I was at SDCC this year and I was amazed at how many booths had Funko pops, which was about 20-30% of the booths and there was a line for the Funko area, jam packed with people. I over heard people saying they found some rare ones or newly released that were hard to find.
A few years ago someone bought me a Squirtle Funko Pop, since Squirtle is the best, and I opened it and took it out of the box. They proceeded to freak out that I ruined is value by taking it out of the box…
It’s just a normal collecting sub-culture. The vast majority of people that have them have a handful, but of course you’re going to have people that want to have complete sets.