Beanie Babies

I really should have taken a picture of my collection but honestly, all of the items would NOT fit into the picture. As I have previous stated, I am a collector of many things. Back in the 90's Ty Beanie Babies were high on my list. Many of you may remember the Beanie Baby craze. $5 bean bag animals that took over the world and spawned a nation-wide craze. People would pay high dollars for those rare and hard to find toys. The fad created such a high demand for the retired ones that counterfeits were made. It was these counterfeits that brought down the values, much to my dismay.

I got into the craze early on and made a decent amount of money off of these things. I would line up at 6 AM, along with all the other crazies, to purchase these little treasures. You would be surprised by the amount of money someone would pay you for something that will be available everywhere in another month or so. For instance, when the Princess Diana Bear came out, I bought it for $6, traded it with someone online for Rex, a retired one, and sold it on eBay for over $800! Craziness I tell you. OH, and yes, I did mention trading. I traded these online so that I could get better ones or complete my own collection. Also, every weekend I would go to Beanie Baby trade shows...pathetic huh? It was a culture unto itself. You had to learn all of the different hang tag generations and make sure that the tags were in mint condition with a tag protector.

I also got into the Disney Beanies and Ty Attic Treasures. *sigh You can only imagine my collection.

Today Adam and I finally went through my boxes o' toys. I have literally hundreds of these things. My next mission...eBay them all outta here. Well, I AM going to keep my favorite ones, including one, Peking, that I could have sold for $2000. YES, I am kicking myself for hanging onto it. I also have 2 pairs of the Patriotic Trio: Righty, Lefty and Libearty, that sold for $1000 at one time. Ah well...no sense in crying over what could have been. WAAAAHHHH