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The collector's mentality is that you can never have enough.
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And that's very dangerous.
[reporter] Oh, my God, this is unbelievable!
It became just an obsession.
[woman] What do you think about grown-ups
jumping out of their car to get a Beanie Baby?
Insane. [scoffs]
Perhaps the biggest toy craze in history.
[man] Bigger than Frank Sinatra, the Beatles
and Elvis Presley combined.
[woman] I would've paid whatever it took
to get that Beanie Baby at the time.
$10,000.
[man 2] Without the few women
that started the entire mania,
Beanie Babies never would've been.
Just moms getting together and creating something.
We didn't get along,
there was a lot of competition, you know. [growls]
If you don't have a number, you're not gonna be let in.
They would just lunge and grab.
[woman] The Beanie Baby craze is reaching insane proportions.
Ty Warner did absolutely no advertising.
It was almost as if there was no guy behind them.
[man] Have either one of you ever met Ty Warner?
- Never. - No.
Like the Wizard of Oz.
Can we come in here and talk about the Beanie Babies?
No.
It was a really nice thing for a while,
until the adults ruined it.
Today that $1500 investment we are told
would be worth about $75,000.
I'm happy. I'm going to get a lot of money now.
[woman] There was no evidence that they would ever
be worth anything, we just believed it.
Something happened with Beanie Babies,
that's all everybody wants.
They are magical, and you get addicted.
I never was addicted to anything,
and I got addicted to Beanie Babies.
And I ran amok.
[gentle music]
Hi, I'm Mary Beth Sobolewski.
Hi, I'm Becky Phillips.
Hi, I'm Joni Hirsch-Blackman.
Naperville is a town about 35 miles west of Chicago.
Very child-friendly,
we won every 'greatest place to raise your child' type of awards
over the years.
Ha! Colorado Court.
People in the neighbourhood would say,
"Oh, you live on Colorado Court, you guys have a lot of fun."
Hi, how you doing? Glad to see ya.
Becky Phillips just lives a few doors down from here.
Before Beanie Babies, I was a language-arts teacher.
Once I had children, I stopped teaching.
So I was a full-time mom.
But I'm very competitive. I come from a family of 11.
But I get involved with something,
I want to go 100% in.
I worked for IBM for about 10 years.
I was a systems engineer.
And I loved it.
But then I turned it all in to be a full-time mom.
I've been working from home almost from the very beginning.
I was carpooling three children. A lot of sweat suits.
Big hair. In the early '90s, I had a perm.
I was a journalist for 'People Magazine'.
I spent a lot of time with my kids. It was a great time.
It was a lot of fun.
I think of the '90s as sort of frivolous.
[song] Socker Boppers! Socker Boppers!
You can sock all day and bop all night...
I think it was a very quiet, non-tumultuous time
preceding 9/11.
It just seemed like a very quiet
time in our world
where people were happy.
We enjoyed collecting.
Especially in the Chicagoland area.
[Mary Beth] Each of my kids started collecting things early.
One of them collected baseballs.
One of my daughters
even collected unsharpened pencils.
So we collect, we collect. It was fun.
The first Beanie Baby I ever saw was the lobster.
A Beanie Baby is a small stuffed animal
that fits in the palm of your hand.
It's very poseable, so you could sit it,
you can fix the arms a little bit.
It has very expressive eyes.
You almost feel like the Beanie Baby is a little person.
It has a personality.
The Beanie Babies have a hanging tag on them that say 'Ty'.
Now, I didn't know what exactly that meant.
I didn't know at the time that there was one guy
and that his name was Ty.
Ty Warner, I like to say is like the Wizard of Oz.
Ty Warner is a real character.
There were always rumours about him.
Not many people knew Ty Warner the person.
Including me.
Deep down, he's very insecure.
That's why he's so private.
Ty Warner is a young man whose father worked for me,
as a salesman.
And then Ty began selling our toys after his father retired.
He got his training with us at our company, Dakin Toys.
And became our number-one salesman.
We were doing over $200 million.
He had a big ego, and that was all part of his thing.
I still beat him on the tennis courts. [chuckles quietly]
He left us and went out on his own.
He hit the market at a time
when collectibles were in vogue.
The best advice I gave him was to
come up with a good name,
and make a quality product.
And market the devil out of it. And that's what he did.
[man] Ty Products were a small manufacturing company.
It wasn't huge, that's for sure
but Ty Warner had an air of success.
And a confidence that he was going to be more successful.
Our family owned a small manufacturing company
in Canada that was in the gift trade,
and wanted to go and look
for some lines that we could possibly distribute.
I used to travel down to Chicago
where Ty's head office was.
And he would show me the new products he was developing,
and he passed me this little green frog.
He said "Bill, you are gonna put every dollar you have
"into that product."
I needed about $500,000 to really get this off the ground.
You know, for a 27-year-old, that was a lot of money.
But I thought, "I gotta do this
"because if I don't do this, someone else is going to do it."
[woman] The office was small in the very beginning.
And I was employee number 12.
And I remember I was 12 because
everybody used to say "You're the 12th employee!"
And it was, like, exciting.
My parents immigrated here from India in 1972.
They wanted me to be a doctor. [giggles]
The stereotypical sort of profession.
But I couldn't stand blood.
So I started at Ty.
My job was a telemarketer and when I walked in,
I remember I was looking around
and saw all the stuffed animals and I was just thinking,
"This is so cool, this is a toy company!"
So we had the first nine prototypes
and they didn't have a name
and there were a lot of different names bouncing around.
And then somebody said 'Beanie Babies'.
And everyone was like "Oh! That's it."
Legs, Chocolate, Pinchers,
Patti, Flash, Squealer, Splash, Spot and Cubbie.
[Joni] In the early days, Ty went to the stores himself.
He always drove a very unusual car.
And often would drive around with a full-length fur coat.
And a top hat...
..to intrigue people
into allowing him in to show his products.
He's unusual-looking, I would say.
He reminded me of Willy Wonka.
Ty Warner never sold to the big stores,
no Wal-Marts, no Kmarts or anything like that.
We think he's making a mistake. We're America's toy store.
Why not have your product in our stores?
It was a big thing for him - 'do not sell to the majors' -
the reason being is they will take your product
and they will put it on sale,
and they'll destroy the market for the little guys.
Ty was all about the small retailers.
He loved the small retailers.
He found them to be very, very faithful to him
and we found the same.
[woman] The Beanie Babies, initially, they were not moving.
It was very difficult to get retailers to take that plunge
to even try Beanie Babies.
Taking a look at the holiday season's hottest toys.
What's THE hottest toy this year?
Probably Tickle Me Elmo and Nintendo 64.
[woman] So then I was sort of thinking,
"What would make a consumer walk into a store,
look at this wall of plush and choose this particular piece?
And I was thinking that there needs to be a way
where it connects to people.
The thought just randomly popped into my head
that we should do poems, that would be kind of cute.
