People are turning their passion for collectible items into profitable projects, according to a new report by online marketplace eBay.
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The most popular items sold by people surveyed by eBay include coins, LEGO sets, toys and sneakers.
Some of these products have been selling for eye-watering sums of money. A sealed box of Pokemon cards sold for $37,000 while a LEGO set has fetched more than $13,000.
One person familiar with the collectible landscape is Victorian banker and father of two Faiyaz Aslam.
Mr Aslam has been collecting LEGO for three and a half years and has amassed more than 1200 sets.
It all started when he received a couple of small boxes for his 40th birthday, and his passion for collecting has grown ever since.
Mr Aslam says he has spent about $70,000 on LEGO and says the estimated total value of his collection is now more than $100,000.
He told ACM he considered himself a collector rather than someone who sought to profit from a hobby, but that didn't mean there wasn't money to be made.
Mr Aslam said LEGO kept its value regardless of how old or disorganised some collections might be.
That was because of the sturdy and reusable nature of the product.
"The one thing I will say about LEGO, that I don't know of any other commodity like this, is it doesn't matter whether it's brand new or second hand, every single LEGO piece ... always has some dollar value," he said.
"It could be the tiniest piece, it could be second-hand, it could be worth a cent, it just won't be worth zero."
While basic pieces were only worth small sums of money, there were definitely high-end sets that were attractive to collectors, he said.
Mr Aslam's favourite piece, a 2017 Lewis Hamilton Formula One set, was bought for a little over $1,000.
He said certain items had particular value to collectors, and he has seen single LEGO figures sell for as much as $3,000 to $5,000 on eBay.
"There'll be people sitting at home, on all sorts of things, but particularly LEGO, they'll be sitting on some old sets and they don't realise what they're worth," he said.
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"There will be people that have really old sets and they just won't appreciate what some of those things might be worth to somebody like myself who loves LEGO, and I might be just looking for that old nostalgic piece that would just look great on the shelf."
EBay Australia's head of sneakers and collectibles Alaister Low said many people could be unaware of the value of their items.
"Definitely people at home, they should have a look at the cupboards and see what's lying around because you never know," he said.
Ebay's state of collectibles report surveyed a sample of Australian collectors and found that over a three year period, people made an average of $5,000 to $10,000 in profit.
Mr Low said most collectors on eBay were making extra money to support themselves by engaging with their hobby. Some had turned their passion into a career.
"There's this one guy who started selling trading cards just because he was passionate about it, and now he operates it as a full business and employs his mum," he said.
Another person from Melbourne, she started collecting trading cards when she was five years old, and now she's gone on and been able to save up a deposit for a home.
- EBay Australia's head of sneakers and collectibles Alaister Low
Mr Low said there had been a boom in collectible sales during COVID-19, as people reconnected with their old interests. That enthusiasm had sustained post-pandemic.
"Adults who used to play with, let's say Pokemon cards, or collected baseball cards when they were kids, during the pandemic, went back and had a look at their collections and started realising 'wow, actually, these collections of cards that I engaged with as a kid, they're actually worth money now,'" he said.
Mr Aslam said LEGO had been a way to reconnect with the joys of growing up.
He had a "humble childhood" without complete sets, but loved playing with buckets of pieces.
"I've got a relatively, I would say an almost OCD personality, so if I start collecting something I tend to fall in head and shoulders," he said.
"It's gone on to be something very, very different to what I thought it was going to be when I first got those three sets."
The only barrier to Mr Aslam's growing supply could be the age-old collectors curse - storage.
"It's very hard to find room, so it's basically every little free space we've got in the house," he said.
