And simple mistakes to avoid.

What is my Beanie Baby Collection worth? This question is frequently googled, but the answer is anything but simple. 

Before you dig into the value of your collection, let’s get one thing out of the way, it’s probably not worth what you think. Several times a year, a news article comes out claiming a mind-boggling values for Beanie Babies. Folks run to eBay and see items listed for as high as a million dollars. Their heart skips a beat and suddenly they’re thinking of that dusty beanie baby collection in their basement and considering what early retirement could look like. 

The Truth is, your collection is worth what someone is willing to pay for it, and realistically somewhere near 99.9% of Beanie Babies are worth under $20. As the market is constantly fluctuating, price guides are pretty useless. But don’t worry, I’ll walk you through the best way to price your Beanie Babies. 

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• Up front pricing & payments - No need to wait for your Beanies to sell or hope they'll auction at a good price.
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• Over 20 years of buying experience, thousands of happy customers & hundreds of collections purchased each year.

Many people do this and are led astray by astronomical asking prices. eBay sets no rules for asking prices. Anyone can ask any price for an item. The folks over at tycollector.com said it better than I ever could, “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 $20,000. 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 $20,000 because that's what I'm asking for it?” 

Clearly, you can’t rely on asking prices to see what your Beanie Baby collection is worth, so keep scrolling for step 2.

Once you’ve searched for your Beanie Baby, you’ll see a long list of filters on the left side of the screen. Near the bottom of the list, you’ll see “sold listings.” Check the box next to it, and now you’ll only see items that have actually sold. If the prices are green instead of black, you did it right.  

In an ideal world simply filtering for sold listings is all you’d need to do, but there’s a few things to watch out for on this page.

1. Accepted Best Offers – Any green numbers with lines through them are listings where the seller accepted something less than the asking price. The challenge is, eBay doesn’t share what the accepted price was. The seller could have accepted a $5 offer on a $2,000 listing. When valuing your Beanie Babies, ignore all accepted best offers, they’re no more accurate than asking prices.

2. Abnormally high prices – The truth is many people are willing to use deception to make a buck. Sellers have been known to buy their own products (or have a friend do it) to make Beanie Values look higher than they are. If you see 20 sales of your Beanie at $5-$15 and one sale at $800, ignore the outlier as your Beanie Baby is not worth $800 if it is often purchased for $10.

If you average out the selling prices of the remaining listings. This is what your Beanie Baby is worth. 

Consider selling your collection in bulk. Visit our buying store, Sell4Value, and learn how to turn your Beanie Babies (and Barbies, Swarovski, Waterford & other collectibles) into cash in 3 easy steps.

While you can find what most Beanie Babies are worth this way, there’s a few more details to be aware of.

1. Beanie Babies heart shaped tags have a big impact on their value. Without a tag, your Beanie isn’t worth much if anything. If it has a first, second, or third generation heart tag it may be worth more. You can read more about tag generations here.

2. Princess Bear – most princess bears hold very little value, but there’s a chance yours may be worth a couple hundred bucks. This blog post will walk you through finding the value of your Princess Bear.

3. Misprints and mistakes- This point may be worth its own post, but for today I’ll just say this. Misprints and mixed-up tags are not rare. They were mass produced by the millions. As I said your Beanie Baby is worth what someone will pay for it, but don’t be deceived into thinking the mistakes are rare. In my opinion no one should pay extra for these errors. 

As you find the value of your Beanie Babies, don’t forget—

1. Asking prices don’t equal value/worth.

2. Accepted offers are deceptive.

3. Exceptions are not the rule.

Hopefully this post has given you a good start on valuing your Beanie collection. If I’ve got ya’ feeling nostalgic for Beanie Babies, check out our post about 5 ways to share that nostalgia.

Hope you have the BEST day! (Oh and keep scrolling to see a few of my favorite Beanie Babies!)