Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1. I saw a Princess Beanie Baby listed at eBay for $65,000. Is Princess worth that much?
No, Princess is NOT worth that much. No Beanie Baby has ever been worth that much. Sellers can list items at eBay for any price they choose, and in many cases the "buy it now" or "starting bid" prices have no relationship to the actual value. We show all of the Princess versions and current values on our Princess Values page.
Q2. What are my Beanies or other Ty collectibles worth?
Value guides are obsolete. Each Beanie Baby or other Ty collectible is worth an average of the prices buyers have paid for it on secondary markets like eBay during the past 30 - 120 days. To find the approximate value of a Beanie Baby (or other Ty collectible) using eBay; search for the item. When the results page appears, go to the left side menu and click on the "sold listings" box. That will change the page to show what buyers have actually paid for the item in completed transactions. Make sure the list is being sorted for "ended recently." The average of the price buyers paid for that item over the past 30 - 120 days is essentially the true value of the item. When prices are crossed out, that means the seller accepted less than the asking price. When you are looking at the "sold" items and there are several that sold for a low price and suddenly one that allegedly sold for an extremely high price, disregard the one that sold at a much higher price than all the others. That is probably a fraudulent transaction.
Q3. Where can I sell my Beanie Babies or other Ty collectibles?
The best place to sell your Beanie Babies and other Ty collectibles is eBay. Some people seem to think there is a secret place that will automatically buy the Beanie Babies they want to sell. Sorry, there is no such place and there are no such buyers either, except the speculative resellers who buy in bulk for a dollar or less per Beanie unless they know the value is high. There are more collectors looking on eBay than anywhere else. You have to be patient when trying to sell Beanie Babies on eBay or anywhere else because there are literally thousands of people trying to sell Beanie Baby collections, but not that many people trying to buy Beanie Babies. For additional selling hints, visit our Where to sell page.
Q4. I have a collection of Beanie Babies. Is tycollector.com interested in buying them or can tycollector.com tell me about collectors who might be interested?
Tycollector only purchases Ty items that are not already in our collection. We have a list of the Beanie Babies we still need on our Missing page. If you are inclined to donate or sell any of the items we are missing, please use our contact form to communicate with us. We do not release names or other information about collectors we know, nor do we become involved in brokering transactions. This policy is in place to protect the privacy of our fellow collectors.
Q5. I have a Beanie Baby with the wrong name on its tush tag. Is it valuable? Is there any information available about these?
An incorrect name on a Beanie Baby's tush tag is referred to by collectors as an "oddity." In the past, tush tag oddities were generally worth two - three dollars more than the same Beanie Babies with correct tush tags. There were so many oddities like this that nobody tracked them for very long. There isn't any information available about how many there are of any particular tush tag oddity. There are lots of them on a lot of different Beanie Babies. The tush tag oddity values have declined for several years because there are fewer collectors who specialize in them and it was also discovered that some were being "fabricated" by dishonest sellers.
Q6. My Beanie Baby has a red paper swing tag with the misspelled words ORIGIINAL and SUFACE. Is my Beanie Baby valuable?
Sorry, this is a common error on 5th generation swing tags from 1998. The swing tags with the spelling errors showed up on several different Beanie Babies before Ty corrected the errors. There are so many of these tags that they don't add more than two or three dollars of value to the same Beanie with correct tags.
Q7. The year on my Beanie Baby's tush tag is a different year than the birth date or other year on the swing tag. Is this a valuable oddity?
No, this is not an oddity at all, as some misguided sellers on eBay would have you believe. In most cases, the year on the tush tag is the year Ty copyrighted the name "Beanie Babies" or the name of that particular Beanie Baby. It may or may not be the same year the Beanie Baby was first introduced or actually produced. Birth date years or other years on the back of a swing tag are not necessarily related to the year on the tush tag. A date or year mismatch between the swing tag and tush tag is perfectly normal and NOT an oddity.
Q8. There are a lot of sellers on eBay listing Beanie Babies for high prices because they have multiple errors on the tags. Are these really valuable?
No, in almost all cases, those errors exist on so many tags they will never be rare or valuable. Yes, there are a lot of spelling and spacing errors on a lot of Ty swing tags. What you'll notice is that these "alleged" valuable Beanies with multiple tag errors are almost all "commons." That refers to Beanie Babies Ty produced in such large quantities that they will never be rare or valuable. A three dollar Beanie Baby does not become valuable because it has multiple tag errors. This scam is most common for Beanies like Curly, Peace, Kicks, Valentina, Valentino, Millennium and several other commons that were produced during a similar time period. These ridiculous asking prices started appearing on eBay between 2014 - 2015. Due to the demise of value guides and Beanie Baby information sites on the Internet over the past several years, amateur collectors can't discover that these errors have NEVER been documented as rare or valuable, even though those errors and Beanies have been around since 1995. So between 1995 and 2014, they were barely worth five dollars and then, suddenly, the value is claimed to be higher than any Beanie Baby has ever sold for. Give me a break. Buyers need to apply a serious dose of common sense when they see Beanies selling for thousands of dollars that were all selling for less than five dollars for the past 20 or more years. Just remember - sellers can ask for any price they want, regardless of value. If I wanted to, I could list a one dollar bill on eBay for 20 thousand dollars. I'll even provide the dollar bill's serial number to show that it is a one-of-a-kind dollar bill. eBay will let me do that. Is my one dollar bill worth 20 thousand dollars because that's what I'm asking for it? You know the answer to that.
Q9. I have a Beanie Baby but the size is different than the size shown at tycollector.com. Do I have something rare?
Beanie Babies, as well as the other Ty plush products are made by hand. Because of that, sizes can vary (sometimes significantly) for the same item. Size differences are much more noticeable in the Classic and Attic Treasure product lines than in the Beanie Babies. Different reference sources conflict with each other on Beanie sizes but that is usually because the references don't stipulate whether the size is height, width, depth, with the item standing, or sitting, or even if it includes things like the length of a tail or the height of a hat. That is why we show "height" or "length" for the measurements on pages at tycollector.com. When we show a photograph and a measurement, we actually measured the item in the photograph. Our measured sizes may differ from the sizes Ty indicated in the original catalog listings or sizes shown in older value guides and references. Sizes can fluctuate from the effects of weather, storage, position while being displayed and other factors, so it is not unusual for a similar item to be one to sometimes two or more inches different from the size we show at the site. Generally speaking, when Ty made intentional size variations, the differing sizes had different style numbers. In recent years Ty has been downsizing many of his existing plush items so it is not unusual to have newer items that measure smaller than the same items when they were first introduced.
Q10. On some of the pages at tycollector.com, Beanies or other Ty products are shown as "retail version." I thought anything sold at retail is a "retail version. What does this mean at your site?
When one of our pages shows a Ty collectible as the "retail version," that means there was another version of that product with the same name or style number that was also sold as an "exclusive" by an organization, country, state or other outlet. In several instances Beanie Babies that first appeared as exclusives were later released to all of the authorized Ty retailers with the same name, but without the exclusive swing tag.