So immediately upon getting the thought,
I just walked into Ty's office
'cause Ty happened to be there
and I told him, I said "I have this idea."
So he said, "You think you could write one for all of them?
"And can you fax me the poems in 18 hours?"
There was, like, 80 or so at the time -
87, I think, that I had to write.
My sister, she's a visionary woman.
She's ambitious, she has the ability to think really big.
And to actually make it happen.
[Lina] Oh, my God. Look at that... That is so old.
This area is where we wrote most of the poems.
Right.
[man reads] "Legs lives in a hollow log.
"Legs likes to play leapfrog.
"If you like to hang out at the lake
"Legs will be the one friend you'll make."
I didn't read it right. I didn't read it very well.
[man reads] Bongo's a monkey that lived in a tree.
[Lina] "He's the happiest monkey you'll ever see.
"In his spare time, he plays the guitar.
"One of these days, he's gonna be a big star."
[both laugh]
It was a toy to play with. To pretend with.
My daughter was buying one a week with her allowance money.
You came to notice them in the Chicago area,
you started to seek them out,
seek more places, seek more variations.
[Becky] You know, it started with my daughter Michelle.
Michelle got excited about it so I got excited about it.
I told my mom about it,
said "Hey, I'd really like to collect some of these.
"Can you help me out?"
I have such good memories of her and I together
racing around looking for the newer Beanie Babies,
the rarer Beanie Babies.
If there was one that you wanted,
you had to go look for them
and there was not an easy way to look for them
'cause they were only in small stores.
So you had to just sort of drive around.
So it was like being on a perennial scavenger hunt.
Ty was not giving us any information whatsoever.
It was a blank slate.
We had no idea what was available,
how many were available, when they were produced,
we had to find this all out on our own.
What we did was we would take every Beanie,
list the dates that they were introduced.
So this is our first attempt
at putting our beanie chronology together.
[Mary Beth] After a while, though, we started saying,
"Well, there must be a finite number of these things."
And having that collector's mentality,
you wanted to check them off a list and have all of them.
From there on, it became a multiple trip, do what we can,
keep going until you were tired,
until there were no other stores in the area
that might have what we're looking for.
And then my mom took that to an extreme
and it quickly became her thing over mine.
[Mary Beth] I am afraid to say that I was
actually the one that got so intense
and then it became almost an obsession.
This is how this collecting craze happened.
It happened by accident.
By parents, mothers, basically
collecting these for their children.
I am Peggy Gallagher. I am from the Chicago area.
I have been a Beanie Baby collector for many, many years.
Since day one.
Paula, who was my younger sister and a physician at the time,
she found them in the hospital gift shop.
She opened the bag and I go, "Oh!
"Well, I want that one, and that one, and that one." [laughs]
Totally love at first sight.
I thought they were the cutest things that were ever created.
And the names, I love the names.
And I just would giggle. I mean, I STILL giggle.
[laughs]
They are cute.
No. I have stepchildren.
They were not.
No, they were not.
Peggy Toy, how are you?
I'm here to go shopping for Beanie Babies.
Did you bring the cash?
When I started collecting the Beanie Babies,
I had just recently gotten married.
I was hiding them because I thought
my new husband's gonna think I'm crazy
buying these little stuffed toys.
So I'd hide them upstairs in that office.
And then finally,
I told him about this collection that I'd been hiding
and I showed him and he couldn't believe it.
He just said, "Do you collect all these toys all the time?"
[laughs] I was like a normal person.
And here I am not acting normal.
He was a little shocked.
He was a Porsche person
so he kept collecting cars and Mercedes,
so he had to be a little empathetic because his toys
were a lot more expensive than mine.
It was evident very early that you couldn't get
all the Beanie Babies
by just going to different stores in your local area.
So then started another phase of my collecting
which was going outside of your state
to find the ones you didn't yet have
that you really needed, right?
[Becky] We called Ty and they gave us some stores
that they were available in.
And so we started calling those stores
and then what we would do
is say, "OK, do you know any other gift shops in your area?"
[phone line trills]
[woman] You're gonna have to wait for a second, OK?
Then we called the Chamber of Commerce
in those cities, and they would tell us all the gift shops.
We called every shop over the United States.
Our phone bills for one month were almost $2000.
So now you're creating a market
innocently by women calling all over the United States.
I wasn't the only one.
You got Becky from Naperville,
buying Beanie Babies, paying with a credit card,
shipping them all.
Mary Beth Sobolewski. She was one.
Gift shop owners, they would even say to me,
"There's these women in Naperville..." I said, "Becky?"
And they knew the names, they go "Oh, yes,
"we just ran her credit card."
and I thought, they cleaned me out before I got to them."
I never felt like there was a competition
between the other collectors.
No, it was plenty of room for everybody.
We didn't get along, there was a lot of competition, you know?
[growls] And women are the worst.
I'd deal with men any time, women and... Oh, my gosh.
Yeah, there was competition.
[man] One of the real sleepers in the industry this year,
these cute little animals called the Beanie Babies
from an unknown company called Ty Toys.
It was going here in Chicago,
but it hadn't really hit nationally as much yet.
We had about a year before
people started finding out about Beanie Babies.
The kids like them so if he keeps them happy,
that's why I buy them.
It was steady growth until Ty had the article
in 'People Magazine'.
I'm the only journalist who ever interviewed Ty Warner
about Beanie Babies.
In those days, if 'People Magazine' was calling,
people wanted to talk to you because they knew the magazine.
If I think back,
I just kind of remember him being almost like a young child
showing you things, you know?
Like, "Look here and look what we did here!"
and he was just very, very proud of what he'd done.
Ah! Here we go.
[Reads] "Ty Warner's Beanie Babies
"are the new gotta-have toys."
He didn't want to be the story,
he wanted the toys to be the story,
and they certainly were.
Ty Warner and Ty Inc.
did absolutely no advertising and they did no media.
There was nothing that came from the company.
People wanted someone who was associated with Beanie Babies
to connect with.
It goes from the child to the parents
to the aunts and uncles and grandparents.
So we would have people
from magazines and radio shows calling us,
so we became the Beanie Baby advocates for collectors.
The brand-new current ones are really hot demand
right here in the Chicago area.
This is actually where the craze began.
I can say, hey, I think Becky and I and Peggy and Mary Beth
really did a lot for it Ty
to get this moving in the right direction.
[reporter] Open any newspaper to the classified ads
and you're likely to find at least a half-dozen ads
from people selling, buying or trading Beanie Babies.
[man] Each day, they come to Hamilton Place Mall
searching for these - Beanie Babies.
[woman] I think the girls really liked it at first
but now I think the adults have got into it, you know?
[Joni] This was supposed to be a toy
and we were all having a lot of fun with it,
but now it's moving into a different realm.
What is a Beanie Baby?
It's a beanbag toy meant to be played with.
My name is Harry Rinker, and during my career,
I was known as the Beanie Meanie.
