Isn?t most of DAM?s output usually non-licensed?
Not lately. They're never done any blatant bootlegs like "Heavy Armored Special Cop" or "Officer K". Some of their Gangsters Kingdom figures were cartoon versions of action movie stars, but were never promoted as being those characters, they made up their own backstories for them. Everything else they did was military figures, some of them used recognizable faces as headsculpts.
But nearly all of their recent work over the past few years has been licensed. They've done Warcraft statues, based on the movie, they have a wide-ranging Assassin's Creed video game and movie license, as well as the Resident Evil 2 video game.
My thought process is, the original Godfather figure became so sought after because people didn't pre-order, so limited quantities were made, then as more people joined the hobby, the figure's value rose. And we're already seeing people here not wanting to pre-order, the cycle is already beginning to repeat.
I see other signs like this figure being from an "unknown" company, (even though DAM's been making high-quality figures for years, people aren't familiar with them), it's very similar to a company like threezero, when they launched Game of Thrones. The show was immensely popular, and even though threezero (and 3A) had been making figures for a while, and had a good reputation, people didn't pre-order the original figures, and despite Tyrion being pretty good, Ned and Jon being a bit less than okay, they still fetch a hefty price on the secondary market, because they are essential characters in the line, but no one pre-ordered them so quantities were low. Similar situation with Blitzway's Ghostbusters, people didn't want to order the set, because they weren't familiar with them, then scrambled to pick them up once they shipped.
Now, retailers might understand this and say "Hey, the original figure skyrocketed in value, let's order an extra 10%" but realistically, they're retailers, not speculators. The speculation part of the hobby comes in on the collector's end. The stock available depends on the strength of pre-orders, not based on the retailer's intuition.
