
Sorry, Collectors, Nobody Wants Your Beanie Babies Anymore - kgwgk
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sorry-collectors-nobody-wants-your-beanie-babies-anymore-1519234039
======
gexla
> and concluded the small stuffed animals, a craze from the 1990s, will one
> day soar in value, like the bitcoins he bought in early January.

Bitcoin. Beanie Babies. The Beanie Babies aren't worth anything by themselves,
but I think I may see a solution here.

A Beanie Babies coin. Beanie Babies owners get a chance at the earliest and
cheapest rounds of the ICO. Rare Beanie Babies bring the owner better
discounts.

Demand for the coin will push demand for Beanie Babies, making them rise in
value along with the coin value.

Beanie Babies could potentially be traded physically like real currency.

Is this enough for a whitepaper?

ETA: Fixed spelling issues in the whitepaper.

~~~
quickthrower2
Beanie Babies are decentralized, and not double-spendable, whilst being pretty
anonymous and not requiring a cohort of miners wasting electricity to mine
them. They are in finite supply, and are not stealable by hackers. And like
fiat, they apparently lose value (which is a good thing for a currency) Pretty
good currency IMO.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Aren't burglars just _ownership hackers_?

~~~
Terr_
They're _domicile disruptors_.

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jakereps
> since the 1990s children—millennials—aren’t collecting like generations
> before them.

I would say (being a 1989 baby), that it isn't due to a lack of wanting, it's
due to the systematic mass production of anything and everything. There is
nothing worth collecting anymore, because there are 10 billion other copies of
that thing... I mean, there are now more than 1,000 Pokémon when there were
only 150/151 when I was a child. My holo-Charizard isn't worth anything these
days.

~~~
mrob
>there are now more than 1,000 Pokémon

Only 807 so far:
[https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon...](https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_Pok%C3%A9mon_by_National_Pok%C3%A9dex_number)

~~~
jakereps
Oops, I think my cousin mentioned the >1k and I just took him at his word. The
official Pokémon site says that 80x number as well (they gave 806).

[https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokedex/](https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokedex/)

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briankelly
I was searching for a copy of an out-of-print book that I wanted to read but
all were $150+, which was more than I wanted to pay. Somehow I stumbled on an
eBay link that had the book for ~$40, but the item was removed yet not sold. I
clicked on the seller and it turns out they relisted it in the $150 range, in
line with the rest of the "market". The book was sitting there for over a
year. It was sitting there for over a year at the cheaper price, too. If it
wasn't selling at the low price, why would it sell higher? Even with
"arbitrageurs" surely looking for those opportunities.

Maybe not the most relevant, but I'm willing to bet most collector markets are
pretty irrational.

~~~
eli
Maybe that was an arbitrage: someone who didn't have the book but was betting
they could obtain it for less than the cost.

~~~
thaumasiotes
That would just be a bet. It's not an arbitrage if you don't know it will
work.

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dictum
I'd ask how come nobody ran a money laundering scheme with those collectibles,
but then, anyone who succeeds in a money laundering scheme isn't exactly
aching to tell the story.

Maybe that's a testament to the work of the IRS.

~~~
amenghra
You know about Lego-backed money laundering?
[http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/lego-
heists/index.ht...](http://www.vocativ.com/underworld/crime/lego-
heists/index.html)

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ggg9990
Interesting that people are making inferences about Beanie Babies from Bitcoin
rather than the other way around.

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chrissnell
Ty Warner got the last laugh on this craze. His Boeing Business Jet (an ultra-
luxe 737) is usually parked at the Santa Barbara airport.

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jburgess777
The current resale prices of some 8 bit micros from the 1980s sometimes match
or exceed the original sale price. Not a good investment if you bought new but
I imagine that many HN readers might be kicking themselves about things they
threw in the trash.

~~~
pvg
Which ones, if you remember? Same price as in the 80s is still discounted,
inflation-adjusted.

~~~
jburgess777
This Amazon listing wants £295 for a ZX81 [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-
Sinclair-ZX81-Spectrum-Pro...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Original-Sinclair-
ZX81-Spectrum-Programming/dp/B00D8ZNBMI)

Or this TRS80 for £500 [https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Radio-Shack-
TRS-80-MODEL-100-PORT...](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Radio-Shack-
TRS-80-MODEL-100-PORTABLE-Vintage-
Computer/323074805250?hash=item4b38c24e02:g:rWkAAOSwGyFZ4kCr)

Of course they might not sell for the listed price, there are other listing
with lower bids. I don’t know a good way to get an accurate figure for what
things typically sell for on ebay etc.

~~~
pvg
Ah yeah, those are quite pricey, especially the ZX81, which is pretty
barebones even for a Sinclair. I think I have a couple of ZX81 kits sitting
around somewhere that I picked up in the late 90s. They cost about $30 a pop
at the time.

~~~
orionblastar
My father picked up a Timex Sinclair 1000 at a grocery store for $30 it had
the 16k expansion but was not built correctly so he bought a Commodore 64
later to replace it.

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Pengwin
Todays equivalent would be those Funko PopVinyl figures. I'm amazed at how
many people thìnk they are worth something when theres hundreds of rudimentary
looking figures for every cult favorite movie, videogame, and cartoon.

~~~
paddlepop
The hype around rapidly increasing values on Pop Vinyls has largely gone, the
market seems to have chilled and the reason it hasn't crashed likely to be
because of the value attached to the licenses. The most interesting part of
the whole thing I found was the effect valuing sites had on the market (i.e.
poppriceguide). They significantly lowered the effort in determining value for
existing collectors and attracted a lot of people whole wouldn't normally
collect to get into it purely for the profit to be gained. I am not suggesting
others wouldn't have been attracted to the market without them but having the
data readily available rather than having to trawl eBay completed sales
lowered the barrier of entry.

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embedded
Or is there some way to read this article without a subscription to WSJ? Does
every geek already have a subscription?

~~~
neonate
[https://outline.com/BKDd54](https://outline.com/BKDd54)

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randomerr
All things come back. So in another 10-15 years they'll be valuable again. But
not those God awful evil look dolls they make now.

~~~
gutnor
The problem is explained at the end though. They were made to be collected.
Mass produced collectable rarely really explode in value because they are kept
preciously by their owner. If there was 10K "rare" beanie, chances are there
are still the same 10K available. The buyer market however is much smaller.

That happens with plenty of stuff even in the antique range. Japanese, Chinese
export silverware/tableware from beginning of the last century trade for
poundland level pricing. Dragon-ware or similar stuff brought back by US
soldier looks fancy and is similarly worth hardly anything. Even the rarest,
best quality lithophane are very reasonable in price i.e. in the tens of
dollar range. A good, purchased to be used, brand of tableware from similar
period can cost 10 times more, rarest pieces going for hundreds.

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kstenerud
Beanie babies aren't worth anything because the people who grew up with them
aren't in their 40s and 50s yet.

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fencepost
My immediate reaction is "didn't beanie babies 'tulip' years ago?" For that
matter don't most 'collectibles' introduced to be collectible do pretty much
the same?

At least Magic: the Gathering cards could be used to play a game.

~~~
larkeith
> At least Magic: the Gathering cards could be used to play a game

The fact that MtG cards and tournaments are more popular than ever, while
beanie babies are an utter flop, tells you all you need to know about
designing collectibles for the sole purpose of being collectibles.

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joezydeco
I've got a crate full of my mother-in-law's Hummel figurines and plates that
says nope.

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taneq
No mention of tulips?