What makes The Beanie Baby come alive is the secondary market.
Not the primary market where it first is sold,
but what happens to it when somebody tries to resell it.
Kids started demanding
that their parents buy Beanie Babies for them
because their friends had them.
Parents said "Oh, my gosh,
"I need to get that this Beanie Baby for my kids,"
and they went to the store and it wasn't there,
so then they went onto the secondary market,
the newspaper columns and all the rest of them
and they paid double, triple, quadruple.
Essentially, with any bubble, what it starts with
is enthusiasm from a small group.
I'm Dave Sobolewski,
I am the middle child of Mary Beth Sobolewski,
one of the original Beanie Ladies.
So my background, my education, my profession, it's all finance.
You know, Beanie Babies is a case study
in just how a few people pushing an idea and enthusiasm,
crazy things can happen.
Well, they started lining up at 1:30 in the afternoon yesterday
for our 8 o'clock sale, so they waited about 18.5 hours.
- Have you got them all? - Yeah. All of them.
- And more. - And more.
- Oh, it gets worse. - All of them and more.
OK. Well, you made it hard, didn't you?
You know, you have... [audio fades]
Oh, I think Jeannine Twardus, she was over the edge. [laughs]
I had wrote a song, 'It's a Beanie Rap',
and the words just flowed through my fingers
as I typed them into a computer.
People have told me it's catchy.
[hip-hop beat plays]
Let me tell you a story about a guy named Ty
He created these beanies that make me high
Little beans in their bodies and cute little faces
I'm addicted to them been to all kinds of places
Smuggling beanies upstairs It's no lie
And I blame it all on a guy named Ty
[sings] It's a beanie rap It's a beanie rap
I'm all tied up.
I actually sold some in my store and on the Internet.
I even tried sending a copy to a local radio station
but they never played it.
Back in the 1990s, I was in the Navy.
I was a cryptological technician.
When I left the Navy, I was working for a bank
and then I worked at the FBI for three years. [chuckles]
Like... [imitates Morse code]
"Do I want to do this for the rest of my life?" You know?
And so I eventually left the FBI.
I'm all tied up.
I think it was around '96, 'cause AOL just had come out.
[voice] You've got mail!
And I saw an article about Beanie Babies
in a Chicago newspaper.
And it described how people were both going crazy
over these little animals and I got on the Internet
to see if anybody else was collecting them
and back then, they had little chat rooms on AOL,
and it was not formalised like it is now in the Internet world,
it was very rudimentary.
[man on TV] Can you believe what's possible these days?
Conversations through your computer!
Worlds of information one click away.
Everyone I know is on it.
- Email. - Instant messages.
There's no better way to keep in touch.
[voice] You've got mail.
[Imitates dial-up modem connection]
It was, like, a very characteristic sound
of logging onto the Internet in the '90s.
And you could hear it through the whole house!
[dial-up modem starts up]
I went to Ty and I told him
there's this thing called the Internet.
If we build something that has a list of all of our products
and a guestbook,
just like you would think at a wedding,
when you have a guestbook at a wedding,
and he asked a bunch of questions, I remember,
and said, "Let's build this,
"this might be something cool to build."
[reporter] Would you believe Beanie Babies
have their own website?
And that was when the journey began.
Jillian and Reed regularly go on the Internet.
[child] We go on the Internet
and we go to what they call the guestbook...
It was maybe one of the first blogs
that ever existed on the Internet.
As maybe a predecessor to the sentiments that early Facebook
was asking for people to share
"what are you doing right now in this moment?"
You can see it has Beanie Baby games,
it has a list with graphics
and also a text version of the list.
That was so far ahead, it's only in looking back,
that you see, "Wow, they were really early."
But this is the Ty one that we're going to see first.
It's the mother of all of them.
Let's take a look at that.
- Mm-hm. - Not many hits.
Look at the number of hits. Back up.
Oh, my God.
Over 1 billion hits.
The page was constantly crashing
because of the amount of traffic that it was getting.
This craze never would've happened
if there wasn't an Internet.
But the Internet in and of itself
was not enough to make Beanie Babies what they became.
On the guestbook, Ty Warner allows us
to talk to each other about the Beanie Babies
and to sell Beanie Babies.
Now you've got people from America Online
trying to hook up with people
that are buying and selling Beanie Babies.
"Here, if you want this, I can sell it to you for 25 bucks."
Beanie Babies would go to production
and they'd be in production for a certain amount of time...
Suddenly, they weren't able
to make a particular one of the Beanies
or the fabric ran out or they just couldn't get that shipment
and they found when a particular item was less available,
that people wanted it more.
I don't think he did that on purpose.
I think it was just a fluke and the collectors caught it.
[reporter] Bob Howard picked up
three new retirees for his grandson.
He chose Rover, Ziggy and Squealer.
Ty wanted to capitalise on that
and not just quietly let one of the beanies retire,
but to actually start letting people know.
[phone chimes]
[Becky] Two weeks before January, 1997,
Ty closes down his website.
And he puts a clock on the website.
[clock ticks]
So we're all waiting.
And then, all of a sudden, January 1...
..he tells us all about the beanie babies
that were going to be retired.
[cries]
So you had people in stores
so they can go and pick them up before they're all gone.
It was like you didn't want to miss out.
[child] Mom, I want this one!
[reporter] Behind all this is a carefully crafted strategy,
add one new beanie to the market, and take one away
and one by one
the beanies move into the Endangered Species category.
The collectors loved it.
Nothing to spark a collector's interest
more than "You can't have it anymore."
So then people now are going in
and if they see one of the ones they've just retired,
they buy the whole bunch.
[reporter] Once they retire them,
they become very hard to get?
Exactly.
Well, then what you saw with Beanie Babies
is the supply went even lower,
as these beanies kept getting retired.
So then you've got demand going way higher.
So prices will rise.
You see how the psychology
of both Ty Warner and the collectors
played hand-in-hand to really fuel this mania.
[reporter] What happens to a Beanie Baby
once a Beanie Baby retires?
- The price of it goes up. - No kidding!
$350, $450, $900.
The prices went up and up and up.
A complete collection of Beanie Babies
could go as high as $100,000.
Somebody offered me $100,000 dollars.
$100,000. 20 years ago, right?
I said no.
In comes the people who said "They're an investment.
"I can buy Beanie Babies and send my kids through college."
[Joni] This was becoming something different.
We don't play with these things
because they're going to be worth money.
If the tag was creased, you'd ruin the value of your beanie.
People were starting to do it for financial investment.
There were the collectors
that made it into a business
and there were others that weren't collectors at all
that just made it a business.
I call myself the monkey in the middle.
My name is Phyllis Miceli.
I've been known as Queenie Beanie for 20 years.
I didn't collect 'em, I sold 'em.
I was crazy about the money in the bank,
not about the Beanie Babies.
