How to Determine the Value of your Beanie Babies

Before selling off your precious Beanie Baby collectio, you have to determine the value of your Beanie Babies, so you know what to ask for and not get scammed for selling a valuable Beanie Baby for a much lower price. In a previous article, I discussed the basic steps to determine a Beanie Babies value – this article will delve in a little deeper and instruct you how to get the best deal for your collection.

For those that haven’t read the previous article, here is the shortlist of ways to determine your Beanie Baby value:

Steps to determine the value of your Beanie Baby:

  1. Check the official Beanie Baby website to determine if the Beanie Baby that you are trying to sell is retired. This is important, as a retired Beanie Baby will be a lot more valuable than a more commonplace non-retired Beanie Baby
  2. Read Beanie Baby Collector Guides. These can be either found online, or at your local bookstore/hobbystore
  3. Research on the internet about your particluar Beanie Baby.
  4. Talk to knowledgable people to see if they can appraise your Beanie Babies valuePrinted Price Guides are somewhat useless when trying to determine Beanie Baby values because the values change so quickly. A Price Guide publisher won’t buy your Beanies from you. Only Beanie Baby collectors or Beanie Baby dealers will buy your Beanies.

Checking retail prices in a catalog online, which will give you a rough idea as to how much a certain beanie costs, but you probably won’t be able to get retail value prices for your beanies since it is difficult for people to find retail customers by themselves.

Once you have an idea of whatyour Beanie Babies value is, then it is important to determine the conditions of your Beanie Babies. This is important because no matter how much your Beanie Babies are valued on the market, it is ultimately what condition your Beanie Babies are which determine how much you can sell them for. Here are some rough guides to determine what conidtion your Beanie Baby is:

  • Mint condition - Beanie Babies that show no signs of wear and tear, have no defects and tags – both hang and tush are in perfect condition (not bent, written on etc.)
  • Near mint condition: Beanie Babies that are basically in mint condition, but  have slightly bent tags. These will decrease value to about 80% of retail
  • Excellent condition: Beanie Babies that are basically in near mint condition, but have creased or worn or written on tags. These will decrease value to about 70% of retail
  • Good condition: Beanie Babies that have virtully no wear and tear, but are missing tags. These will decrease value to about 40-50% of  retail
  • Damaged: Worn down Beanie Babies, tears, stains, missing parts etc. Expect to receive 5-30% of retail value depending on amount of damage

The most valuable Beanie Baby is the No. 1 Bear, which is only given to Ty employees.

To get the most value from your collection, it is probably easier to sell your Beanie Babies off one at a time. Selling off your whole collection will give you the least amount as you will be getting wholesale prices. Selling individually will get you more money but it will take more time as you will need to find individual people who are interested in a specific Beanie Baby.
Now that you know how much to expect to get from the sale of your Beanie Babies, you can either go to a retailer or convention to sell them. Ebay works well too! For further information on how to sell your beanie babies, please see my other article – How to Sell Beanie Babies