The "big 4"

[cstojano]

I have little to add except the rhetorical question of whether anything can become iconic anymore. Is anything a cultural phenomenon? Lost, Twilight (sorry), The Walking Dead, Hunger Games, Game of Thrones - there seems to be a new it thing every few years. Is TWD #1 so expensive because its the first appearance of Rick Grimes? I never thought of that way and many of the earlier keys seems to be based on that.

 

There are many things that are culturally relevant in the contemporary sense.

 

You're asking whether there will be any future nostalgic or emotional attachment down the road to anything contemporary today?

 

Sure, it just wont be something that is collected early on. It will generally catch people by surprise. Like cell phones and video games. Nobody thought about collecting old Atari consoles and brick cell phones....until it was too late to collect them.

 

It also needs to be something people spend a lot of time doing, and in this day and age when people have short attention spans the chances of something like that happening is lessened.

 

Agreed, I tend to think nostalgia is overplayed in the "what is collectible" question. Sure its important but it determines a smaller percentage of what I collect than one might expect. Perhaps I am different. I tend toward the things I wanted as a kid but never had as well as high quality original artwork within the comic/fantasy/sci-fi/pop culture genres. But you do see these same kinds of discussions on most collectible forums. The arguments seem to involve: 1) something about nostalgia, 2) something about how the old farts with money and attachment will have no one to sell to once they start to die, 3) younger generations lack attachments to material things, lack attention span, selfies and cell phones, etc.

[90sChild]

Nostalgia has a massive short-term impact on demand, look at Pokemon Go this summer. It drove up everything pokemon related including video games, cards, toys, etc. But it won't last until next summer, it probably won't even last through the winter.

When you talk about old people with money to spend, they are just a different version of that nostalgia, but it isn't temporary - it is a generational thing. This leads to long-term stability in the market. Especially when demand/supply remains nearly the same for decades at a time. Trying to figure out how a totally different generation of people will adopt it is anyone's guess. In terms of walking dead I do think it will eventually fade the same way the X-files, Lost, etc did. There will be something else that replaces it, which is 'new and shiny'. There will of course be the current generation who grew up with it that also remains.

 

edit; Ironically I am rewatching all of the X-files right now, and there's a quote in Season 3 Ep 1,

"Something lives only as long as the last person who remembers it" [ancient indian saying]