I sold to accountants,
actuaries, airplane pilots,
they were all into Beanie Babies.
A gentleman emailed me
and he said, "Can you handle a large account?"
And I said, "No problem. Send me the money."
And he sent me $20,000. to buy Beanie Babies for him.
He was stationed in the Marines in Hawaii.
I didn't trust the Beanie Babies
being sent through the mail.
So we hopped on a plane and handcarried them to Hawaii.
His wife went to the bathroom and he handed me 20,000 cash.
And he said, "Don't tell my wife what I paid for these."
[laughs]
My husband and I both thought it was totally crazy. [chuckles]
And when we got back to the hotel
I remember we threw the money on the bed.
[laughs]
[footage rushes]
First ever international Beanie Baby convention.
How do you like that?
[reporter] 1000 people milled through the convention centre
to get a closer look at current and retired Beanies.
[Becky] I realised going to the collector shows
that there were people out there
who were buying the beanies and this was their livelihood.
This was their job.
I know some of them that would make $30,000 at a show.
And so we started doing the same thing.
And so we were shipping boxes of Beanies and selling them.
I would get, like, 50 Patti the Platypus.
I remember thinking,
"I just paid 10 bucks for each one of these,"
and my husband said, how much are you gonna sell these for?"
I said, "$300."
Right away, I'm not good in math
but he's, like, calculating,
"Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Oh, my God!"
He's, like, jumping around. [laughs]
He thought I was just a genius.
I might have bought a newer Mercedes.
I had 'B BABIES' Yeah, I got the plates,
I thought "Oh, my God, this is so cute."
It was on my Mercedes and I was proud of that.
[laughs]
[reporter] Becky Phillips
and Becky Estenssoro of Naperville
have turned Beanies into a career.
They've even written a book called 'Beanie Mania'.
We want to concentrate on the collectors,
so they know what's available, so they don't get ripped off.
[reporter 2] Out of her home where she and her husband
are raising several children,
she puts out 'Mary Beth's Beanie World Magazine'.
A publisher gave me a call out of the absolute blue
and said, "We would like to do a magazine
"all about Beanie Babies."
By the end of the time the first issue was out,
they made it a bimonthly.
It just kept going and going and going.
[reporter] They're going to be turning out 600,000 copies
of the May issue.
I couldn't believe it. I was like,
"Oh, my gosh, this is my name on here.
"Are you kidding?" This is just me from suburbia.
I think in the Beanie Baby world, I was famous.
I was pretty famous.
We all want that one moment
where we feel that maybe this is just our special time.
[Rinker] Ty did not manipulate this market.
Let's talk about what it takes to manipulate a market.
First of all, there needs to be a secondary market
and a craze - that we already established.
This is the highest price I have heard. For $2000 at a show...
[Rinker] Then you need the media,
they're the best suckers to manipulating a market out there
if you can get them to do it.
There are so many collectors all around the world,
this, of course, is a phenomenon.
[Translator speaks German]
I got paid to go to England, I was all over Germany.
You start out with a finite list of Beanie Babies
where you can check them off.
I was doing so much media, it was truly 24/7.
[reporter] The books and magazines explain their worth.
They needed the price guides that come out.
These ladies that wrote these price guides
made a lot of money off of it - why?
Because they raise the price in every price guide
and people took that as a price absolute.
[reporter] People pay hundreds, even thousands
for hard-to-find beanies on the secondary market.
But to spend that much money...
The feeling is just very intense in this collectibles market.
There was such a frenzy.
Oh, gosh!
Just the electricity.
[crowd clamours]
[woman] They would just lunge and grab
and somebody was yelling, "I need, I need,"
and it would go flying across the store.
[Mary Beth] You'll start to do anything you can
to 'complete your collection'.
That's when things got out of control.
[reporter] Don't be fooled, these are not the real thing.
US Customs officers at O'Hare Airport
confiscated over 400 fake Beanie Babies.
[Mary Beth] People knew they could start
making money on this stuff,
that's when the counterfeits
started oozing into the environment
and ruining everything.
[reporter] The stash of cute creatures
was initially mistaken for a different kind of stash.
We suspected that there may be narcotics in it.
When the inspectors opened the boxes,
lo and behold, stuffed animals.
[woman] There are some Beanie Babies out there
that sport a $5000 price tag.
With that kind of money at stake,
Customs officials say despite this huge Beanie bust,
keeping fake ones off the street may be nearly impossible.
[Becky] We know of several collectors
who lost at least $10,000 or more on Beanies
because they were counterfeit.
The first thing that we noticed
when we open the box was the material.
You can see that the material
on the fake, counterfeit Beanies
are not as plush as the regular Beanie Babies are.
In the beginning, counterfeit Beanie Babies,
it was obvious they were counterfeit.
But then they were starting to look better and better
so that is when you had people
like Peggy Gallagher
starting to do authentication of beanies.
They are picking these up for 70c
but these are rejects,
these are not the authentic Ty Beanie Babies.
- So they're frauds? - They are frauds.
They were coming from Beijing
and the people in China knew that these Americans are crazy,
they're paying all this money...
Well, of course they're gonna start counterfeiting them!
'Cause there gonna make a fortune
because these people don't even know what they look like.
You know what, you have a service that you offer.
Yes - on my website,
I have the first authenticating business
for Beanie Babies.
People were sending these to me from all over the country,
and I think I charged 20 bucks
and then I started getting a lot of competition
but I was still the main one.
They knew they could trust me.
So that has a lot to do with my success.
For a little item,
it's amazing how much of a back story there is.
You can't even imagine.
Initially, I don't even remember
having a title at the time - it was just sales,
and then, within six months,
he had asked me to become general manager for the company.
It seems so much smaller than I remember.
We were all young at the time,
and everyone was open to change.
So I think that was really exciting
to be able to hit the dragon's tail and it actually moved.
It was insane. You couldn't get through on the phone.
Ty was very frustrated when he couldn't get through.
So he installed we called it the bat phone.
The big red phone.
If that rang, whoever was there had to run and get the phone.
My name is Mark Jeremias
and I was executive VP over merchandising for Ty Inc.
I started in the fashion business.
I spent my life watching supermodels
take their clothes off in front of me
and then I came back and worked with little teddy bears,
so that's a rather big difference.
When your secondary market becomes so, so, so much greater
than your primary market,
that's when a brand has problems.
- Yes.
He's protecting the brand, the trademark, the copyrights.
You know, on the other hand, I think that some aspects of it,
um, it's just become a part of his nature.
Well, what kind of people?
I'm just asking what kind of people you talking about?
That's all true.
[Mary Beth] We had to tiptoe around the Ty company itself.
Because we were treated much of the time as an enemy,
which is really crazy
because, um, we were their mouthpiece
and due to our media presence and our magazines,
that they sold, you know, millions more Beanie Babies
than they may be would have.
[voiceover] Everybody is selling something.
Beanie hats, Beanie shirts,
Beanie jewellery, even Beanie computer software.
