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TIL there was a thing called beanie babies
I wish I had your yersterday's innocence.
Seriously I had to google it. I didn't grow up in the States so I wonder perhaps a lot of people in some parts of the world never heard about it or seen one.
After my research, I realised I've seen some toys like that during my childhood but they must have been knockoffs or other brands. Pretty sure I've never seen one that wasn't a keychain. I had no idea people were investing in them as valuable collectibles.
Yep, while they were still being produced...so you had a situation where people were buying based on the assumed scarcity of a product upon which there was no pressure of limited quantity and in fact with the way they were selling there was every incentive for the manufacturer to keep making more and more, destroying that scarcity and in the process, the value.
There were certainly "limited edition" models, but even those weren't that rare, and the omnipresence of beanie babies in general likely mitigated any sense of rarity to all but the most dedicated collectors.
I remember not knowing the bottom had fallen out, but thinking it was odd to see someone at a flea market selling them for like $3 each, then realizing I hadn't seen them in a major retailer in a while, and then figuring out that the bubble had indeed burst.
My sister had a few dozen, including some rare ones, and I had received one (not a rare one) as a gift at some point, but even at the peak of the craze, my parents were very good about explaining what was going on with them to us kids.
Look up Furby next.