Robot Claw

I spent many hours this summer in the attic, emptying out boxes that had been sealed in some cases for decades, and disposing of lots of things that we didn’t need to keep anymore. I ended up reducing the attic storage by a factor of about 75%, which was very liberating. In a few years I’ll do another pass and likely toss out more.

The last step of this years clean-out was today, specifically taking care of this:

This is our Beanie Babies collection, purchased during the fad in the late 1990s.

A lot has been written about the Beanie Babies phenomena, but the quick history is that these little stuffed animals became popular in 1996 and very quickly it seemed everyone was collecting them. They were sold almost everywhere, created long lines and shopper hysteria when new ‘waves’ were released, and spurned an entire industry around them as people latched on to the idea they were not just toys, but investments that would one day make them rich. And then in 1999 the whole fad fell apart and by 2000 almost no one cared about them any more, and the world moved on.

We bought them for a few years, then put them in a box and forgot about them until now. Had you asked me how many we had I would have said a few dozen, so I was quite surprised to find we had 111 of the things:

It is surreal to think back on that era. People were legitimately insane for Beanie Babies (there’s at least two good documentaries about them), and in particular went crazy for the teddy bear types. I always found the bears repellant, but we somehow managed to get 9 of them:

People were selling some of the bears for hundreds of dollars in those days. Beanies were about 10% of all eBay sales during the height of the fad, and by 1998 the madness was worldwide. We never bought in to any of this, since it was abundantly obvious since with everyone buying them there wouldn’t be a sellers market in the future 🙂

Some of our Beanies are unusual – including one that isn’t even an animal – but these mostly come from the end of the fad when all the normal animals had already been made.

I don’t like any of these and can’t remember ever buying them. In fact both of us were surprised by some of the ones we own that we don’t find attractive in any way. I suppose we just bought them because they were inexpensive.

That said, one of ours has a $15 price tag on it!? It’s hard to believe we ever paid that and indeed I don’t recall every buying one on the secondary market (like a toy show) so this remains a mystery.

McDonald’s got in on the action as well with Happy Meal ‘Teenie Beanies’ toys several times during the craze. We have 18 of these, from the 1996, 1998 and 1999 series. As with the full sized beanies, these were extremely popular and sought after at the time. In 1996 the first series was the most successful Happy Meal promotion McDonald’s had ever had to that point!

As you can see the McDonald’s ones (on left) are about half the size of the normal toy (in the middle). At the right is a ‘Beanie Buddy’, and no I don’t know why we own that either.

A small few of ours have ‘tag protectors’ on them to keep the red cardboard tag on good condition. But we also had a pack of dozens of protectors that we never bothered putting on, which perhaps shows how much we valued this ‘investment’! Some collectors bought elaborate storage cases or even sealed them in lucite. It was important to keep the investments in tip top condition 🙂

So let’s talk money. In 1996 the suggested price of a Beanie was $5, and it seems this continued until at least 1998. We have one from 1999 with a $5.50 price tag, but that was probably just a store marking up due to demand. I think it’s reasonable therefore to estimate – at the low end – that we paid about $555 for our normal Beanies plus at least $36 more for the McDonald’s ones (Happy Meals were $2 in those days). The above photos therefore represent an ‘investment’ of about $591.

I’ll say again that some people truly thought these would make them rich one day, and such beliefs continue through the endless eBay auctions where sellers don’t understand the market died 25 years ago and never recovered.

The truth is Beanie Babies are worthless today. Every single one we have can be obtained for under $1 on eBay right now, and collections are selling for much less than $1 per Beanie. If you search you’ll find that the vast majority of auctions for these things don’t actually sell at all, since everyone has them in their attics and no one wants them! I’m sure there’s a few diehard collectors out there seeking holy grail error Beanies (and good luck to them), but it doesn’t change the fact that 99.99999% of the things now retain no value at all.

So our $591 we spent between 1996 and 1999 has now become… well maybe $50 if we successfully sold them on eBay, which is not what anyone would call an investment! But what if we’d ignored the Beanies entirely and spent our $591 back in 1999 on a true investment like the Dow Jones or Apple stock?

If we’d spent $591 on a DJIA mutual fund in December 1999 we’d have about $2458 worth of stock today.

If we’d spent $591 on APPL (Apple) stock in December 1999, we have about $171,800 in Apple stock (yes you read that correctly) today.

But we didn’t, and today we simply have worthless Beanies! We selected a ‘favourite’ each (the term is used lightly) – Legs the frog for KLS and a dubiously coloured Platypus for me – and put the remaining 16 kg of them into a different type of permanent storage:

Goodbye Beanie Babies. We’ll never forget you.