The Market For 12-Foot Halloween Skeletons Isn’t What It Used To Be

We may have hit peak Skelly.

When Bradley Cayce went to a Houston Home Depot in September to buy a 97-cent light-switch cover, he stumbled across the hottest Halloween decoration in the land: the improbably famous 12-foot skeleton, known adoringly to fans as Skelly. They were hard to find, adding to their popularity. Cayce grabbed a cart and bought two, shelling out about $650 with tax.

“My wife has been lusting after one for years,” said Cayce, 32. They named one of them Allen, whom they consider a member of the family now. The other they listed on Facebook Marketplace for $500 to try to recoup some of the cost.

It was not to be. The second “plastic monstrosity” is still sitting in the box at home, said Cayce. “It has not moved as quickly as I thought it would,” he told Forbes. Cayce puts some of the blame on an ill-timed vacation, which meant he wasn’t answering messages. But most of the offers have been for barely more than the purchase price. So he plans to show some backbone and hold onto his second Skelly until next season to see if he can get more. If not, the skeleton will join Allen in the front yard.

“At cost, I’ll get more joy out of the wife enjoying it,” said Cayce.

Halloween is a scary big business. Americans are expected to spend a record $12.2 billion on Halloween this year, up from $9 billion five years ago, according to the National Retail Federation. A third of that goes toward decorations, while costumes and candy each take roughly another third. When Home Depot began selling the 12-foot skeleton in 2020, it uncovered a hidden multitude of Halloween enthusiasts eager to spend hundreds of dollars in hopes of using Skelly’s dominating stature to conjure the spookiest house on the block.

While Home Depot still sold out of the skeleton this year, the secondhand market has fractured, said Jennifer Penelope Corcoran, who runs a Facebook group with almost 60,000 members called 12 Ft Skeleton Halloween Club. She said she’s seen average resale prices on sites like Facebook Marketplace and eBay fall from north of $1,500 in the early days of the pandemic, when Skelly was first making his bones, to as low as $500 this year.

The Skelly bubble may have burst. “The people who really wanted him have found him,” Corcoran said.

There are rumors that this is the last year Home Depot will sell the 12-foot skeleton. A spokesperson for Home Depot said they haven’t yet decided Skelly’s fate. The chain has been trying its luck with other enormities, like a 13-foot Jack Skellington, 12-foot ghost and 9-foot predator of the night. Lowe’s has also introduced a line of 12-foot inflatables, including a mummy, a grim reaper and a ghost.

Erika Plancarte, 42, purchased a 12-foot inferno skeleton with a pumpkin head from Home Depot — but only when she thought she was once again unable to get her hands on the original Skelly. When she tried calling Home Depot one more time to inquire about their next shipment, however, she heard the store may be getting some in. She and a neighbor hurried over and found two. Her neighbor, not caring about the ribbing she might get, laid on the boxes while Plancarte ran to get a cart. They had to load the bones one by one to get them to fit in her car.

When she got home, Plancarte decided to put just one in her front yard and see if she could sell the other. She listed it on Facebook Marketplace for $450 in September, but she’s only gotten lowball offers.

“A bunch of people have been inquiring about it but they all want it for less than what I paid,” said Plancarte, who lives in Las Vegas.

_{Storage Questions}

If she can’t sell it, she’ll have to store it. How exactly to do that has become such a frequent topic of conversation in Corcoran’s Facebook group that she had shirts made: “I don’t have a Halloween problem, I have a storage problem.” Most people put the skeleton in giant Christmas tree storage bags, said Corcoran, but she’s seen novel tactics like wrapping the bones in plastic wrap. This year, she’s considering asking her dad to store her decorations because she’s run out of room in her Nashville condo.

Some people leave them up all year, dressing the skeleton for other occasions — football games, birthdays, graduation and Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.

Some Halloween fans are renting out their Skellys. Kimmy Luk, who lives in San Francisco, said she received several messages within the first hour of listing her second Skelly for rent on Facebook Marketplace.

Tiffani Cavazos, 39, who lives outside Dallas, rents out the nine skeletons she has collected over the years. She bought the first one on Facebook Marketplace for $800 to put in her front yard, then kept adding to her skeleton squad. She charges $175 for a one-day rental, which might seem steep until you consider that she delivers the skeleton anywhere within a 20-mile radius, sets him up and then returns at the end of the day to collect him.

“He has to be anchored down a certain way or he’ll snap,” Cavazos said. “Removing the stakes is a nightmare.”

So far she’s made $1,750 by renting him out on ten different occasions. It will take another eight rentals to break even. While Halloween is the most popular time of the year, she has also rented him out for birthdays and weddings. She asks for a $175 deposit, which will be refunded if Skelly is returned with all his bones in the right places.

Cavazos stashes her Skellys in a storage unit she keeps just for Halloween decorations. Most of her customers, she said, just don’t have space for him.