The dwindling value of amiibo figures

On the surface, things haven’t been particularly easy for amiibo as of late. Last year, the line did celebrate its 10th anniversary, which is a pretty big milestone for toys-to-life: they’re usually long discontinued by the time by that point. Still, that doesn’t necessarily mean amiibo are doing better than ever – it’s kind of the opposite, in fact. When they first launched in late 2014, each amiibo figure cost $12.99 each. They were marketed as affordable statues and add-ons to games – these bonuses were fairly inconsequential for the most part (but Super Smash Bros. amiibo training is still surprisingly deep), and if you didn’t want to spend the money on each figure you didn’t have to.

Recently, Nintendo upped the general price of new amiibo figures to $24.99 – $34.99 each. Of course, these are much more detailed than the original $12.99 amiibo that released in 2014, but it’s a steep bump nonetheless. Furthermore, the prices of all older amiibo were increased to $19.99 each. That means characters who were originally released for $12.99 now cost $19.99 without any significant increase in quality. Even if there were an increase in quality, this price bump puts amiibo out of range for most collectors. And yet, despite these price troubles, Nintendo announced a boatload of amiibo in the September 2025 Nintendo Direct. In my opinion, this marks kind of a doubling down of sorts – rather than going the amiibo card route like we previously suggested, Nintendo is doubling down on making amiibo into figurines of the highest possible quality.

Generally speaking, the amiibo Nintendo announced in September 2025’s presentation seem to be of incredibly high quality. One thing you’ll notice is that they’re all absolutely massive – much larger than the Super Smash Bros. series figures that made this line of toys famous. The Metroid Prime 4 amiibo, for example, all stand on big carvings of stone, which are on top of a normal-sized base. The new ones for Super Mario Galaxy are also gigantic, especially when compared to a regular Mario or Rosalina amiibo. Then you’ve got the Kirby Air Riders figures, which are a category all their own. These amiibo come as a set: one character and one vehicle. The character snaps on top of the vehicle, and when scanned in-game, grants a Figure Player much like Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. This is a very creative use of amiibo, too – considering you can swap riders and vehicles in real life to change up your FP, this grants the concept lots of flexibility and customization. But it’s also very, very expensive.

Nintendo’s new approach to amiibo might not sit well with everyone. In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, a metagame formed around amiibo training because each individual character was between 15 and 20 dollars. You could purchase one figurine, train it up, and then compete in online tournaments. In Kirby Air Riders, though, figures can cost up to a whopping fifty dollars. That’s a massive barrier to entry – one amiibo and vehicle costs almost as much as the game itself – and as a result you probably won’t see too many people training amiibo in Kirby Air Riders thanks to the astronomically high asking price. The Super Mario Galaxy ones, which release four months after the actual games do, grant Life-Up Mushrooms and 1-Up Mushrooms in-game. We’d imagine that most players are already finished with the titles by the time their amiibo release.

All of this is to say, though, that Nintendo is doubling down on amiibo as fancy figurines rather than amiibo as cheap figures with neat in-game bonuses. Kirby Air Riders’ compatibility is the most in-depth we’ve received in years, but that’s probably because Masahiro Sakurai is the director of the game and he pretty much popularized amiibo in the first place. Other games have compatibility as an afterthought – a lot of times, amiibo unlockables in new Nintendo games are obtainable through normal gameplay as well. And in a way, there’s really no winning there – if an amiibo’s unlocked content is too cool, people will complain because it’s locked behind a $30 figure. Which is fair. But if the amiibo’s unlocked content isn’t cool enough, people will complain that there’s no point to buying the figure, which is also fair. In that sense, I think Kirby Air Riders and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate have the best kind of amiibo support – the kind that gets you involved in playing the game in a different way.

And even though Nintendo’s approach of focusing on quality even if it means high prices is understandable, it’s already had some effects on the market. In June 2025, Nintendo released four new amiibo for Tears of the Kingdom and three new Street Fighter amiibo. These were $30 and $40 each, respectively, and as you might expect, they’ve been sitting on store shelves nearly untouched since then. GameStop and Amazon have actually lowered the prices on some of these to $20 previously, which tells us they’re not selling at that high price tag. That being said, the new Super Mario Galaxy amiibo have sold out at a few different retailers at different points, so it’s not that people won’t buy amiibo at those price tags – it’s that they won’t buy expensive amiibo unless they’re really nice and of characters they like. If new amiibo sell like the Tears of the Kingdom ones have (or haven’t), it’s possible that we see a tiny price cut – but given the economic situation of things right now, who knows how likely that is.

Do you think amiibo are still worth buying for $30, or have you been holding off and waiting for sales instead? Would you be interested to see more amiibo cards made available at a lower price, or would you rather stick to figurines only? Feel free to let us know in the comments down below.