Sometimes, being a fan of a movie franchise can be as simple as showing up to the theater to watch each new chapter. But many fans take pride in collecting mementos related to their favorite flicks – and that can become an expensive hobby. As a matter of fact, a recent study showed that many popular film series collectibles are not cheap, especially if you’re a Harry Potter fan.
There is certainly not a shortage of great Harry Potter gifts and memorabilia associated with The Boy Who Lived. Even if a Potterhead only wanted to collect the essential source material associated with the beloved franchise, they could still end up paying a pretty penny. At least, that’s what a new study from British financial firm money.co.uk revealed. According to their research, Potter ranked as the most expensive film franchise for its fans, based on the average price of its most sought after merchandise.
This isn’t completely surprising. After all, between eight Harry Potter movies, seven books, prequels, sequels and spin-offs, the canon associated with the series is wide-ranging. Even though the study only captured the average cost of a few key items – box set collections, figurines, t-shirts, costumes and signed posters – in most cases, the Wizarding World items were still the most expensive.
There is a range of prices, though, which should be encouraging to fans who can’t always afford to splurge. For example, the study revealed that a fan should expect to pay $403.28 for a signed movie poster, $72.49 for a box set of the original films, and $17.12 for a t-shirt.
In total, fans can expect to pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $616.76 for all of these items. While that’s much less than what The Washington Post reports it would cost to spend a year at Hogwarts, those price tags are nothing to shake your wand at, either.
Some of the franchises that ranked high in the study may be a bit more surprising. The Godfather ranked as the second most expensive film franchise, at $591.24. While The Godfather DVD collection or other boxed set is much less expensive on average, a signed poster of the Frances Ford Coppola classic rings in at more than $500. Behind that was the Back to the Future trilogy, which also commands a hefty poster price – though given what a big impact that series had on generations of fans, that’s not too shocking.
Other big name series like Superman, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, the Dark Knight Trilogy, Rambo, James Bond, and Guardians of the Galaxy rounded out the top ten. Each of those franchises has no shortage of devoted fans. From a rumored new Harry Potter TV series on HBO Max to Amazon’s Lord of the Rings TV show, many of these series are still actively in production. So it’s safe to say they’ll only continue to find a bigger audience. Hopefully, their future fans have some money saved up – they’re gonna need it.