I feel like this is either exaggerated or uses inflated values.
Granted, a lot of companies have periodic problems unloading inventory so it's not really unique. Funko just apparently didn't plan well enough and was holding onto inventory for too long. During the 2022 Christmas season, Five Below had a reasonably large Pop! offering... but for $6, which was lame.
This so hard. They haven't really ever had a thriving secondary market, certainly not like Beanie Babies.
While I know that some collectors have tried (and often failed) to sell their collections afterward, they weren't buying them for the secondary market, they just bored of them, which is like anything else.
That's unsurprising. The franchises that get adapted can make or break a collectibles line and, while Funko has had success diversifying, the fact that they've gone all-in on some franchises must be hurting them.
tbh, that's always been the appeal of Funko lines -- they tend to offer collectibles from underrepresented franchises or characters from those franchises. In the case of older films, it's sometimes been the ONLY figure that certain characters have had.
...that said, most of the Pop!s, Mystery Minis, etc, I've bought have related to moderately popular franchises, many of which have collectibles. However, in some cases, the Funko version is either cheaper (Chernabog, for example) or covers a character better (ie, some of the Spidey Far from Home normal figures were garbage; Molten Man, for example, might've only appeared in a budget line and the quality was lousy, whereas Funko did great versions of Molten Man)
And, honestly, for a lot of stuff, there's a long gap between merch.
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/9/AAM3HCAAEOPx.jpg i don't think this my hero academia character has anything else except a funko pop