Rise and fall …

Fascinating little tale of the Beanie Babies fad.

In many ways, in fact, the Beanie Baby mania was the dot-com stock bubble writ small.
Both were creatures of a frothy, peacetime economy with low unemployment and towering consumer confidence. Both were abetted by the advent of online trading and the explosive growth of the Internet. Both gave rise to celebrity oracles who seemed able to decode the mysteries of the market. Both spawned fraud and even episodes of violence. And, finally, both flouted all classical notions of investment value. Until they didn’t.

BBs were still hot when I moved to Denver, and a store at the Tabor Center (where my comic book shop was) would periodically at lunch time have a huge queue of people in front of it, waiting for the doors to open and the New Shipment of Beanie Babies to be on sale.

For me, I have a few, most of which are in Katherine’s custody. Indeed, they are fun little toys, and their value as such is show by the fact that Ty still makes them (though only seeing half the revenue today that they did in ’99).

But getting swept up in a collectible fever and spending huge amounts of money for a children’s artifact in the insane hope that prices will be bid up so high someday that it will put my daughter through college?

Bah. Silly people.

Now, my comic book collection on the other hand …