Who Knew...Gobbles Could Be Worth A Fortune?

 

No...

Um, no...

Just no.

Since today was my first day back to work since before Halloween, I put away my one Halloween desk decoration, and got out my one Thanksgiving desk decoration, a cute little Beanie Baby named Gobbles.

The reason I have Gobbles is two fold. It's a great Thanksgiving decoration, but he (I'm assuming it's a "he"...) and I share a birthday. I have no idea if the company made 365 different Beanie Babies. If so, everyone would have one that shared their birthday. Gobbles is mine--a fine choice, if I don't say so myself.

 I don't have a lot of Beanie Babies--I'm no collector, but every once in a while I like to do a little research on the ones we do have. Tonight, I thought it would be interesting to check out other Gobblers out there.

And I don't think there's any way any of them can be worth thousands of dollars.

Yes, I understand that scarcity drives up demand. The Gobbles I found on-line, the "not perfect" ones, have flaws, a typo here, a missing space there. My Gobbles is downstairs on my desk. Of course, I could run down there right now and see if my little guy has the same flaws. I'm not, because even if he did, I have a hard time believing anyone would voluntarily hand over the equivalent of a nice used car for a small plush animal with flaws.

Then again, I'm no collector so what do I know?

Not much, apparently.

If I found my Gobbles to be work thousands of dollars, I'd gladly hand him over, then spend a very small percentage of the profit I made on a regular, non-flawed Gobbles. After all, all the flawed ones and all the non-flawed ones have the same birthday.

Curiosity will drive me to check. Most likely I've got a regular Gobbles. And that's just fine with me.

Cha...And...Ching!

I stopped by a yard sale today. It's been a while since I've indulged, but I was coming home from running an errand this morning and I thought it looked like fun. Plus, the sign by the side of the road clearly advertised a "Multi-Family" event.

So I stopped.

And I picked up a few things.

And those things were Beanie Babies.

Truth be told, the multi-family sale wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be, but what they had was nice--and clean.

I came across the box of bears and other animals. When I saw what they were selling for, I did something I never do, I pulled out my phone and searched "Rare Beanie Babies" on Ebay. I checked out some of the rare ones then looked in the box.

I ended up buying ten. When I got home I did a little more checking to see why some of the prices for rare Beanie Babies were so high (some in the tens of thousands of dollars...) on Ebay. We did a little investigating and found that some of the ones I bought are worth some money--not anywhere near the super high rates, but worth a surprising amount.

I've never sold anything on Ebay so setting up an account figuring it all out so neither we or the buying gets burned should be interesting. 

Of course, the Beanie Baby market could be down the tubes by tomorrow morning. If that happens, then I'll have purchased almost a dozen cute, once-valuable little animals full of plastic beads.

Friends On A Shelf...

Friends On A Shelf

A couple of days ago I saw a lifestyle story online. The story centered around toys that were at one time extremely popular. Beanie Babies, Cabbage Patch Dolls were just a few of the toys that gave parents fits--especially around Christmastime--because they were so hard to find. The story can be found: HERE.

I didn't think much of the story. I think we all know about fads that are here today, gone tomorrow. Toys seem to be something the media loves to talk about...it makes for good television at Christmas.

This morning my wife and I visited a friend in the neighborhood. In their house they have a bookshelf full of Beanie Babies and the story came back to me. We complimented them on their collection because it was a good one. I realized that to the people who have assembled these colorful toys could care less about how much they have depreciated in the past decade. They just love them and enjoy having them in their house. And, after all, isn't that the only thing that's really important?

(I realize Chuck is not a Beanie Baby, but I couldn't not include him...)