$2k a year just on joe figures? Hell even at $200 a figure and four a year thats $800. If you mean via other lines as well then yeah but I wouldn't be shocked if folks do that now.
I'd rather see them move more into the quality territory to be honest. I want more bang for my buck and companies like SS and HT know this so thats what they're doing.
Then you buy less. Sorry. As I said most collectors want bang for their buck and for a lot I imagine that of collectors want their figures to kick as much ass as possible. That usually means
Don't get lost in the numbers I typed, its just an example to prove the point that as the line slows quantity wise, SSC will make up for the lost revenue via increased margins on higher quality figures. Same as a brand like Lexus makes a lot of money even though they don't sell nearly as many cars as Toyota. It would be silly for SSC to just say, "we're selling $XX a year in GI Joe, lets cut it in half". No they'll still try to make that $1,000,000 somehow.
There's no need to apologize for wanting nicer figures for yourself, but your "most collectors" theory is incorrect.
10,000 > 2,000
There are approximately 8,000 less people buying SSC figures these days than at their peak. So you cannot simply say "most collectors" would prefer better/higher priced figures when it has been proven they don't via drastically decreased edition sizes.
Maybe your point was that the 2,000 collectors still remaining prefer better figures, in which case, you could be right. We'll have to see if edition sizes drop further in coming years.
Just for clarity, I'm not exclusively talking about GI Joe here.