving the cash untouched in your bank account.

For the stock market, we've used a historical returns calculator, and for bank savings, we've assumed an average 3.5% return calculated using our handy compound interest calculator.

As you can see, the results are dramatic: £500 in the winners’ basket of collectibles could have turned into £30,000, while picking the wrong fads would have left you with just £580 – not even enough to beat inflation. The same amount in an S&P 500 tracker grew to £3,396, and even a steady 3.5% in the bank only got you to £1,181.

In short: pick the right collectible and you’d have outpaced the markets by miles, but get it wrong, and even leaving it in the bank was the safer bet. But the difficulty in spotting the right collectibles? Well, we'll get to that shortly.

From Charmander to chargeable gains

Unlike investments held inside a tax wrapper like an ISA or a SIPP, collectibles sold at a profit can create tax obligations.

Collectibles count as "chattels" in tax terminology – that’s just HMRC’s word for personal possessions you can move around, like toys, antiques, or art. If you sell a chattel for more than £6,000, you may face Capital Gains Tax.

Sell a booster pack for two grand? You're likely safe. Shift a sealed iPod for £22,000? That's a taxable gain, and unless you've still got a spare annual allowance lying around, the taxman will share in your good fortune.

It gets murkier if you make a habit of it. If you dabble too much in buying and selling, HMRC could decide you're trading, in which case it's income tax instead of CGT.

Will today's collectibles be worth anything in the future?

So, will today’s “must-have” collectibles end up paying for tomorrow’s house deposit, or just gather dust in the attic next to the Furbys?

The truth is, nobody can say for certain – which is exactly what makes the world of collectibles so fascinating (and risky).

Here are a few of the things people are speculating on today, and a reality check on whether they’re likely to be tomorrow’s treasures, or just the next wave of “remember those?” curiosities.

• Jellycats: The beloved UK plush toy brand, “retires” a selection of its cuddly animals every year, quietly turning some into sought-after collectibles. While most are destined for nursery shelves, certain rare models have become cult favourites among adult collectors – some now changing hands for £350, with the rarest selling for upwards of £1,200. Whether people will still look back fondly on Bashful Bunnies or Amuseable Avocados in 20 years, though, is anyone’s guess. 
• Coins: Every year, the Royal Mint releases new designs of its Britannia coins, many in strictly limited numbers. For example, only 10,000 of the 2023 “King Charles with crown” Britannias were minted, instantly making them a target for collectors. Could these turn out to be a goldmine in the future? Possibly – but as our millennium £5 coin experiment showed, even the most sought-after commemorative coins can deliver only a modest gain. The true value is always in the demand, not just the mintage.
• Funko Pop figures: Funko Pops are stylised vinyl figures of pop-culture icons, superheroes, musicians, and more. Most are mass-produced and sold everywhere from comic shops to supermarkets. But a handful – convention exclusives, limited “chase” variants, or misprints – are made in much smaller numbers. That’s where the market gets a bit wild: one rare Funko Pop recently sold for $2,700 on eBay. Still, history offers a cautionary tale: remember Star Wars action figures? Millions were made, and only a lucky few became truly valuable. 
• Labubu dolls: The latest designer toy craze – quirky, wide-eyed creatures released in limited-edition “blind box” runs. The rarest Labubus can sell for £350 or more, as collectors scramble to complete their sets. But as the market floods with new releases, experts are already warning that values could fall sharply in the next five or six years. There’s another pitfall too: Labubus have become the UK’s most counterfeited toy, with nine out of 10 fake toys seized at UK borders last year being Labubus dolls. So, buy with care.
• Lego sets: Certain Lego sets – especially rare or retired ones – are among the most reliably valuable modern collectibles. A used “Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon” set can easily sell for hundreds of pounds, while rare, unopened sets often fetch thousands. Even some newly released sets, like the Brick Cross Train Station, are tipped by Lego investors for future gains. Analysts predict an average annual growth rate of around 5% for top-tier sets. But as with everything else, picking the next winner is tough. Sometimes the bricks pay off, sometimes they’re just… bricks.

Trash or treasure?

A big reason why people think today’s toys might be tomorrow’s treasure is what’s known as the nostalgia cycle: the idea that what’s popular today will eventually be looked back on with rose-tinted glasses, and in 20 or 30 years, everyone will want a piece of their youth again – just look at today’s teenagers raiding Urban Outfitters for baggy jeans and polaroid cameras.

Of course, just being old isn’t enough.

For a collectible to really hold (or grow) in value, it usually needs two things:

• Rarity: There just aren’t many left in existence – either because few were made, or most were lost, binned, or broken over time. Good luck finding a pristine 1989 Game Boy. But you can get a Beanie Baby by the sackful.
• Enduring appeal: People still have to want it decades later. This is where things get dicey. What seems iconic now can be completely forgotten tomorrow – just ask anyone who’s tried to flog a minidisc player on eBay.

In reality, predicting which pop-culture fads will boom or bust is a lottery.

For every Charizard or first-edition Harry Potter book that turned into gold, there are countless Digimon and Polly Pockets that end up being effectively worthless – and make you look incredibly strange as you hoard them.

There's also the added complication of keeping the items in pristine condition – never using them, never enjoying them, and hoping they don't end up getting accidentally stood on or soaked by condensation or a burst pipe over their decades-long exile in the basement.

After all, a pristine first-edition Pokémon card is only valuable if it wasn't handled with sticky fingers, or traded away on a strictly "no swaps back" basis for a Beyblade when you were in year three (I won't forgive and I won't forget, Toby).

And the likelihood is that you'd need to keep hold of hundreds of potential collectibles, in mint condition, just in the hope that one is worth something in future – with no guarantee it will cover the costs of acquiring and holding onto the losers.

There are some categories where the odds are stacked in your favour: fine art, classic cars, vintage wines, even rare fossils – items with built-in rarity and a proven track record of long-term demand. 

These are the “blue chips” of the collectibles world.

Of course, the catch is that they usually come with a hefty price tag from the start, and the risk for greater losses increases. The more likely something is to hold its value, the more you’ll have to pay for a ticket to the game in the first place.

So, are collectibles a financial strategy worth considering?

For most people, the answer is no – at least not with money you can't afford to tie up or possibly lose.

You also need to consider the opportunity cost of the time put into researching and bidding on the items before justifying it on purely financial grounds. Of course, if you trawl eBay simply for the thrill of the hunt, then more power to you.

Unless you have a crystal ball, the most likely outcome is you'll end up with a loft full of clutter that collects dust rather than dividends.

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