The one thing all these people have in common
is that none of them have anything to do with Ty Inc.
Probably the biggest entrepreneur of all
is Mary Beth Sobolewski.
[Mark] Originally, Mary Beth was a collector,
as her collecting increased, she decided to do the magazine.
The magazine at the time I believe
was starting to make a lot of money.
'Mary Beth's Beanie World Monthly'
was out for about 1.5 years
and things were going so smoothly
and then all of a sudden, one day, I'm working from my home
and the doorbell rings.
And I open the door and they said, "Mary Beth Sobolewski?"
Really nice, cheery young guy. I said, "Yes, that's me."
And he says, "Here," and I'm like, "What are these?"
"You're being served."
"Served? Oh, my gosh."
You know, Mary Beth was profiting
off of our likeness and image.
Well, that was an issue for us.
[Mary Beth] So I was being sued by Ty Inc
for infringement on using the word 'Beanie' in our title.
I had spent my last 1.5 years
being a cheerleader for this man and his products.
And to get served,
I felt like it was kind of a thorn in my side.
She took advantage of the situation,
of benefiting by infringing on copyright and trademark,
to me, it's not an ethical... thing to do.
[woman] What do you think my chances are
of getting an interview with Ty for this documentary?
- Absolutely zero. - Why?
He doesn't like to interview.
[reporter] Stores say when they get them,
they're as good as sold.
It's a nationwide frenzy and a multimillion-dollar business.
[woman] It was insane.
We couldn't get the product in fast enough to ship it out.
I think at one point in the late '90s,
they were shipping $1 million a day.
[chuckles] It was crazy.
My sales in 1996... Um... I don't care, I'll tell you.
They were $2.6 million.
And in 1997 they were $23 million.
So yeah, it was pretty straight up.
I don't know how many are sold but...
[laughs]
Yep. Yep, I did. I bought a crazy car.
It was a Porsche 911.
Pretty sweet car. I was pretty lucky.
So as it goes out the door,
there's another container coming in the door.
So...
[man] All gone in two months. That's the turnover.
And then it will all fill up again.
My estimates are that we sold over 40 million Beanie Babies.
It's ridiculous.
But think of how many he did, if he did maybe 10 times that.
You know, you can do the math.
[somber music]
The world has lost Princess Diana at age 36
in a car crash in Paris,
along with her companion... [voice fades out]
[Joni] She was an iconic figure in the world, I think.
And it was covered endlessly.
[reporter] No-one could've required this ocean of flowers.
[Joni] I think people were very, very sad about
the loss of such a positive person at such a young age.
People can understand now what Diana did for them.
For those who love and collect Beanie Babies,
there's a new one hitting the stores today,
it's a bear called Princess
in honour of Diana, the Princess of Wales.
NBC's David Gregory this morning
is in a shop in Chicago.
- Hi, David. - Hi, Katie.
I wish you knew how nervous I was
on the train coming down here
with this little purple bear in my pocket.
Do you know that if people knew I had this,
I could be mugged on the streets of Chicago?
Here it is. This is the Princess bear.
It's got the little yellow rose on the chest there
and a little inscription from the Ty toy company
saying "Like an angel, she came from heaven above,
"she shared her compassion her pain, and her love."
It goes on and on.
All profits of Ty from this collectible
will be donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial fund.
Princess bear was hard to get, so that's why they were popular.
[reporter] Each store will receive 12
of these special Beanie Babies.
And that will only add to the collectability.
That's what credit cards are made for.
Mm-hm. Credit card debt.
There was thousands of dollars people were spending.
I will just give my credit card number, just say,
"Here, just send me every one of those little Beanie Babies
"with the red Ty heart and just send it to me."
It became an addiction.
I got addicted. [laughs]
I never was addicted to anything.
And I got addicted to Beanie Babies.
And I ran amok, is what happened.
That's a hard line to say.
I mean, when does it turn into addiction?
When it becomes excessive?
Where it affects your normal life? Could be.
What if your normal life becomes part of the addiction,
you know what I mean? It's supporting the addiction?
You just get the store, does that become your normal life?
Or is that part of the addict's life?
So... [chuckles]
I could've been a Beanie Baby addict at one point.
The addiction is there. And it's catching.
I don't know why you can't cure it.
I'd have 36 teddy bears sitting here,
the brown teddy, and I go to turn
and then I'd see one sitting there
looking at me on the shelf.
"Oh, look, he's cute. I'll buy him."
There's always a little bit of financial problems
and it's still haunting me to this date
so I get by but it's hard, yeah, it's been hard.
We should start a group called BA instead of AA,
Beanies Anonymous.
We could stand up and say,
"Hi, my name is Johnny, and I have to have Gigi."
- It's is it a 12-step? - No, it's a 32-step program.
- 12 won't cover it. [they laugh]
This thing is so big that I can't even imagine.
I met Ty through my hairdresser,
who offered to make an introduction
and asked me to bring in my resume
and he faxed over my resume to Ty to take a look at.
[phone chimes]
Hundreds of companies wanted to dance with us.
Virtually every category that you can imagine,
from fragrance to children's apparel
to Beanie Baby backpacks.
[phone chimes]
Steven Spielberg's office called regularly.
They wanted Beanie Babies for their movies. [chuckles]
[phone chimes]
Virtually none.
Ty was a very smart man.
He understands that the greater you diffuse your product,
the less you can control it.
They chase me around all day, looking around my cart.
I'll come out the back of the store
and there'll be five people waiting on me.
And they'll just smile, I know what they want.
People were following UPS trucks all over the suburbs,
from one Hallmark store to another.
It was obvious where it was going
and it was kind of obvious how to throw fuel on it.
[roaring in distance]
- Dinosaur? - Nope. Stomach. I'm starving.
- Hey, let's get a Happy Meal. - Cool.
[Joni] In the 1990s, a Happy Meal was a staple
in every mom's life.
A Happy Meal made your kid happy.
The first license that was secured was a license
with McDonald's Corporation for a line of Teenie Beanies.
- First I got Pinky. - Then I got Pinky!
I got Pinky And Patti in the same week!
What, did Vanessa catch something?
Teenie Beanie Baby-itis.
[voiceover] Now at McDonald's,
your kids can get Teenie Beanie Babies in a Happy Meal.
Real Ty Beanie Babies in a mini size.
[singer] Teeny Beanies.
[reporter] The Beanie Babies officially went out
with Happy Meals at 10:30 this morning
and that's when the onslaught began.
Can I get the purple Beanie Baby?
She's already got the pink one.
[reporter] McDonald's is selling out in Chicago
and throughout the Midwest.
Parts of New York City and Connecticut and the South.
Maybe if there was a few people left that hadn't heard
of Beanie Babies or Ty Inc.,
this was the way to make sure everybody knew.
[reporter 2] McDonald's thought the Babies
would last five weeks - they were gone in two.
