The price of official K-Pop merch can range from reasonable to exorbitant, and a recent piece of RIIZE merchandise offered by SM Entertainment has netizens riled up over its price tag.
RIIZE | @RIIZE_official/Twitter
The piece of merch in question is a necklace with the RIIZE cueball logo used as the charm. It’s a simple-looking piece of jewelry on a thin silver chain and it’s hard to tell what kind of quality it actually is.
Despite its simplicity and unknown quality, however, the necklace has a selling price of 80,000 won, which is about $60 USD. The reason for its high price seems to be the Wonbin photocard that comes with the purchase.
| SM Entertainment
The photocard is teased in the listing, though slightly blurry to try to prevent fans from just printing it out themselves.
There has been a lot of talk recently about the price of K-Pop idol photocards and the consumerism around them, with some albums having a huge number of photocards to collect to encourage fans into buying multiples. While it appears that the Wonbin photocard is the only one this necklace comes with, he’s in such high demand right now that there will likely still be plenty of people that buy it despite the price.
Wonbin (RIIZE) | SM Entertainment
The listing was shared recently on an online forum, where K-Pop fans shared their distaste and irritation over it.
Will the price of K-Pop merch and other goods continue to go up, or are we going to eventually reach a limit at some point?
