How much to sell my collection of over 100 TY Beanie Babies for?

soolin

Contains_Mild_Peril wrote: »

Really? Are you sure the skips are Oxfam's? If they are I think yours actually is unique, and if not unique it's certainly very unusual. Oxfam has its own textile recycling company: clothes and other textiles (including cuddly toys) which aren't sold locally are sent to a big plant for sorting. Some are redistributed to specialist shops (e.g. vintage shops, and stalls at festivals where customers will pay amazing prices for a decent pair of wellies), some are sent abroad, and some are shredded to make things like carpet underlay.

Oxfam also sells other items to other recycling companies, usually for very little money but it's better than them paying for it to go to landfill. The company which collects books from my local Oxfam pays £1 per box (recycling company supplies the boxes). When I see eBay listings for very cheap secondhand books, CDs etc where multiple copies of many titles are available, I imagine these are companies which buy charity shop overstock in bulk and have huge warehouses and special deals with Royal Mail. Of course I still expect that most of the books sent for recycling get pulped.

About the Beanie Babies, there are a few popular rare ones that are still quite saleable, but most are worth only pennies. They are cute and parents do still buy them for kids to play with if they're cheap enough (e.g. 3 for 99p in charity shop).

Value is a matter of supply and demand. With Beanie Babies, lots of people bought them when they were popular and kept them in pristine condition, and now they're out of fashion, supply is high relative to demand so prices are low. Given long enough, supply will drop as many get de-tagged and given to children to play with and/or thrown away, and they will eventually acquire nostalgia value and demand is likely to rise at least a little. I'm pretty sure the prices of the height of the craze will never be repeated, but if I had a collection I'd be inclined to store them away for years (I'm probably talking a lot of years) to await a revival. If that's not for you, selling as a bundle on Gumtree, Facebook or even eBay might work. 99p-start auction may be the best tactic on eBay: you won't make a fortune but they're virtually guaranteed to sell.

Yep, definitely Oxfam. They have at least one of those big industrial lidded containers- sometimes it is open where they are obviously using it, most of the time it is padlocked shut. When open it has toys, books, clothes, cushions etc in it. They occasionally also have furniture out the back which I assume is waiting to be dumped as it is piled up regardless of the weather . As I mentioned earlier they told me once when I tried to donate a coffee table that they wouldn't normally accept furnitre if their storage was full as they would have to dump it.

My Oxfam is quite a large one, when I started to dump my book stock (I used to sell books professionally) they asked me to mark mine carefully and to pack the good stuff separately from the chart books- on the basis the good stuff was sent to their specialist book stores. They sell very few books really, and usually have a shopping trolley out the front with 'help yourself for a donation' type arrangement for common books (most of my local ones have that arrangement)

When I used to collect my books from a different charity shop (not Oxfam) I often had to help them haul things to a skip as well and they always moaned that people donated rubbish like puzzles with a piece missing, or dolls with the arm hanging off.

Contains_Mild_Peril

That's very different from other Oxfam shops. Oxfam is normally one of the better charity shops for recycling unsaleable items. My local one has multiple recycling bins upstairs for different categories of stuff. The only situation where clothes go in the general bin is normally if they would contaminate recycling stock (e.g. if they're mouldy, flea-infested or very dirty): otherwise, they get sent here http://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/feb/15/what-happens-to-oxfam-donations-sorted

pleasedelete

beanie babies sell very easily for a £1 each at our local car boot sale.

deanos

TY Beanies, we are moving soon and found about 300 of them in the loft , will pass them into grand kids in the future , got some ones that were worth quite a bit back in the day, worth sod all now

The wife used to trade with people across the world

alykatz

Seems some are still worth something.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044622/Bude-couple-bought-Princess-Diana-Di-Beanie-Baby-boot-sale-without-knowing-value.html

Brooker_Dave

alykatz wrote: »

Seems some are still worth something.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3044622/Bude-couple-bought-Princess-Diana-Di-Beanie-Baby-boot-sale-without-knowing-value.html

"another version is currently listed on eBay for £62,500"

That does not mean someone will pay £62k for a small soft toy though, did it sell at £20k?

Brooker_Dave

"in an irresponsible and non-professionally researched newspaper article on April 18, 2015, the UK Daily Mail and The Sun (UK) provided misleading information about Princess Beanie Baby values. Once again, tycollector.com was inundated with emails from people in the UK and Ireland hopeful that their Princess Beanie Baby was worth a lot of money and asking for the best way to sell theirs.

The writer of the original article (as is usual with these types of articles) used "listing" prices on eBay, as opposed to the prices buyers have actually paid for Princess over the past 30 - 60 days, to support the premise that Princess is valuable. One cannot avoid speculation about the credibility of ANY article in the UK Daily Mail or The Sun, when those online magazines/newspapers permit such a misleading article as the one about the Princess Beanie Baby to be published.

We are truly sad so many peoples' hopes were mistakenly raised by reading a fraudulent article that suggested they might own a rare and valuable Princess Beanie Baby."

http://www.tycollector.com/the-scoop/princess-bear.htm#fa2

Brooker_Dave

"Contrary to all of the hype, misinformation and secondary market speculation, even a "first edition" version of Princess made in China is currently worth approximately $27. A "first edition" version of Princess made in Indonesia is worth approximately $47."

Perhaps the people from Cornwall won't be getting on the property ladder afterall?

RFW

Brooker_Dave wrote: »

"another version is currently listed on eBay for £62,500"

That does not mean someone will pay £62k for a small soft toy though, did it sell at £20k?

Looks like it's still running, finishes shortly. There seems to be more than 100 listed on Ebay now, selling from a fiver. The guy in the story was a collector after a bit of publicity. Chances are it boosted the short term sale prices of all beanie babies, so if I had any, now would be a good time to list. At least until the story of the £20k one turns into "My Ebay false bid nightmare".

As you say, take any Daily Mail story with a pinch of salt, their journalists' research usually amounts to checking the first page of Google and a Twitter feed.