Amiibos are a little bit like potato chips; you can’t have just one. Of course, it starts with one. For anyone who doesn't know, amiibos are figurines of Nintendo characters that come to life once they are scanned into certain games.
My first amiibo was a Christmas present: Kirby. I loved Kirby, he was so cute and detailed and I thought, "what a neat little concept!" I named him Kelvin, trained him to level 50, and used him to fight in the way which was intended. Then came Link, Toon Link, and the rest is a blur. I became obsessed.
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At the time where amiibos were coming out, there was this great craze which admittedly fueled me. What happened was Nintendo didn’t realize just how popular these little figurines would be. They under-produced certain amiibos because they were the less popular characters, and in turn figured no one would really want them. How wrong they were. It was madness! People started scalping amiibos and raising the price to $50, $60, sometimes $100. This was considered normal at the time. Rare amiibos became a thing and Rosalina for example went for around $60 on Amazon. This was both a disturbing and exciting time to be an amiibo collector because when you ran into a more rare amiibo in the wild (normally Target) you could easily justify spending the retail price of $12.99. Heck, at that low price I would often time grab two or three more to sell to my friends.
One of the most adventurous things I have ever done for an object was camping outside my local Target for the Wave 4 amiibos to be released. I was there all night long. I brought my boyfriend along, a folding chair, my 3DS, some snacks, and made friends with really amazing people. I was fourth in line and waiting in particular for Jigglypuff, but more so for the extremely rare Robin and Lucina. The night was cold, but talking with fellow amiibo collectors made it pass quickly. Turns out that Target only had four each of Lucina and Robin. The guy behind me was extremely angry. There were police there as well to make sure no one would steal our rare Amiibos. It was pretty crazy looking back at it. I remember feeling such joy and accomplishment for just buying some detailed plastic. I loved Amiibos so much so that I wrote a free-style rap about them. Crazy? Maybe. But I always follow my passions
To this day I have 55 amiibos and counting. My goal is to eventually get the entire Super Smash Bros Roster someday. I have dropped hundreds of dollars on these figurines that can come to life and I proudly display them above my bed. Some people collect baseball cards, other people collect stamps. I collect amiibos and although it has been quite the journey. Although it has become easier and cheaper to find certain ones, I can say that one of my favorite things now is that each amiibo has a story behind how I got it, which to me is really special.