If you want one of these little cuddly characters,
you better get to McDonald's fast.
The kids say they have to have them all.
The little Teenie Beanie Babies,
that became a whole collecting frenzy too.
I got the cat. Two to go.
[woman] The woman in front of me, they had turned over a card
that they were out of something
and she must've been waiting for it and she went nuts.
Mom, I want this.
I hate to admit some of this stuff
but I got a number of sets, full sets of Teenie Beanies
by no other way but going through the drive-through.
We would take all of the kids.
And we would put them in line,
"Here's $20. Here's $20. Here's $20."
Get in line, get a set of the Teenie Beanies
and out they would go.
And we would go to a different store,
and we put them in line again.
[reporter] McDonald's says it has ordered more Beanie Babies
than it did for its last largest promotion.
[reporter 2] Sets of the 12 new Beanies
are already being auctioned on eBay
for twice the retail price.
I figured $125 would be reasonable
for a set of 10 Teenie Beanies
and I sold 28 sets the first weekend.
[man] The happiest meal of all
is the profits the company is reeling in.
[woman] McDonald's expects
to double its usual sales of Happy Meals.
Beanie Baby this, Beanie Baby...
And they're not only ordering two or three,
they're ordering like 10, 15, 20.
This is our fourth McDonald's.
I was only buying food in order to get Beanie Babies.
She doesn't want to eat all these Happy Meals.
Who could? Who would?
It was, like, ridiculous. People were throwing away food.
That part I didn't like.
[helicopter whirrs]
[man] Oh, my God. A guy's stopping. This is unbelievable.
[reporter] Several hundred little international bears
headed to McDonald's
dumped accidentally in the middle of five lanes
of 285 rush-hour traffic.
The Golden Arches' loss was someone's gain.
And it wasn't pretty.
[man] There it is! There it is! Oh, my God. Look at this.
They're rolling on this, right?
[woman] Would you ask your mom to pull over?
- Yeah. - You think she would?
They're crazy. Come on, folks. It's just Beanie Babies.
Greed. It is the dark side of anything.
[reporter] One store in Royal Oak, Michigan
ran out in just two hours,
a shipment in Wisconsin was hijacked by thieves.
[man] Beanie Babies are becoming so valuable,
they're attracting the criminal element now.
Beanie burglars, if you will.
That's who investigators say broke into a home
here in Pasco County and stole a family's entire collection.
Its felony theft, $300,000 worth of Beanie Babies
were taken.
At tradeshows, people knew
that I would have these rare Beanie Babies.
They would tried stealing them, right out of the little cage.
And then I thought, "Oh, my God,
"I've gotta hire off-duty policemen
"to stand by my table."
We had a full transport truck
and the next morning, we had the shipping company call us
and say, "We went to pick up the truck last night,
"but it wasn't there."
And I said, "I don't know where it is."
The police department views this matter very seriously.
Just as seriously as we would
if it involved the disappearance of money, drugs or weapons.
Well, they found the truck the next day,
but it was completely empty
and it had about $500,000 worth of product on it.
That was the point probably in time where I went,
"Well, this is really, really out of control.
I mean, there were so many scams going on
it was unbelievable.
We had employees who were
getting bribed to put orders through.
We even had employees walking out of the warehouse
with them in their shoes.
They are putting them in their pants,
they were putting them in their shirts.
One woman, who was very sweet,
she was an A-cup, and she leaves in a double-D.
It was bad. You know, it was bad.
[reporter] A security guard making the rounds
was surprised by two men who jumped him from behind,
and attacked with a sledgehammer.
This is pretty much the worst I've seen
as far as for a stuffed animal or a toy for a child.
[reporter] Beanie Babies are more than just a passion -
for Ty Warner, these beanbag collectibles
have turned the company into a billion-dollar business.
[man] Sales of Beanie Babies skyrocketed
from a reported $215 million worth last year
to an estimated $2.5 billion this year.
There was a sales meeting we had where he had announced,
"I have never been in a room with so many millionaires,"
or something to that effect.
And we had our whole management team there.
None of the management team was compensated like that.
The reps were obviously...
They get a percentage of the commissions
and they were making very, very big money.
And it was one of those things,
all the management team sort of, like...
..bit their tongue and that's where it sort of hits you.
[woman] The first year he became successful,
he gave all his employees their annual salary as a bonus.
And then the following year,
he gave them all a Billionaire Bear,
that cost him maybe $0.35 to make, and that was their bonus.
[reporter] Billionaire Bears,
here's a picture of one of them,
it's given by Ty, there's 475 of these made,
signed, and numbered, to his employees.
The warehouse employees were mostly immigrants,
a lot of them didn't speak English.
A lot of the employees wanted the money.
Because if the bear sold for $6,000,
that's a lot of money, they could go and buy furniture
or appliances or put a down-payment on a car.
He would number each Beanie Baby
so they could tell which employee
had which Billionaire Bear.
So they would come to me to sell them
and I would put a range of numbers on eBay,
so that they wouldn't know,
Ty wouldn't know who sold their bear on eBay.
[she types]
He had a number of people
that would check on everything on eBay
that people did. That was their job,
to sit there and check auctions.
I know of several occasions where they stopped my auctions.
They thought I was and I never did.
But they thought about that with everyone.
They thought everybody was corrupt except them.
And it turned out that they were the corrupt ones.
As the company expanded and
there was additional management being brought on,
not everyone had the same values
and that, for me, was probably the most challenging,
dealing with some people.
I just didn't agree with that and that's what I told them.
I said, "The management team
"is different at this point in time - I'm done."
At that point, the impact of what we had done
was indisputable.
And what I wanted ultimately, I wasn't able to get.
So we left.
And I later found out
that people within the Board of Directors
did not really understand the Internet
and thought it was a fad.
I was very hurt.
Even though I walked away and it was me that walked away,
it was such a big part of my life.
Welcome to Ty Canada, guys.
- How you doing? [boy] Good.
Ty started to ask for things that
were completely out of the norm
from the relationship we'd had.
He asked me for my entire customer list.
These are all Beanie Babies, these are all Beanie Babies,
and these are all Beanie Babies.
He asked for me to put my building up as collateral
and I said, "I can't do those things.
"I'm not going to do those things."
And he said "Well, I guess we're done."
And it was like that.
We ended up having to close
and I had to let all of our staff go.
And having the bank come in
and sell off all of the product that we had.
And yeah, that was probably the closest I've ever come
to a nervous breakdown.
[woman] Everybody keeps going, "How long can it last?"
And it's like, "Forever."
I don't see any end in sight to Beanie Babies at all.
You know, people get caught up in these crazes
and they think they're going to go on forever.
This is here to stay.
I don't think the Beanie craze will ever die.
People think prices will continually rise to infinity.
This morning we asked two people
with two very differing opinions.
Mary Beth Sobolewski, also with us this morning Harry Rinker.
I really was a handsome dude when I was younger, wasn't I?
