Beanie Baby Futures: Slightly Better Investment Than Bernie Madoff
Last year, I visited my parents to help clear out the house we had lived in since 1984. One of my more cuddly tasks was to sort the three garbage bags full of Beanie Babies hanging out in the closet of my childhood bedroom. Most of them found new homes in the garage sale, or were donated to charity.
Far too many other American families and businesses have similar stashes. For some, they're a forgotten childhood relic. For others, it's an investment that never quite paid off.
"Basically, if you can afford to do this, simply putting away five or ten of each and every new Beanie Baby in super mint condition isn't a bad idea." (The Beanie Baby Handbook, 1998, p. 27)
I was in high school when the Beanie Baby craze hit. I accumulated about 200 of them, mostly as gifts. I wasn't stockpiling them as investments. I just like stuffed animals. Judging from the number of decade-old Beanie Babies I see in A.C. Moore for $4, plenty of companies and individuals hoarded thousands of the stuffed critters in mint condition, waiting for the day when they could cash in.
The essential flaw in this plan is that everyone hoarded the damn things. Toys are worth more years (or decades) on in mint condition because the vast majority are played with or destroyed.
Alan Scherstuhl came across a copy of the 1998 best-seller The Beanie Baby Handbook in a Kansas CIty thrift store, and gives readers highlights from this delightful relic of the late '90s. One feature of the book that I had forgotten was that it gave projected values of all Beanie Babies in ten years, or 2008. Their predictions: not quite on the mark, putting values for normal critters at around a thousand dollars.
Scherstuhl writes:
I'm not calling the Foxes a pair of Beanie Madoffs. Still, I'm unsettled by any speculators who establish inflated prices on commodities in which they themselves are heavily invested. (For further examples, Google "Enron" and "California.")
I guess as bad investments go, one where you're left with something you can hug is better than nothing.
And you thought your investments had tanked: Studies in Crap rages against The Beanie Baby Handbook [The Pitch]
(Photo: shutter.chick)
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Comments:
A friend of my aunts was one of those Beanie Baby people years ago. Even as an 11-year old boy I knew that "investment" was never going to pay off.
Collecting Beanie Babies? Bah!
Cabbage Patch Kids and Starting Lineup collectors LAUGH at such a silly notion!
My neighbor hoarded these things talking about how they were going to be worth so much money. The local Wal*Mart would hide these things around the store to make it "fair," let everyone have a chance at getting them.
I still have about 7500 late 80's and early 90's baseball cards. I heard too many stories of my fathers generation putting Mickey Mantel rookie cards in the spokes of their bicycles, only to later see them "worth" $50,000 to ever toss them.
I also remember seeing stories in my Becket Baseball Card Monthly about how these pieces of cardboard were great investment vehicles.
*has flashbacks to the chaos when McDonalds had beanie babies kids meals*
I always thought Beanie Babies were dumb (now Magic TG cards... THAT was a good investment :P )
I guess we all fall into stupid stuff like this when we're young. Honestly though, I was amazed when I heard people were making counterfeit Beanie Babies. Wow.
As a kid I had to make some tough decisions, I chose to invest my money in trolls instead. . .
I have visions from my youth of old ladies buying numerous orders of Happy Meals just to get a new Mini Beanie Baby. I wonder how much those are worth now? I also remember my aunt pawning all my cousins Beanie Babies to pay their cable bill. She promised she would buy them back, but the pawn shop burned down the following day.
My sister has a good collection, but she adored how cute and cuddly the little critters were. My mom's younger sister ate untold numbers of happy meals to get my sister two full sets of the Beanie Babies from the happy meals.
My mom has them stored at her place, I don't think my sister cares if they're worth money or not.
Luke Skywalker, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Darth Vader with telescoping lightsabers in pack with card are worth close to $10,000 a piece right now. They did not gain that value in 10 years. It took them close to 40.
I'm not saying Beanie Babies will be worth a damn in 30 years. They may, they may not. What I am saying is you shouldn't expect to be selling them for hundreds quite yet. In fact, I don't know for sure as I was too young, but I would bet Luke Skywalker with telescoping lightsaber went through a long period when they were worth close to nothing and went at garage sales for 25 cents.
Way back when my sister gave her toddler daughter a Beanie Baby bear called "Garcia." Lexi was happily chewing on the tagless ear at the mall one Saturday. A woman snatched the bear from her and screamed at my sister that she had ruined her daughter's future by letting her touch this rare collectible instead of packing it away to pay for her college education.
I always lived by this basic collecting investment guideline, if it is called a collectible sure to rise in value, it won't even be worth a fraction of what was paid for it.
Ha, I have 50 Webkinz..... I didnt know anything about em, but they were $1 a piece! I figure that was cheap.. and good enough to hock on ebay for some extra cash. So far so good.
