Toy Beanie Babies are the latest collectors' craze to sweep the US and the contagion is catching at a toy shop near you.
Mr Pat Staunton, managing director of Nimble Fingers toy shop in Stillorgan, Dublin, says people buy them hoping they'll go up in value after a Beanie Baby is "retired". Ty Warner, the owner, "produces, say, 10 million of one and then he might produce only 10,000 of another one. You don't know. It's like a lotto."
Nimble Fingers sells each Beanie Baby for £4.99.
But, according to Mary Beth's Beanie World Magazine's price guide for May/June 1998, the median market price for Brownie the Brown Bear, who retired in 1993 (the earliest retirement date shown), is £2,755 sterling or $4,750. A "Buyer Beware" note states: "The only feature that makes Brownie special is the first generation, single TY tag that says Brownie on the back. Without this, he is a $40 Cubbie Beanie Baby.
According to the guide, Chilly the Polar Bear who retired in 1995 has a median market price of £1,392. It says the average price fetched for Derby, the fine mane horse, retired in 1995, is £2,610 - which should not be confused with Derby, the coarse mane horse, the median market price for which is only £14.50 with a forehead star, or £11.60 without the star. Meanwhile, it appears the Diana, Princess of Wales Bear, a current toy, fetches £159.50.
So why does Nimble Fingers sell a Beanie Baby for £4.99 if it could fetch many times that on the Internet?
Mr Staunton says Ty Warner is an extraordinary individual who, if he feels a retailer is overcharging, will stop supplying them. As for Nimble Fingers, "people know the price and that's it. Whereas in town I believe they've all different prices on them. But everything goes out here £4.99".
High prices are fetched on the Internet because particular Beanie Babies are hard to get. "You won't get Britannia in America. It's impossible to get one. If you get one, you're very lucky."
When Mr Staunton was in the US recently, he came across a car dealer who offered to swap 40 Britannia Beanie Babies for a free car.
Mr Staunton accepts it's an artificially created market - up to a point. "But it's been going for years now. I think the main reason is that it's affordable." But he warns: "If the tag goes, they're not worth a penny."
Mr Ian Whyte, of Whyte's auctioneers in Marlborough Street, Dublin says: "We've been here before with this kind of stuff - like Cabbage Patch dolls. I think it's an artificially created market pushed by the people who make the things. It could be a nine-day wonder. They'll be hot now. Then they'll go dead quiet for about 20 or 30 years and then adults will look back in nostalgia at their youth and say: `Oh I didn't get my complete collection of Beanie Babies' ".
As for Brownie the Brown Bear fetching £2,755, he believes some buyers could spend that much. "If this bear is particularly scarce and you've got to remember there's a lot of wealthy people around and if they get into something, they don't mind what they spend on it. But I don't think it's something that's going to have a great future.
"Maybe the ones from 1993 or 1994 are quite good. But I think £2,755 sounds a bit too much. Nobody has come in to me offering to auction them. But people in America are going mad and paying silly prices for them."
Mr Whyte feels that toys changing hands on the Internet for multiples of their retail value "doesn't ring true. They're probably worth collecting but I wouldn't go overboard."
