So I happen to know a bit of that world. I’m a collector of memorabilia of failed capitalist endeavors. The point others have made is very true about merch being hard to authenticate when you could just recreate on any custom T shirt / hat / mug site. But for some companies, Enron, Pets.com, and a couple others, merch still commands a high price (not Fyre level though). Personally I prefer to seek more rare and “inside baseball” artefacts but in some cases merch is the best I can do (or an autographed book).