@WiglyWorm: First off, Star Wars is 32 years old, so it's closer to 30 than 40. Second, those were worth quite a bit even just 10 years after they came out. I'd be willing to guess that your long period of Star Wars merchandise being worthless probably never happened. I mean, there was a price guide put out for Star Wars collectibles in 1985, so they had to have been worth some money back then.
@Radi0logy: The sad thing though was that the few people that I knew who where collecting them weren't children; they were grown adults.
@WiglyWorm: But at least in that case the toys are based around a movie. Even if nobody really knew what kind of impact Star Wars would have on the future, it's still something to be built around. There is absolutely nothing tied to Beanie Babies that even grant them the possibility of being relevant. As far as I recall, it was the dolls and that was it. No tv shows, movies, books, or anything.
My Grandmother probably spent a thousand dollars buying beanie babies for me and my brother. She would also spend about 100 dollars on those "rare" collectors beanie babies and she made me keep them all in specially designed cases. Now 10 years later I have no idea what happened to them. If my Grandmother ever tries to do something like that again I will not hesitate to smack her.
Forget Beanie Babies. I collected Meanie Babies [www.meanies.com] . Burnsy the Bear, Floaty the Fish, and Splat the RoadKill Kat, are but a few that grace my mantel.
@Jonbo298: I remember us walking into a McDonalds and seeing everyone acting nuts. People yelling to one another across the restaurant "do we have this, do we need that". We watched grown women buy Happy Meals and then throw them out on their way out. It took us awhile to figure out what in the hell was going on. When we finally got to the register I asked if we could get a discount for NOT buying a beanie baby. Of course no. To date that has got to be the most absurd thing I've seen grown adults do. All for a stupid bean bag.
While I was selling my old computer junk on eBay about 10 years ago, I bought a few (about 10) beanie babies as a hedge. (You never know, some things take off, and some don't.) They're pretty rare but now even the rare ones sell for chump change on eBay. Eh, whatever, only cost me a few bucks.
Now that Taco Bell Chihuahua that says "Yo Qiero Taco Bell" when you squeeze it - that I'm holding on to!
This stuff is all like art. Buy it if you like it, and don't count on making money on it.
One of my neighbors growing up was arrested for stealing these from a swap meet. It was sad because he was about 40 years old and a very well respected business owner. Looking back at it I do wonder how these became so popular. It is nothing more than a stuffed animal.
@ken2148: I remember hearing about that craziness in the news. People acting irate because they already had the Beanie Baby they got in their meal and they wanted some other one. That was one of the nuttiest fads I ever saw.
This is not unlike when people looked at comic books as an investment. There were stories of #1 Action Comics selling for tens of thousands, other early comics being worth hundreds and thousands of dollars. The reason of course was because of rarity. Because kids in those days read the comics, and during WWII they were dutifully collected by their mothers and taken off to be recycled, or thrown out because they "corrupted the youth". So there were fewer copies lying around. In the 80's and 90's people were buying and preserving their copies, so there were lots of them around, meaning they did not increase in value very much.
@Jonbo298:
I was about 11 and my mom and I would call ahead to the area McDonald's to make sure they had the one we wanted. good times.
@Benguin:
You should check out the Double Extending Lightsaber version, much more rare.
"...The small plastic weapon of the Jedi Knight would rise out from the hollow arm of each figure, then a thinner piece would further rise out. This proved difficult to manufacture and broke easily, so it was abandoned in the next wave of figures to reach stores, replacing the telescoping lightsaber with a single-piece version. It's been said that only a few hundred versions of these figures were ever made..."
Personally I want the Blue Snaggletooth and Yoda with a Brown snake.
These are rare for a few reasons:
1. They were bought by boys.
2. They were usually played with.
3. They were usually played with in a rough fashion.
My originals all went through the horrors of the chlorine reach planet of my pool, flew countless flight with the aid of modified bottle rocks, explored the desert conditions of the sand pit in my back yard (Wet sands really holds smoke from firecrackers to make a Dagaboth like mist) and were baked in the Florida sun countless times.
At 40 years of age, I don't know if I would have given up the joy received then for the money now if I would have known what they would have been worth.
This past year during a move from Miami to Buffalo (yeah, I know) I ended up giving away two steamer trunks full of Baseball cards to a young family friend. Most never opened with gum, the younger brother I found out was forced to try some and said it dissolved in his mouth like sand (These cards are 15 to 20 years old).
Our agreement was this, if by chance anything was found to be of value (unlikely) that I would never be told about it and it was his to do with what he wished. Too many people collected these cards during that time frame, there were dozens of shops I could drive to in 20 minutes back then; now not many people consider them to be an investment.
Any possible value was not worth the space on the moving van to me. I just wished I had the money now to pay of the credit card bills I have. One of the few regrets I have so far in my life.
"Beanie Madoffs"
Tee-hee. Well done, Laura. Very well turned phrase!
@Yoko Broke Up The Beatles: I collected vintage pieces of rock cocaine but my darned roommate smoked up my retirement. :(
Well, to be fair, my cat started it first: mistaken attempt to home-cure his nervousness.
