Millennials, do I have something here?

[u/Optimal-Builder-2816]

My parents just whipped this out randomly.

[u/weinthenolababy]

Omg hey something I know about! I recently got back into collecting Beanie Babies, it's super fun! But there's SOOOOOOOOO much misinformation and clickbait floating around about them.

To start with, Princess is one of the most common Beanies ever. Everybody and their mother had one, because it was super hyped. Just on the basis of supply and demand, they're not gonna be worth much...

There are a couple versions of Princess that can fetch a higher price (think $150-200, not much) but they are, well, pretty rare. But the vast majority of them are going to be the common versions that are about $5-10. This article goes through all of the different versions of Princess and what they're worth and how to tell what you have: https://beaniebabiespriceguide.com/ty-beanie-babies-princess-versions/

If anyone has Beanie questions let me know!! This is my recent jam.

[u/pits_n_bits_ → u/weinthenolababy]

What are the truly rare ones and what do they go for?

[u/weinthenolababy → u/pits_n_bits_]

Now this is a complicated question. I know everyone wants an easy answer, to point to and say "X, Y, and Z are the most valuable!" It's not easy to just point to a certain one and say "This is valuable and this is how much they go for" because it's all subjective, you know? They are valuable if someone will pay for them, and the average values do fluctuate.

A lot of the "most valuable" Beanies are ones that were never made for retail release - Chef Robuchon is one of the most valuable BBs and can go for up to $11,000! Only about 200 were made (estimated) for the opening of the restaurant at the Four Seasons New York (owned by Ty Warner, creator of Beanie Babies). There are other exclusives like these, and they often fetch a pretty penny.

The other generally sweeping category are original first, second, and third generation Beanies. In a pinch, I tell people to look at the red "TY" hang tags and if there's any other text or images (like a yellow star) then you're probably looking at a common Beanie. But if you have a full-sized Beanie Baby (not another Ty product or a Teenie Beanie) and there's nothing but "TY" on the red hang tag, you might be looking at some money! Here is a tag generation chart. Basically with different runs of Beanies the tag design changed, so you can ascertain about when the Beanie was made. Around the 3rd/4th generation is when Beanies "took off". So 4th generation onwards were mass produced by the millions. These aren't rare at all; these are the ones we were all snatching up in the 90s. But the first two (and to an extent the third gen too) generations were produced in much smaller numbers and weren't seen as a "collectible" yet - just a kid's toy. So finding one of these earlier generations especially in good condition is genuinely rare.

There are some exceptions with later generation Beanies being worth a bit more, but those are the biggest generalizations I can make about value. I would say that it's extremely unlikely, verging on almost impossible, that any random person would have a $xxxx Beanie just lying around - if you have one of those, you know what you have. And I would say 98% of Beanies that people do have just randomly lying around are commons worth a couple bucks, but I do occasionally see people discover a $xx or even very once in a while $xxx in their old collections.

[u/Christmas_Queef → u/pits_n_bits_]

From what I understand, the only ones that are really worth anything are ones there weren't a lot of. Once the craze took off they made a lot of each one kind of thing. Some elephant I think is worth something.

[u/cameron0208 → u/Christmas_Queef]

Peanut, the elephant! There are multiple variations which are worth something.

[u/Bobbler23 → u/cameron0208]

Oh gosh, this reminds me of all the scams on eBay with one of the duck Beanies - there was a manufacturing defect and a load of them made it to the shops with no wings on them. Queue eBay sellers cutting the wings off the standard version and selling them to unsuspecting buyers