Beanie Babies

[MRG]

I still have a pet rock that a fellow college student made for me after we returned from a geology field trip.

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Best kind!

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I figure anything that I or my family actually had must be so common by definition that it can’t be very collectible. Cousin’s MIL had an entire room full of those baskets when she passed earlier this year and they are still trying to figure out what to do with them. At least my Dad’s coin collection had some intrinsic value to it.

 

[travelover]

I'm thinking Beanie Babies will come back, maybe, very strongly some day. Now is the time to start buying them up cheap so when the market soars again, I can cash out, big time.

Contrarian thinking.

 

[FUEGO]

I'm still trying to disabuse my mom of the notion that all the random things that are old that she has are worth anything. She gets it now after showing her at least a dozen different things that are being sold on ebay for pennies on the dollar, or even more persuasive, are listed for pennies on the dollar on ebay and still don't sell (because they are literally worthless and no one will pay anything for them at any price).

I kind of get the mindset. Things used to cost a lot because of much less efficient manufacturing and distribution practices and less competitive consumer marketplaces (and some will argue "toys were made better way back when" but that's often demonstrably false). A toy might cost the equivalent of many many hours of wages from one's labor. Now most toys cost very little (just bought a wooden trainset manufactured in Germany for $10, roughly the rate for 1 hr of unskilled labor here). Dollar store = a half dozen toys for an hour's worth of minimum wage labor.

When things cost a lot, you think they are valuable and you really conserve that resource. Growing up I heard the common refrain "take care of that stuff; it's a collector's item and will be worth something someday". Boxes were kept. We had to be very mindful.

Once I had kids and my parents started buying stuff for them, this created a little conflict. My mom and dad would get toys that "are collectors items and will be worth something someday" and then ask that we only let our kids play with the toys when we are closely supervising so they toys don't get messed up or damaged. Waaaay too much work and stress, so given the strings attached, we would kindly ask that they keep the toys at their own house for the grandkids to play with while there since we didn't want to take on such a great responsibility. I think they've gotten rid of a few things a decade later that they kept for the grandkids to play with but they never did, and now the grandkids no longer care about them since they are older (porcelain dolls come to mind).

At least we're on the same page re: antiques and them passing on material goods as an inheritance. I've said that we don't really want anything so they can feel free to get rid of whatever they want to make their life and surroundings as best as possible.

 

[athena53]

My mom and dad would get toys that "are collectors items and will be worth something someday" and then ask that we only let our kids play with the toys when we are closely supervising so they toys don't get messed up or damaged.

American Girl dolls come to mind here. I have two granddaughters but fortunately, DDIL and I agree on this: you don't buy a kid a toy and then put a lot of constraints on how they play with it. They won't be getting any American Girl dolls.

 

[Hamlet]

American Girl dolls come to mind here. I have two granddaughters but fortunately, DDIL and I agree on this: you don't buy a kid a toy and then put a lot of constraints on how they play with it. They won't be getting any American Girl dolls.

Yup. My wife gets stressed out when my two young daughters damage/wreck/lose their toys.

I just can't expend energy worrying about all the little plastic things they play with. My mother was the same way, and talks about vacuuming up the little guns from my Star Wars toys.

 

[FUEGO]

American Girl dolls come to mind here. I have two granddaughters but fortunately, DDIL and I agree on this: you don't buy a kid a toy and then put a lot of constraints on how they play with it. They won't be getting any American Girl dolls.

Yes. I'm glad my parents didn't know about these (nor did my kids ).

 

[NW-Bound]

I'm thinking Beanie Babies will come back, maybe, very strongly some day. Now is the time to start buying them up cheap so when the market soars again, I can cash out, big time.

Contrarian thinking.

Sounds like a sure way to make money. Still, you need to hedge and diversify.

I propose that you find as many things as possible which have fallen out of favor and load up on them. Don't do just Beanie Babies alone.

 

[cbo111]

In my Air Force days I flew with an electronic warfare officer (seemed to be a normal, intelligent individual) who was just nuts about Beanie Babies. Every time I traveled with him, he would say, "we gotta stop at this restaurant, they are supposed to have a big supply of x-type beanie. " This guy spent thousands $$ on these highly collectable stuffed animals. We were in MooseJaw Canada and he was buying a giant pile and claimed he would make a fortune back home. I wonder how that all worked out?

 

[foxfirev5]

After reading this thread and all the bitcoin mania, gold is starting to look reasonable to me. However at my age I'm sticking to my AA. I still have my fun money sitting there waiting for the opportunity to jump in on something I know. It could take awhile.

 

[97guns]

I’ve done really well on guns and ammo as my name suggests, I’ve never lost money on them and on most all pieces that I’ve sold I’ve doubled and tripled up on the investment, higher end knives have done well for me too

 

[97guns]

I did lose money on baseball and sports cards, at 17-18 I thought I was gonna be a millionaire off my $2500 stash, can’t even use it for toilet paper now, a few have held up ok

 

[CaliKid]

My MIL still thinks she'll retire on her Beanie Baby money one day. Even after I show her the closed sales on Ebay showing sales for $1.50 with free postage. They are essentially worthless outside of a couple rare ones. She has none of those... though she doesn't believe that I really checked enough... so they sit.