Collecting stuff and thinking it will appreciate in value is idiotic. MTG hasn't collapsed in on itself precisely because no one is rushing out thinking that they can fund their kid's college tuition with Magic cards. Plus, you can actually play with Magic cards, unlike with 10x of each still-boxed beanie baby
Anyone remember the divorce that turned into a custody battle over the Beanie Babies? I don't remember the exact number on the legal fees in the end, but it was appalling.
A quick google for information on it led me to this:
[kwc.org]
in which a divorced man is trying to sell some of the BBs his ex-wife left behind, and meets with members of the Beanie Baby Brigade. It'd be hilarious if it weren't so scary:
"Very clever listing; however it is very likely you have some fakes (counterfeits) among the listing and I suggest you pull them from the auctions until you have them authenticated. Humphrey the camel is an example. It is a requirement of eBay as well as unde the provisions of the U.S. Criminal Cpode that a seller know the authenticity of a trademarked item s/he is selling. ... To sell counterfeits of a trademarked item wold make you a common criminal."
He's supposed to put the time, effort, and I presume money into AUTHENTICATING a miniature, given-out-as-Happy-Meal-toy STUFFED ANIMAL?
::eyeroll::
@Skankingmike: You can do anything if you don't ask questions first. Then, when pressed about it, say the names and likenesses are purely coincidental. After that, you can stop making them so that some guy can try to hawk them on eBay for a couple grand.
I prefer this bit from a 2004 LA Times article on Beanies:
"Now and then, Marks still sees customers who once believed that Beanie Babies would pay for their kids' college educations.
When they ask him what to do with their collections, he offers this advice: "They make great insulation if you stick them in the walls.""
A Beanie Baby Bubble? No way!
@WiglyWorm: You're forgetting one thing...most of the Star Wars figures back then were opened and played with, with never a care given towards future collectability. OTOH, probably 99% of Beanie Babies were stuffed away by greedy hoarders who thought they'd have a goldmine in their basement/attic 20 years from when they bought them.
Hopy crap, you've brought back some horrible memories. My grandmother was OBCESSED with beanie babies. Wanted every single one. Anyone remember the McDonalds Tiny Beanie Babies? The horror...while driving cross country, we stopped at every single damn McDonalds to make sure we obtained two or three of each one. I was so freaking sick of happy meal burgers. That was a rough year.
For me it was baseball cards in 4th - 6th grade. While baseball card collecting had always been an innocent pursuit, it was turned into a commodities market in the mid 1980s. And, true to a form I would eventually repeat, that's when I bought in.
Unfortunately, very few of those cards are worth anything, mainly due to lack of scarcity. Once manufacturers started selling entire sets in 1985, demand could not keep up with supply. Eventually the bottom fell out of the modern cards, people lost interest, and the bottom fell out of the entire market.
Oddly enough, the Star Wars figures and matchbox cars that I had growing up would have probably been worth a ton. But i never kept them. The important thing is that I did have fun with them...and that's what it's all about.
@Benguin: When I worked at a day camp for overprivileged children, there was an 8 year old whose father was a trader at the Chicago Board of Trade (she would entertain us on the camp bus by teaching us the hand signals) who was always deep in her Beanie Baby guide.
She made THOUSANDS -- literally thousands -- of dollars speculating on Beanie Babies she'd bought with her allowance money and a tolerant mother who'd drive her to whatever store allegedly got a shipment. Though of course she wasn't buying and holding ... she was buying and selling to OTHER collectors.
She honestly showed an unusual gift for markets so early, and kept explaining to me the psychology of collectors/investors and how pig futures worked and things like that.
Her only beef was that her parents kept making her put her earnings in a college fund in nice, safe mutual funds instead of letting her speculate larger sums on Beanie Babies or invest in corn futures through her dad. I believe they did let her buy a pair of Sketchers, though.
@Radi0logy: Heh. My husband ran across his Magic cards while cleaning the basement recently and running some of the high-value ones through the internets, figures he's got around $800 there. Though of course that's a very small handful of cards ... the other zillion cards are worth like $10 all together!
as a kid i got hustled by this very book. i spent $100 of my sayings as a little girl on this. i think my 1998 $100 is worth $6 today. my sister and i little kids that we were would hoard these things and ask for them for gifts for all occasions for a year and we got 3 sets of the mini babies that are worth 25 cents each today.
i dont real feel bad for the adults that put their retirement in this, but i feel bad and sad for the kids that the duped into these kinds of "collectibles" at least once every generation, baseball cards, trolls, pokemon cards, yugi-oh all this crap. sadly parents indulge this and dont say to the kids "dont waste your money on this crap"
God... I remember Beanie Babies. They were sorta cute in an odd way, huh? Hell of a lot better than those freaky ass Webkinz. Some of those are just so STRANGE.