Quarantine Collectors

Half a year into the worldwide coronavirus pandemic many things have come to a screeching halt. From family gatherings and traditions to simply taking a stroll around your favorite shopping center, many seemingly trivial acts are no longer the same. One of the hobbies that has completely changed is collector culture. Collector culture refers to the hobby and past time of collecting everything from collectible figures to comic books. Before the pandemic, collector culture was as strong as ever. With the arrival of movies from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Star Wars franchise, hobbyists and collectors rejoiced in the amount of merchandise and memorabilia being produced. As a collector myself, I began to explore more franchises and considered traveling to neighboring towns to grow my collections.  

However, when the quarantine began, like many people, I stopped buying and collecting for favorite franchises. In a time of uncertainty, the last thing I wanted to think about was spending money for recreational purposes. This sentiment remained until recently. Businesses reached a point where they needed to continue doing business. This was especially true for small comic and collectible shops in Brownsville, Texas.  

One shop provides an insight into what it was really like at the forefront of such a massive movement – Kulture Shock Collectibles. The owner, Jesse Rosales, recently opened his comic and collectible shop and shared his experience with me. Rosales said that he has been collecting since the 1990s. Starting his collecting career in his sophomore year in high school, Rosales has deep rooted connections to the collector’s scene in Brownsville. Beginning with small shows Rosales said he turned his passion into a business in high school. Rosales has a deep understanding of the collecting game and has participated in shows and conventions all over Texas. He opened his first Kulture Shock Collectibles store in McAllen in October 2019. He opened a second location in Brownsville in June 2020. However, his Brownsville Kulture Shock’s grand opening was delayed because all non-essential businesses had to shut down. 

 For Rosales, this meant that from April to May, the shop was closed to in-store shopping. Having gone through ups and downs in the industry, Rosales is no stranger to trials and tribulations and he adapted. Kulture Shock and other collector shops took their business online. “We did a lot of eBay, a lot of Facebook groups”, Rosales includes. In the heat of the lock down, selling merchandise online and locally yielded positive results. Rosales stated that pockets of collectors around the Valley were supportive and willing to negotiate prices and patiently wait for shipping. This period of only online selling began to shift as more and more businesses shifted to curbside pick-up. With curbside pickup Kulture Shock was able to let collectors pick up “hot items” in a convenient and safe way. This would later change when businesses were allowed a limited number of customers.  

Although many businesses were able to adapt to these new conditions, Rosales mentions that there was indeed a period of “huge unknown” but the small boost in support for local business allowed for a temporary solution to the nationwide economic limbo. This boost would be a combination of a stimulus check and a brief economic relief period in the high of the quarantine.  

Rosales shared one interesting thing that he had never seen before during his time in the industry. When the government issued the Covid Relief checks to American families, it brought with it spikes in both local and national sales. This period when people received stimulus checks and began to receive unemployment led to a small boom in the collecting industry, as Rosales mentions, in the collecting industry. However, this grace period was short-lived.  

Businesses are starting to return to their previous state prior to the stimulus package. Despite that, demand is as high as ever as. This brings us to what Rosales mentions as a more “generational” shift in collecting.  As large companies are moving to online releases of collectibles and limited allocations on valuable merchandise, people from all ages and walks of life have something they can collect and come together for. In this modern age of collection, the quarantine has allowed more collectors to connect online with others from all around the world and continue to grow the forever evolving industry of collector culture.