Mr Rinker, you call yourself - your term - a beanie meanie.
Why?
Well, first of all, yes, there's a secondary market,
but what you have to understand
about the Beanie Baby secondary market
is it is highly speculative.
We have no guarantees
that the prices today will be the prices tomorrow
and what goes up is definitely gonna come down.
[Rinker] I was the Beanie Meanie.
I would debate with these people
because they really believed it.
Mary Beth, I know you want to disagree with that.
You say that every time a new one comes out,
an old one goes off the market,
they get bigger and better, is that the case?
Absolutely.
I have to agree with Harry
that it is a very speculative market.
There's no doubt about it.
But any long-term investment is speculative.
The problem is
that when somebody is trying to tout a market,
they tout the top end,
and don't ever ask, "What's the condition of the market
"in the middle and low end?"
And if the bottom and the middle of the market was weak,
that was a bad market to be playing in.
[reporter] Six years after Ty introduced Beanie Babies
and 253 versions later,
these small stuffed animals
are sagging on the secondary market.
Three different guides show the values of many retired beanies.
Those no longer made, have dropped considerably.
What do you hope to do with 400 Beanie Babies someday?
Give them to my kids when they get old enough
to maybe one day,
it might send them through college or something.
[Dave] At some point, there comes a time
where somebody buys it for a certain amount
and they can't sell it for profit.
People say, "You know what?
"I don't want to buy beanies anymore
"because I can't make a profit."
So then there's more supply than there is demand.
And now the same dynamics that fuelled the bubble,
they're in reverse,
and it can be a vicious cycle to the downside.
Welcome back.
On special assignment tonight, a close look at Beanie Babies.
Six years ago, these tiny toys hit the stores
and sales now are sagging,
values are plunging, and collectors are concerned.
[Mary Beth] All of a sudden, there was this one month
when a couple started to go down.
And then you notice the next month,
more and more and more went down.
And that was getting a little frightening.
Don't you think a lot of people out there
have been misled by the worth of Beanie Babies?
[Mary Beth] The ones that have been retired since 1998
have, in my opinion, been overproduced.
Like the Princess Di bear,
people paid hundreds for her, we were offered eight bucks.
[Mary Beth] It was no longer the market of scarcity
and collecting like a collector would,
it was flooded.
I think a lot of people got caught up in it
without understanding how it worked.
The secondary market couldn't
sustain an increase in value and all of a sudden,
the Beanie Babies that you thought
you could double your money on
were selling for less than you paid for them.
Just when I felt that people were getting tired of something,
Ty would always do something to create a frenzy.
[reporter] When Beanie Baby collectors
logged on to their favorite website,
this is what they found.
In the fall of 1999,
he came out with the announcement
that there were gonna be no more Beanie Babies.
A web posting by the Ty Corporation
makes it very clear
that Beanie Babies will be a thing of the past
come December 31.
Estimates are more than a billion Beanies have sold,
and when inventory clears, there will be no more.
That was the saddest day of my life.
I thought, "Oh, my God, this is...
"You can't take these little Beanie Babies away."
December 31, the entire line
of Beanie Babies will be retired.
No more Beanie Babies created. No more.
I think it's very, very sad.
I think it's really bad.
Kinda sad.
I'm happy. I'm going to get a lot of money now.
Everybody started emailing and calling and acting crazy.
"Did you see this? Did you see this on the news?
"Did you see this all over the Internet?"
Retailers say this latest bit of Beanie buzz
is moving merchandise.
So yesterday, you sold 200 Beanie Babies in two hours.
At least. Yeah.
[reporter] This is all that's left at the Gift Cottage
in south suburban Midlothian.
The phones were nonstop ringing.
We had customers every second of the day
trying to get any Beanie Baby they could get.
He knew how to market his beanies.
He knew how to get interest from people.
He knew how to get those emotions going
in order for us to continue buying his beanies.
[woman] My prediction is that there will be
some kind of Beanies, maybe in a little different way,
for the new millennium,
maybe with a little different look.
So guess what?
He comes up with this 'vote to save the Beanies'.
[reporter] Starting December 31, Beanie Baby fanatics
can vote on Ty's website.
They announced on the website that people are going to
get to vote now for 50 cents.
So you can vote.
I think it's going to be phenomenal
and it's gonna be...you know, this is PT Barnum time.
This is, you know, "There's a sucker born every minute."
We're gonna see people behaving in apocalyptic ways.
[reporter] Will computers recognize the year 2000
or will they shut down thinking is the year 1900?
Some believe the feared Y2K bug
could temporarily knock out power.
Shut down the water system and cause panic in the streets.
The bottom line, no one can really predict the future.
[crowd chants] ..five, four, three, two, one!
[crowd cheers]
[dial up internet connects]
[voice] You've got mail.
This week, drumroll please, it was announced
that the toys will continue to hit the stores.
Now some are wondering if this wasn't just one big PR stunt.
What a wonderful way to find out
if there's a collectible audience out there,
let people vote!
- I'm gonna... - What about that Internet vote?
- It was so staged, wasn't it? - Do you think?
[reporter] Collectors are taking a wait-and-see attitude
towards the new toys.
Don't do it. Stay out of it. It's worse than smoking.
We realized it was just a gimmick to entice people
to possibly purchase more of his Beanies.
I personally felt manipulated.
It's like, "Are you kidding?"
Why would you stop a good thing?
It was too popular, too...
I think it was just a big publicity stunt.
I think he just wanted to create more demand.
[reporter] Beanie insiders say
they're are little sceptical about the company's motives.
[Mary Beth] What might have looked like a great idea
because he was used to retiring and creating,
all of a sudden, um, backfired.
I think it's time to stop, myself.
I think a lot of the collectors,
they just sold their Beanies and got out of the collection.
The people were disgusted with all the money they'd lost,
they were just letting them go for practically nothing.
A lot of people that had significant collections
were willing to discount it
if you bought a lot of them at once.
All of the original Beanie Baby sites were shutting down
and he started collecting Beanie Babies
at just the right moment.
[man] We have about 22,000 Ty products.
Oh, boy. You hit me with a question like that. Um...
I'd have to find him but it's a lamb.
Yeah. There you go. There's Sondra.
I'm gonna go with Ringo the Raccoon
because there's something about a raccoon's mask
that just reminds me of my dad
because I thought it looked like him,
it reminded me of the little dark circles under his eyes.
Anyway, it was Ringo the Raccoon.
Wow.
It's not a commercial collection,
it's a collection that we love the items we're collecting.
Really have warm feelings for a lot of them.
And when you have them around,
they kind of cheer you up,
and if you really get upset,
you can talk to them or yell at them, they don't judge you.
He's never yelled at any of them.
No. I don't want to hurt their feelings.
[Rinker] I don't have any problem
with Beanie Baby collectors
if they collect it because they love it.
I'm contemptuous of people
who think that antiques and collectibles are investments.
