Pictured above: “Star Trek: Picard” actress Adele Shepherd’s price list at the Trek Long Island con.
By Dave Paone
Campus News
Throughout the year – and throughout the world – young people love to gather together for days at a time dressed as characters from comic books, animated series, video games and science fiction shows.
“Cosplay,” short for “costume play,” generally happens at a venue and when it does, it’s called a “comic con,” with “con” being short for “convention.”
The venues can be small, such as a library, or huge, such as the Jacob K. Javitz Convention Center in New York City, where thousands of participants attend for three-day weekends.
According to a 2023 Research and Markets report, the global cosplay costume and wigs market is anticipated to be valued at $80.85 billion by 2028, up from $35.2 billion in 2022.
That’s a lot of money to play dress-up. Campus News took a look at who’s spending all this money.
In 2017, Alex Hyams of East Moriches, Long Island, attended a con at the Nassau Coliseum, dressed as DC Comics’ antihero John Constantine. Alex was 27 years old at the time and had been attending Suffolk County Community College on and off for the previous six years.
His three-day attendance at the convention didn’t come without a hefty price tag. The cost of a VIP ticket, plus a photo op with and an autograph from Wonder Woman Gal Gadot totaled almost $500.
This was Alex’s very first comic con and he didn’t mind spending the money.
Some might argue that $500 is an enormous amount of money to spend on recreation but comparatively speaking, one Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium isn’t much different.
Parking alone is $49, the cheapest ticket is $107, and one could spend a small fortune at the concession stand, bringing the total price of three hours’ worth of entertainment into the hundreds of dollars.
Alex got three days, a photograph, an autograph and a lifetime of memories for his $500, which could be argued is a much better value.
Mitchell Ki is a 30-year-old from Long Island who’s been attending cons (usually dressed as Spider-Man) since he was a 24-year-old film and television major at Brooklyn College.
In his first year as a cosplayer, he attended four or five cons and spent a lot of money on extras, such as souvenir t-shirts – and as did Alex – photo-ops and autographs.
But he’s since concluded those extras – plus the cost of admissions, the travel expense of the Long Island Railroad to New York City, and the overpriced food at the venues – were unsustainable, and now buys only what he absolutely needs to attend an event.
Abigail Loos and her mother, Teresa, have been making the younger Loos’ costumes from scratch for several years. They’ve made more than two dozen of them so far.
Production is both time-consuming and expensive. Teresa estimates they spent “a little under a thousand” dollars on supplies the first year they got serious. “It can get expensive,” she said.
The Looses travel to cons throughout the North East together and they attended all three days at Anime NYC in 2022, with Abigail cosplaying as Transformer Elita One on the second day.
The elaborate costume was assembled from 17 separate parts, plus a harness, and made from wood, EVA foam, Worbla, a Spandex bodysuit, and a modified chrome mask with battery-operated lights. It took months to build.
Teresa estimates the cost of constructing Elita One was about $559.
The pair spent five nights at the Four-Points Sheridan Hotel in Manhattan with a cost of $2,400. (They live on the South Fork of Long Island, so commuting each day wasn’t an option.)
It’s not only a four-star hotel, it’s in a prime location – only a block from the Javitz Center – where the Anime NYC cons are held each year. These two factors make a stay there very expensive.
The old adage, “You have to spend money to make money” holds true for cons.
This past spring, Stefanie Gangone produced her second annual Trek Long Island con, specifically for sci-fi fans. (The Looses had a Klingon costume and a Borg Queen costume in the works specifically for this con but wound up not attending.)
Stefanie’s day job is as a reference librarian but she created an LLC to produce the inaugural convention.
Her biggest expenses are the venue and the airfares and hotel rooms for the many celebrity guests she has appeared at the cons. This year she had over 20 during the three-day event.
Trek Long Island hasn’t turned a profit yet and Stefanie doesn’t expect it to for a while.
“It’s like any business. You’re not going to make money the first four or five years,” she told Campus News.
She did have to take out a business loan to get started and believes her good credit was key in qualifying for it.
At Trek Long Island was Daniel, a 47-year-old who’s been cosplaying since long before it was a word. (Campus News was surprised at how much older the attendees were, compared to other cons.)
