Howdy y’all, I chatted with my friend Mary Neely about her Beanie Baby collection and the limits of collectibility for the first episode of SAMI REISS RADIO. Forgive the audio quality.
Long story short—Mary has a $1M Beanie Baby collection that is worth… jack shit? I looked into selling it and it is impossible. I tried to sell it—no buyers. No middlemen in vintage will touch them—I didn’t—they are unsellable goods. And yet, a narrative persists that these things are worth tens of thousands of dollars. That they are collectible items. That they are not complete garbage. What’s up with that? Why is everyone wrong? Some of these topics are addressed in the episode.
Show notes:
1:00: Intro
2:00: Mary’s collection, selling them
5:00: These things aren’t worth anything
6:00: Price discrepancies… why is this Princess Diana only worth $7?
7:00: Freelance Beanie Baby sellers with Zoom accounts who charge by the hour
8:00: No one in vintage wants this bull crap
9:00: Was there ever a market?
10:00: How to allegedly sell Beanie Babies
14:00: Fake listings?
15:00: Sammy the tie dye bear
15:30: Why you can’t mass-market collectible items (Upper Deck)
17:00: Has anyone ever sold a Beanie Baby for money?
17:05: Photograph of Bill Gates’ daughter (???) and her Beanie collection
18:00: Bill Gates is a lizard and why this is important
18:57: Arguments against Bill Gates’ lizardhood
19:00: Did Marx predict this? Or did he fail to predict this?
20:30: Show is over
Selected reading:
Have You Ever Tried To Sell a Diamond? by Edward Jay Epstein in The Atlantic, 1982. Exact same market only more Russians
Beanie Mania, 2021 HBO Max doc (haven’t seen; life’s too short)
Bill Gates-Beanie Babies story in Air Mail (also didn’t read even though Graydon Carter and I are both from OTTAWA)
This episode was edited by Anonymous Snake Intern 007.
Thanks for listening. Expect an Observer tonite.
Snake
SAMI REISS RADIO 001: THE COLLECTIBLE BEANIE BABY MARKET THAT ISN'T