BEANIE BABY ECONOMICS

I am quite proud to say I didn't get sucked into the whole Beanie Baby frenzy when they first arrived on the scene 20 years ago.

My daughters were too young to be interested in collecting them and I wasn't falling for their cuteness one iota.

Our Beanie Baby repertoire over the years consisted of one soccer bear, two monkeys and a gorilla named Kicks, Sweetheart, Bongo, and Congo, respectively.

However, recently I experienced some down time and decided to fill it with some thrift store shopping. I noticed there were Beanie Babies everywhere! People were heartlessly abandoning them in droves. 

Unfortunately, due to the excessive number of Beanies sold and collected over the years, they were no longer considered to be valuable.

There were lions and tigers and bears... and iguanas and flamingos and armadillos...oh my!

This got me thinking -I could buy these abandoned Beanies for a fraction of their original cost, and hang on to them until they were worth some serious coinage once again.

I believe this is what investment guru Warren Buffet calls speculation - in fact I'm speculating he has a closet full of Beanies he's sitting on until the market turns. If it's good enough for Warren Buffet, it's good enough for me.

I bought them all!

I took them home and researched each and every one of them. It was official; they were all technically worthless...for the moment.

However, my research also yielded some priceless information - there were some valuable beanies out there now after all.

And so began my hunt for red Tabasco! A rare red Beanie bull due to its limited run under this name. The Tabasco Company threatened to sue and the bull's name was changed to Snort immediately thereafter.

 There are other valuable Beanies out there, such as the elusive Princess Diana Beanie, the original nine, and the royal blue version of Peanut the elephant that top the list for value. 

So that was how, 20 years after the fact, I was gripped by a Beanie Baby frenzy of my own making.

The search for rare Beanie Babies continues, but I began to second guess having those worthless Beanies languishing in my closet. So, I hatched a scheme to get rid of them and pawned them all off as "presents" on unsuspecting family members one glorious Christmas.

Once the family was gathered I had them blindly choose a Beanie out of a bag and told them whatever Beanie they ended up with was their spirit animal.

Oddly enough, this ruse went over extremely well and no one seemed to mind that I was giving them used items that were virtually worthless.

Everyone started justifying their spirit animals immediately. My sister in law's mother questioned how a parrot could be her spirit animal, but her husband quickly cleared up the mystery by pointing out how much she liked to talk.

My daughter picked a bear named Cashew who happened to be the twin of a bear named Pecan - my daughter's a twin. Her twin picked a bat - she's a nighthawk.

I even started to fall for it myself. My spirit Beanie, the Flamingo, made perfect sense because I need to run before I can fly in my dreams.    
                                                
Then things got serious. All of a sudden this ruse had rules.

My niece's eight-year-old son asked me if it was okay to trade his spirit animal. Apparently he wasn't feeling his tie-dyed "Peace" bear - after all, it was no Garcia - (insider trading joke). 

"Everyone remember your spirit animal picked you, you didn't pick it," I replied dogmatically: "Absolutely NO TRADES!"

This sent some people into a panic - NO TRADES? Two wanted to trade! Most wanted to hold! One wanted to buy. No one wanted to sell. 

Beanie Babies turned into a commodity right before my eyes, and my living room turned into Wall Street. What the hell was happening?

It was a microcosm of the Beanie Baby frenzy from the 1990's, and a basic lesson in economics and psychology - how the illusion of supply and demand can create temporary insanity in otherwise perfectly normal people.

But it got me thinking...if only I could replicate this Beanie Baby mania on a larger scale...but first I would need to get my hands on some more Beanies. I wonder if Buffet is ready to sell.

Run on Flamingo

Recommend Reading: Rich Dad Poor Dad -Robert T. Kiyosaki

Recommended Listening: Nothing From Nothing - Billy Preston

Recommended Viewing: The Wolf of Wall Street