I was not the biggest watcher of anime before the pandemic. But after finding myself with so much time to fill, I dove into the libraries of some streaming services and really became a big fan of quite a few shows. Unfortunately, I ran into the anime merch problem: If it is not an evergreen IP like Dragon Ball, Naruto, or One Piece, or a New Hotness IP, like MHA, Jujutsu Kaisen, Demon Slayer, it is just hard to find merch for slightly older series.
Which is why, one of the things I am most excited to do is to scour resale shops for merch of my favorite IPs. I probably won’t go nuts, after all it’s hard to get a $200 statue back to the U.S. in one piece. But it will be great to see if I can find something small from a handful of anime that have not received much attention in a couple of years. Since it’s about the quest, not the treasure, even if I come up empty-handed, I know I will have had a good time exploring all the resale shops.