Bankrupted by Beanie Babies

boing
21

I know!

22

Yeah I had friends who were into the whole beanie buying and selling thing back in the day. They knew perfectly well that it was an irrational bubble akin to tulipmania and knew there was no long-term value in collecting them – but they knew there was money to be made in the short term and most of them did quite well from it as I recall.

23

More like a great sample of Greater fool or speculation and in this case, this is the last guy holding the bag. I don’t see this as a scheme.


Like the recent financial crisis, was it a great idea to spend a huge chunk of wealth on just one thing?

1 Like
24

I get my kids Beanie Babies at our local bowling alley. They have a $2 play-til-you-win claw game there…

1 Like
25

I’m impressed that they’re still on good terms with each other. I’m guessing that they’re basically kind people.

26

I was going to make a similar comment. Think about the people who “invested” 100,000 in a stock and then the price went to nothing. I have a relative who did that. He rubbed it in when he was “making money” on paper. When the stock crashed from 124 to 3 dollars it was horrible. I could have rubbed it in when he lost it, but I didn’t. I just decided that the stock market (especially individual stocks) is not a ‘good investment’. There are too many people who know it is a rigged system, because they rig it. They are counting on “fish” like this relative to buy their stuff not knowing that it won’t last. At least the guy buying has “things” my relative just has pieces of paper and a line on a chart going to zero.

1 Like
27

It seems to me that he wasn’t bankrupted by Beanie Babies, he bankrupted himself. He happened to use Beanie Babies to do it, but if it weren’t them then it would be something else.

It’s like those guys who always have some get rich quick scheme they’re working on. Very rarely one of them will work and they’ll make the news, but they almost always broke otherwise (even after the one scheme works) because they’re involved with so many other bad ideas.

1 Like
28

Far too many people assume that “old” always equals “valuable” and that “rare” = “will sell for tons of money”.

They almost always forget that “demand” = “fickle” and that without demand, “value” = Zero.

1 Like
29

Chris has been hoping to make a feature-length documentary on his dad’s scores of illegitimate children—he’s got a brief bit about meeting his many half-siblings on these interwebs (Bastard). Hopefully the attention from BBB will give him the opportunity (anyone forced to work on “Whitney” has, in my opinion, paid his dues).

1 Like
30

Point is, Western civilization has been falling since the Fall of Rome. At least.

They probably went under because they spent all their gold on a complete collection of all Olympic deities, included the rare Aphrodite variant with the removable toga. (Both sets, of course - the Greek and the Roman one.)

1 Like
31

Yeah my brother was like employee #76 at Covad (it’s Megapath now) and had a sweet deal for stock options. He invested what he could into buying the stock, and did not sell what he was allowed to sell and diversify. He lost 3/4ths of his money when the dot com bubble hit, somewhere around $2M. I had called him so much bugging him to diversify that he would hang up the phone as soon as he heard my voice.

He wanted to play politics with the company and didn’t see selling as good for his reputation at work…

32

It was the '90s, assuming “collectible” stuff would somehow become valuable in the future was in vogue.

The same kinda speculation boom nearly took out the american comics industry; even now it hasn’t really recovered…

1 Like
33

Yet again tvtropes has great insight about it

1 Like
34

I recently decided to start collecting records* mostly because I wanted something cheap and ‘adult’ to do, but I’ve kinda have gotten into it at a bad time. You see there’s a ‘boom’ going on right now, to the point where new vinyl factories are opening up, but it’s also getting to where most new records are shipping with COLLECTABLE gimmicks such as random colored vinyls and shaped 7-inches. It doesn’t help that there’s other hype-events going on like Record Store Day where there’s a fake demand for limited editions (nevermind that most record shops still have multiple copies of Lonely Island’s #YOLO sitting around) which mostly end up scalped on ebay for many times the price, and most established best sellers are only putting out ‘definitive box sets’ of their new album for twice as much as the cd (Incubus and Flaming Lips come to mind). I also just found this

*I used to pick up something once in awhile and play it on my parents crappy all-in-one stereo unit, but then that all burned down, so now I have my own semi-nice unit and crate dig at thrift stores or get stuff directly at concerts because buying new at retail is retardedly expensive (25 to 40 dollars).

/addendum (ugh): http://macklemoremerch.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/pre-order-heist-deluxe-vinyl

1 Like
35

this reminds me of that new feature of Antiques Roadshow. When they re-run an old show, the part where the appraisal is displayed is now bordered by a more current appraisal, complete with a sad-trombone-esque sound effect when that price has fallen. Instead of thinking “wow, that doo-dad was worth $1000 back in '98, it must be double that now!” you see that “collectibles” from the robust economies of the 90s-to-mid-2000s are really just junk now that nobody spends money on frivolities.

Of course, the true collectables hold their value, and the rarities still increase.

3 Likes
36

Well, at least Beanie Babies have some intrinsic value as doorstops or loft insulation. Unlike BitCoins.

2 Likes
37

they also could be made into pants

2 Likes
38

I knew what it was gonna be before I clicked it. Remember when he wore 'em in the Young MC video?


(not sure embed will jump, it’s at 2:00)

1 Like
39

$100,000 for Princess Diana beanie still in package? Someone would have too be a real sucker too buy that over the internet. “Sure it’s a good buy. It’s going too triple in value in 20 years.”

40

Anyone who gets into collectibles should realize that “collectible” means “there’s a bunch of these objects out there to be had and a limited number of people who want to buy them.”