14 DAY TRIAL // The Amiibo phenomenon is a veritable gold rush, with select figurines disappearing from the shelves of retailers instantaneously and being sold at outrageous prices on eBay and other such websites.
Part of the blame is on Nintendo, who failed to forecast the popularity of each model and, worst of all, used some very ambiguous wording when announcing the rarity of some of the figures.
This prompted a lot of speculators to buy them by the crate and then sell them overseas at up to five times the retail price or more, and it's truly a wonder that could even be done, given the popularity of region-locking at Nintendo.
In any case, it would appear that the craze still wasn't enough for Nintendo, as it might be planning to release a limited run of silver and golden Mario Amiibos.
The information comes from some certificates found on Nintendo's website (which have been removed), showing the packaging and the two figurines, with the writing "Mario" in either silver or gold text, alongside an appropriately colored background.
Since Nintendo didn't even peep about them, it's pretty clear that the company might be planning a surprise around them, and it's not ready to disclose it to the public yet.
Everybody wants to own a Mario-shaped gold nugget
In any case, given the amount of money some die-hard Nintendo fans are willing to spend on mascot memorabilia, and that some people are intent on collecting them all, as they have been rigorously trained by years upon years of playing Pokemon, the two models will surely prove to be a smashing success for the Japanese corporation.
So far, Nintendo has disclosed that over 5.7 million of its toys have found a home worldwide. The Amiibos' functionality is pretty ingenious, offering small but noticeable trinkets and improvements over a wide variety of titles, rather than working in the way other toy-to-life franchises do, when each new figurine translates into an additional playable character.
This means that collectors will get more and more value from them as time passes, and those who don't buy them won't miss out on any significant pieces of content in any Nintendo game.
