# beanie babies: did the market crash? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 20, 2001, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142 "2001-08-20T14:53:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![zuma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/e9c0ed/32.png) [@zuma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zuma)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/1 "2001-08-20T14:53:28Z")
Just three years ago i was shocked to learn that otherwise sane people were spending thousands of dollars for beanie babies. I was fascinated by this hysteria. Bean bags in the shape of animals were fetching hundreds or THOUSANDS of dollars. I found this ridiculous. I will shamefully admit that I trolled various beanie babies boards and mocked them for their ridiculous hysteria. In 1998 I warned them that spending hundreds or thousands of dollars for a child’s toy was ridiculous and unwise. Today, you don’t hear a peep about beanie babies. I’ll guess that the market has tanked, and many people have lost a lot of money on stuffed animals. I did a google search on beanie baby prices, and was unable to find anything updated after 1999. Can anyone here fill me in one what happened to the thousand dollar beanie babies from 1998? ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/2 "2001-08-20T15:04:26Z")
Happens with all fads. Did you notice they weren’t making them anymore? Try [Ebay.com](http://Ebay.com) youll find thousands of them, just a guess, I haven’t counted. ---
**Author:** ![DougC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7feea3/32.png) [@DougC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DougC)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/3 "2001-08-20T15:41:53Z")
- - - A co-worker’s mother got into selling beanies during a long off-work time period she had, due to a car accident injury: I dunno how much she made in the year or so she did it, but she is now stuck with literally thousands of them that she bought for $5-$7 a piece, that can’t be sold even for half that much, so she just stored them - a small mountain of them. ~ Casually speaking about it once, she claimed to (still) have several of almost every kind, except the Princess bears: two she bought off Ebay from somebody in Britain, for $200 each, she recieved with the backs slashed open and a US customs inspection notice. - MC ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/4 "2001-08-20T16:19:57Z")
Judging by this list of recent [BB auctions on eBay](http://search-completed.ebay.com/search/search.dll?ht=1&query=beanie&SortProperty=MetaHighestPriceSort), the bubble has burst, but some die hards are still willing to spend big bux on them. When I checked, there were **12,6940** separate auctions, and many of those were for whole collections of hundreds of the little monsters. Still, individual examples, like [Billionaire Bear](http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1623092714) can still excite enough people to bid up the price to over $1,100. Go figure. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/5 "2001-08-20T16:21:24Z")
yikes, that should be **126,940**. That’s very different! [I fixed the coding. bibliophage] [Edited by bibliophage on 08-20-2001 at 06:07 PM] ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/6 "2001-08-20T16:43:18Z")
It’s all reminiscent of the [tulip mania](http://www.sunwayco.com/news10.html) that swept Holland in the 17th century. A frenzied market developed around tulips. People were spending outrageous sums of money on rare tulip bulbs. When the market collapsed, fortunes were lost, and the Dutch economy took a huge hit. A classic investment bubble, just like the dotcom mania, for that matter, as noted in the linked site. ---
**Author:** ![handy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5a626/32.png) [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/7 "2001-08-20T23:00:09Z")
A purple elephant BB used to sell for a lot of $$. Wish I had some back then. Something like thousands of dollars for it. ---
**Author:** ![Timban](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Timban](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timban)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2001, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/8 "2001-08-20T23:43:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MC \* > \*\* - - - A co-worker’s mother got into selling beanies during a long off-work time period she had, due to a car accident injury: I dunno how much she made in the year or so she did it, but she is now stuck with literally thousands of them that she bought for $5-$7 a piece, that can’t be sold even for half that much, so she just stored them - a small mountain of them. ~ Casually speaking about it once, she claimed to (still) have several of almost every kind, except the Princess bears: two she bought off Ebay from somebody in Britain, for $200 each, she recieved with the backs slashed open and a US customs inspection notice. - MC \*\* Customs shouldn’t be able to pull this kind of shit. That lady should be able to charge the customs officer that did the inspection with vandalism… destruction of property… something, anything. It’s just not right that they can destroy your stuff for no apparent reason. ---
**Author:** ![the\_O-man](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/9f8e36/32.png) [@the\_O-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/the_O-man)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2001, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/9 "2001-08-21T01:44:45Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s just not right that they can destroy your stuff for > no apparent reason. The only exception I can see is if the sender used the term “Sample” for the description. Some people do this as a way to declare a lesser value for the item they are sending. Customs is on to this ploy, and will purposely mar or otherwise mutilate the item. Since it is just a sample with a very low value, the damage will not affect the price or resale value. I once heard a story where a woman handmade a wedding gown for her daughter in France. She had it overnighted to France, and put as the description, “Sample, no commercial value.” When the daughter took the gown out, there was a huge black “X” along the back of the dress, put there by customs. You have to be honest when you fill out a customs form, or you could do yourself an injustice. ---
**Author:** ![Timban](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Timban](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Timban)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2001, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/beanie-babies-did-the-market-crash/77142/10 "2001-08-21T02:09:37Z")
I agree with that. It’s not right to cheat customs, but you do realize that customs can still tax an item, whether or not it’s labelled sample or gift. Canada Customs has taxed b-day gifts from my folks before, after all. OTOH, you have to look at something. The lady made this gown as a gift for someone. It had no /commercial/ value, except perhaps the raw materials put into making the gown. Oh? And injustice? No injustice done to the person who lied on the form. Just to the person receiving valuable goods. It’s just not right, no matter how you look at it.