Cult collectibles from Barbie to Gaga

Barbie and Dr Who are perhaps not the first names that come to mind if you’re looking for things to collect for profit.

Barbie and Dr Who are perhaps not the first names that come to mind if you’re looking for things to collect for profit. They’re hardly van Gogh, but they have been commanding headline-grabbing prices at auction for long enough now to be interesting to serious investors.

The new collectibles say little about art — although they belong very much to the world of design. They are all about icons, dreams, personalities, popular culture and the fixations of youth. Toys, comics and gadgets from as recently as the 1980s and 1990s are changing hands for staggering amounts on eBay and speciality websites and, in some cases, in traditional auction houses. Items popular with American collectors can fetch particularly impressive prices: the comic Uncanny X-Men 1 cost 12¢ in 1962 and is today typically worth $3,000 to $10,000; and Incredible Hulk 181 (featuring, for the true cognoscenti, Wolverine’s first appearance) cost 25¢ in 1974 and is now worth as much as $7,500.

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So-called ‘vintage’ Barbie dolls made before 1972 can fetch astonishing prices, particularly in the US. A pristine doll that skipped off the production line in 1959 and originally cost $3 recently went for $47,500. Boringly, though, it’s primarily the dollies that were never played with and are still in their original packaging that raise the most money.

Collecting experts say that if you want to buy stuff that’s likely to be valuable in ten or 20 years’ time, you should invest in items that today’s teenagers want but can’t afford, such as iPhones. It’s the grown-ups of today who chase the must-haves of their youth: chopper bikes, for example, cost £35 in the 1970s — a lot for many parents in that recessionary decade — so teenagers who couldn’t afford one then are buying now, in early middle age.