‘The adage “You have to spend money to make money” holds true.’
He began in the early 1990s at Renaissance Faires as a performer and then transitioned into comic cons. He has Star Wars costumes, Ghost Buster costumes, Dungeons & Dragons costumes, and X-Men costumes, and his wife has some, too.
Daniel estimates he’s spent $35,000 on these costumes over 35 years.
The most recognizable celebrity guest at Trek Long Island was Armin Shimerman, who played Quark in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He had a steady stream of fans come to his table to chat and purchase an autograph or a photo op. A picture with the Ferengi actor cost $60.
Mark Sickle purchased a “Deep Space Nine” comic book for $30 and had Armin autograph it. Additionally, Armin’s wife, Kitty Swink signed it. (She played two characters in the series and had her own booth next to his.) Mark also purchased a selfie with him, bringing the total cost to $80. (The autographs and photo were a combo for $50.)
“It’s not bad,” Mark told Campus News. “For a con like this, those prices are pretty average, pretty typical I think.”
Mark is also the founder of The Star Trek Family Community, which is a nationwide fan organization, with nearly 14,000 members. Risa Einsidler worked one of the two tables the group had at the con.
At 62 years old she can remember watching the original Star Trek series as a child in the 1960s. “I have a memory of being at my grandparents’ house on Friday nights watching on the living room floor with my brother,” she told Campus News. “And of course I was madly in love with William Shatner.”
Many years later she was expecting twins but was bedridden because of her high-risk pregnancy. “The Next Generation kept me company,” she said. “So Star Trek means a lot to me.”
Risa has been cosplaying “for decades” (although she called it “dress-up” before the word was coined) and has a closet full of Star Trek costumes.
Many of these costumes were custom-made to her measurements and sewn from either Paramount Pictures or CBS-sanctioned patterns, giving them an authentic look. She estimates their combined value at $10,000.
On the second day of the con Risa spent $500 on Star Trek merch.
Christina is such a die-hard Trekie that she’s taken five Star Trek cruises. These are Royal Caribbean ships that are chartered specifically for week-long Star Trek parties.
“They call it the ′unconventional voyage′ because it’s like a convention but it’s way better than a convention,” she told Campus News.
Not only is it a shipload of fans, but several actors from the various Star Trek series are onboard for the week as well.
Christina has hobnobbed with William Shatner, Jonathan Frakes, George Takei, Walter Koenig and others.
“George Takei makes a point to go around and say hi to everybody when they’re eating at the buffet,” she said. “Gates McFadden is amazing and a wonderful person to chat with.”
For 2025, the cheapest cabin for a first-time voyager is $2,310 and the most expensive is $11,220. Christina has cruise number six booked already.
Adele Shepherd is a Burbank-based actress who appeared in two episodes of Star Trek: Picard but commands $40 for an autographed poster.
While it may appear this is easy money, the truth is she had to lay out some cash to be there.
Stefanie paid for her hotel but Adele paid for her flight. She also needed to pay for the printing of the photographs she signed.
Some of them contained the Star Trek brand logos so a designer needed to be hired to put them on the pictures and in the case of official photos with a logo, she needed approval from the studio and had to pay for their use.
This is the economy at work. Money goes from one person to another, and each time it’s exchanged, both parties get something – either cash or a product.
A headline from a FoxNews.com article in 2016 read, “Sexy cosplayers can make $200,000 a year at comic book conventions.”
The article quotes comic book expert Christian Beranek who said, “[P]opular professional cosplayers can make at least $5,000 to $10,000 a show.”
That money comes from somewhere and it’s safe to assume it’s from the attendees who pay a substantial amount to go to these cons.
The truth is she had to lay out some cash to be there.
For Anime NYC this past August, a single-day badge was $67 but a three-day badge that includes a lot of perks wass $429. The three-day badges were sold out months in advance.
Everyone Campus News spoke to at Trek Long Island has no regrets about the money they spend on cons.
“Find what you love and do it,” said Daniel.
Risa put it this way: “Whatever I’ve spent has been completely worth it because it just is my place of joy; it’s my happy place.”
Clearly there are a lot of people who feel the same way.
Facebook Comments