Beanie Babies

Pick your favorites and start collecting! Beanie Babies turned little stuffed animals into one of the biggest collecting crazes of the 1990s.

Bears. Dogs. Cats. Frogs. Lizards. Every one of them had a name, the little heart-shaped TY tag and just enough pellets inside to give it that floppy “beanbag” feel.

Beanie Babies took off in the 1990s partly because there always seemed to be another one to find. Some characters were retired. New ones appeared. Stores didn't necessarily have every Beanie Baby you wanted, and suddenly that little heart-shaped tag wasn't just a tag - collectors wanted it kept in perfect condition.

Before long, people were buying plastic protectors for the tags, checking price guides and hunting for supposedly rare Beanie Babies that they hoped might someday be worth a lot of money. The early Internet helped push the craze even further, giving collectors a way to trade information (as well as actual Beanie Babies) with people far beyond their local toy store.

My kids loved these. They would search store displays for animals that they liked or wanted, or for Beanie Babies that looked like our dog, or our neighbor’s cats. We still have a few of these tucked away in our storage bins in the basement. I don’t know if ours are collectible or rare (and they are certainly not in pristine condition, because my kids played with them quite a lot), but I still have fond memories of joining them on the hunt for that one hard-to-find animal.

While there are stories of people supposedly getting record prices for rare Beanie Babies, the fad eventually died out, and the prices dropped to about what little stuffed animals are worth.