It's a gamble!
The media likes to talk about
the rise and fall of the Beanie Babies.
And we kind of want to refer to that
as the rise and fall of the Beanie Baby gamblers.
[Mary Beth] The days of that magazine took time and energy.
It did cost me a lot.
I hope my kids, when they look back on it now,
don't feel like I didn't give them what they deserved.
So, um... [voice breaks]
I hope I gave them what they needed during that time.
I'm sure for some people, they collect their whole life.
For me, it's now in the past.
Now the Beanie Babies are in a case. And life has gone on.
No. [chuckles]
Like I said before, it's more like Beanie Baby bankruptcy.
[laughs] Because I had a lot and I still have a lot.
It's been a long time,
we're talking at least 25 years or so.
And I didn't sell a lot of stuff.
I don't know what would've happened
if I had sold them all and made a lot of money then.
It would've made things easier now, that's for sure.
Maybe I could've paid off the house sooner, you know?
I don't know.
The only person that really became a big millionaire
was Ty himself
because he ended up getting so rich.
[reporter] The billionaire creator of Beanie Babies
has been accused of hiding as much as $107 million
in a Swiss bank account to avoid paying taxes on it.
H. Ty Warner,
the man behind the lovable plush toys popular in the '90s,
reportedly faces a stint in prison for up to 57 months
when he's sentenced on January 14 in Chicago.
[cameras click]
I didn't know much about it
other than what I read in the paper
but I understand that he had money in an offshore account
and was not paying taxes on some of his profits.
[man] He admitted that he set up an offshore bank account
in Switzerland back in the 1990s.
[reporter] Warner said in court
his decision to evade taxes was a bad one,
and he is begging a judge not to put him behind bars
after admitting to tax evasion.
[Joni] I remember seeing the pictures of him in court
and thinking, "Wow, that's really too bad.
"I liked that guy."
[reporter] Warner pleaded guilty to the accusation in court.
Now all that's left is for a judge to decide
how Warner will pay for his crimes.
[reporter 2] The judge says a two-year probation
and community service sentence is fair
given Mr Warner's personal humiliation
and record of charitable works.
[reporter 3] The judge said
that charity work that Warner had done,
that justified no prison time.
I don't like the idea of people avoiding paying their taxes.
I pay my taxes and it's awfully hard for me.
But I do and I think
if you're going to be a citizen in this country,
you should pay your taxes
because you having all the good benefits out of it.
Pay your taxes.
This is the homepage.
You'll notice no pop-ups,
no advertising we're not selling anything.
They show an introduction.
If you're just interested
in how many Beanie Babies there were,
we show a complete list of every Beanie Baby ever made.
If we keep this up, we're gonna have to open a small museum.
A small museum would be fun.
It would give me something to do when I retire.
It will be a job for Sondra.
The one that everyone asks about probably
the most hit page in our site
is the Princess Beanie Baby values.
So if you look at the average price
for the most valuable princess on the Internet
it's at $57, which is much lower than people believe.
Hello, everyone. I'm Colleen Ballinger.
And I don't think I have ever been this excited
for a YouTube video.
You might notice behind me a pile of Beanie Babies.
Hey, what is up, you guys? It's me, @lovekayray.
And today we are valuing and selling our Beanie babies.
This Beanie Baby is worth $300. That is insane.
I just scored four bins of Beanie Babies
for 20 bucks total.
This guy's only worth about seven bucks,
he's worth about seven bucks,
this guy is actually worth about nine bucks.
Now, that doesn't seem like a lot
but think about it, the three guys right here
after shipping and fees, I made all my money back.
I'm going on record, it may not be true,
to say that I have the world's largest collection
of Beanie Babies.
Elvis people, don't you want the Elvis edition Beanie Baby?
That's got to be a collector's item.
Somebody wants this thing. 'Cause I don't.
I want the money.
My mom started collecting Beanie Babies around 1997.
For her, to collect this many Beanie Babies, it took years.
I would tell her as a kid,
I think this could be worth something one day
and she just kind of held onto them.
I've never sold a single Beanie Baby.
Not one. I've just held onto them.
The collection themselves and the connection to my mom
is the more intrinsic value of them, I would say.
But there's a price. I have my number.
I'll reserve what that is, but I have my number.
But if it comes about
then the Beanie Baby collection might not be here.
[gasps]
Mom, get in here. Wait.
[woman] Do you have something? We might. Hold on.
I haven't even looked for them yet
but one of the things it says these international bears,
but it says if it's in its original packaging.
Mom, why did you take it out of the package?
Oh, my gosh.
I was getting tweets from fans saying, "Oh, my gosh.
"I just looked up this Beanie Baby and I have it.
"And it has this error on it."
So it kind of like started everyone looking up
which Beanies they had to see if they were worth anything.
Here's the Canada one and it's not in the box.
Mom!
The YouTube video, it was really fun.
We're gonna be rich!
And a great night for my mom and I to have together.
Where's the camera?
- It's in the ring light. - Oh.
Some of my best memories from that time
were finding Beanie Babies and collecting them with my mother.
I remember the feeling of it, that's so bizarre.
Finding Beanie Babies
was one of the only things I ever did with her
during that time of my life that was special just for us.
This one's selling for $18.
I still feel like you could sell them for a lot.
But that means part of your childhood would go away.
It's, like, another bonding moment for us, Mom.
We get to go through this all again.
If another beanie craze happened,
maybe my collection would be worth something.
So I'm crossing my fingers that another beanie craze
comes about 'cause I will make so much money...
Probably not.
Now what's happening with the market
is it's the grandchildren coming around,
finding these tubs that their grandparents left them,
revisiting this phenomenon.
I get them every day or a couple of times during the day,
UPS automatically sends me an email.
They want to make sure they're authentic
and I think because they're selling them on eBay.
No, because I love Beanie Babies. [laughs]
I don't get sick of it.
I charge, like, $25,
I bought display cases,
I got tamper-evident tape, certificates.
This is the one I write all the details of the Beanie Baby.
The generation, the authentication number,
which would be... number 125,878.
125,877.
Isn't that amazing?
[chuckles] It even shocks me.
Tape it on there.
And that's ready to go.
You know, a Beanie Baby is just a thing.
What makes the Beanie Baby come alive
is the stories associated with it.
Who made it? How was it made?
Why was it collected? How was it marketed?
And what does it say about the people the collected them?
[Becky] You know, sometimes you reflect on it,
but you always go back to the beginning.
Nobody really knows where all this started.
But we do.
It was just a little happy family.
And that's what's most important to me
is the ones that I started out with know exactly what we did.
Beanie Babies gave me first of all a connection with my kids.
Especially in the beginning.
Of course, it brought financial...um, success.
But if you're the lucky owner of this,
this goes for about $4000.
It brought me a lot of craziness.
But it brought a lot of good things.
25 years, and it just keeps going
and it happened by accident.
I do. Because I love them.