 

[travelover]

...........I propose that you find as many things as possible which have fallen out of favor and load up on them. Don't do just Beanie Babies alone.

Excellent idea. I'll start looking for 8 track tapes and maybe some spats.

 

[NW-Bound]

... 8 track tapes ...

You just reminded me of the following.

For some years now, I have meant to digitize home movies made on VHS tapes. When I had my first born - she's 32 now - I paid $1,300 for an over-the-shoulder camcorder so I could tape her growing up. I have been too busy with other stuff, and the other day it occurred to me that I might not have a working VHS player to hook up to my PC to digitize.

I may still have one or two inside the home, but out of curiosity looked on the Web and found that new VHS players were expensive! On Craigslist, used ones can get close to $100.

I should have picked up a new one at Costco when these were being liquidated for $50 or so.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

After reading this thread and all the bitcoin mania, gold is starting to look reasonable to me. However at my age I'm sticking to my AA. I still have my fun money sitting there waiting for the opportunity to jump in on something I know. It could take awhile.

I have just one word for you ... platinum!

 

[GalaxyBoy]

I worked with a guy who collected Civil War artifacts and claimed to make a fair amount of money at it. He claimed the trick was to actually sell the stuff he bought and not hang onto something just because it interested him. I wonder how that worked out for him in the long run?

 

[Jerry1]

You just reminded me of the following.

For some years now, I have meant to digitize home movies made on VHS tapes. When I had my first born - she's 32 now - I paid $1,300 for an over-the-shoulder camcorder so I could tape her growing up. I have been too busy with other stuff, and the other day it occurred to me that I might not have a working VHS player to hook up to my PC to digitize.

I may still have one or two inside the home, but out of curiosity looked on the Web and found that new VHS players were expensive! On Craigslist, used ones can get close to $100.

I should have picked up a new one at Costco when these were being liquidated for $50 or so.

DW wanted to do the same. We must have been on the same wave length in the early 80's. DD is 30ish and we have VHS recordings of her coming home from the hospital. We tried to digitize them once, but we're not comfortable with the long term viability of the disks/format. We looked at new VHS players and wish we'd thought of that a few years earlier. Not sure what we're going to do now.

 

[Throwdownmyaceinthehole]

Over the past couple months I've been stopping at Estate Sales. Just to see what's being sold. I don't buy, I'm just nosy. Lots of collectibles with no value. I wonder where all the leftovers go that don't sell and it keeps me from buying 'stuff'

 

[sengsational]

We got beanies when my kids were little and liked such things. Got a few too many since I'm completely an anti-stuffed toy person. But occasionally I'd see my daughter lining them up and having them interact with each other...playing with them and having a good time. The only thing I did differently than any other stuffed toy was to carefully remove the swiftak (the nylon thing that holds the tag on). If one she happened to have went up in value, I'd have sold it with the clean, original tag, lol! But I never looked at what they were going for on eBay back in the bubble period, so never really thought they'd be worth anything.

 

[athena53]

Lots of collectibles with no value. I wonder where all the leftovers go that don't sell and it keeps me from buying 'stuff'

I used to buy Department 57 (Dickens Village, Snow Village, etc.) figurines, houses, etc. back in the 1980s and put them up every Christmas. They were made of china/ceramic and lit from the inside so they made a very pretty display. I never had the illusion they were an "investment" even though they had a newsletter, touted items about to be "discontinued", etc. I suspect I sank less than $500 into all of them over the years.

A few years ago I saw an article in a local paper about a church putting up its annual display of Dept. 57 villages. My guess is that someone donated their entire accumulation to the church and got a nice tax write-off. They're worth almost nothing on e-Bay, especially since they're fragile so they have to be packed carefully for shipping. Fortunately for me, my daughter-in-law likes them so she now has my collection.

 

[joeea]

Gold and diamonds command more than their inherent value in large part because of their rarity. Bitcoins are a series of ones and zeroes in magnetic storage ... nothing rare there.

By design there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. There are vastly more pieces of gold and vastly more diamonds.

So if "rarity" was the actual arbiter of value, you have the argument precisely reversed.

Bitcoins are a particular series of ones and zeroes. Just like gold and diamonds are a particular series of electrons, protons, and neutrons - nothing rare there.

 

[Mr._Graybeard]

By design there will only ever be 21 million bitcoins. There are vastly more pieces of gold and vastly more diamonds.

So if "rarity" was the actual arbiter of value, you have the argument precisely reversed.

Bitcoins are a particular series of ones and zeroes. Just like gold and diamonds are a particular series of electrons, protons, and neutrons - nothing rare there.

Well, my main problem with bitcoins is that they have no intrinsic value or asset base to support them. Gold and diamonds are also poor investment vehicles, IMO.