Beanie Babies current worth? It’s complicated!
Millions of people who bought into the Beanie Baby craze of the 1990s hoped their investment in the plush critters would pay off. But thanks to the glut of Beanies produced, only a very few rare Beanies — in specific categories with certain tags — are worth much at all. And even with those, experts say, it’s difficult to confirm values because of private transactions that may not have resulted in the advertised prices. The most hyped Beanie in terms of value is the Princess bear — deep purple bears produced in 1997 to raise money for a Princess Di memorial fund. There have
been reports of such bears bringing in thousands of dollars, but most of them only garner a few hundred, if that. BeanieBabiesPriceGuide.com and TyCollector.com offer resources and information for those who want to buy or sell. But the main marketplace remains eBay, which has its own list of top Beanies: http://ebay.to/2gJNq5H “If you were to host a group of Beanie Baby specialists with a view towards establishing a ‘most rare’ list; you’d get lots of heated debate and no real consensus,” says Leon Schlossberg of the Ty Collector site. That said, here’s Ty Collector’s short list of “most rare” Beanies, in no particular order of value:
(bear) — Made to promote the 2006 opening of L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City.
(red ribbon or green ribbon) — Handed out to employees and field representatives of Ty Inc. at the Second Annual Appreciation Night on Sept. 13, 1997.
(bear) — Handed out to guests at the 2010 Hong Kong Toy Fair in the Peninsula Hotel.
(bear) with a brown nose — Holders of the Ty sponsored MasterCard received these bears. The bears normally had black noses, but a few card holders were randomly selected to receive the rare versions with brown noses.
(monkey) — This Beanie Baby was renamed Bongo and very few were sold with the “Nana” name on the tags.