@aldet_4021
You seem to be missing the point regarding items which have actually become "collectible" after a period of time.
Some items became actually "collectible," due to the proven SCARCITY of the items -- the T206 Honus Wagner American Tobacco Company baseball card (of which probably less than 200 were actually printed); or the 1918 "Inverted Jenny" airmail postage stamp, of which only 100 were ever accidentally released; and so on -- all eminently collectible due to initial scarce production.
Consider as well all the magazines and comic books which were collected during the scrap drives of World War II -- a form of "forced" collectibility, since the vast majority of these periodicals were destroyed to assist in the war effort. That's one of the factors that makes an ACTION COMICS #1 or a DETECTIVE COMICS #27 so valuable -- not that many survived the scrap drives of World War II. And many of the later EC Comics from the early 1950s never even hit the newsstands, after the Congressional investigations of comic books.
In addition, so many future "collectibles" only attained that status due to their inherent disposable nature: Consider all the items that were normally trashed or donated over the past 80 years -- no one at that time ever gave any thought to the idea that any of these items would ever be considered "collectible" -- and yet the shelves at antique shops are stuffed with "collectible" this or that, that grandma had regularly tossed out as worthless, or destroyed as trash.
But Beanie Babies are exclusively different: they were deceptively marketed IMMEDIATELY as a "collectible," and the collectors and speculators swooped down upon them in droves to snap them up -- creating a false scarcity, based upon the myth of "future value." Any item which is deliberately marketed as an "instant collectible" is only "collectible" to the individual investor/collector -- but not to the real financial marketplace.
Unfortunately, too many of these "rare" Beanie Babies were manufactured in the tens of thousands (or more) to satisfy the hunger of a limited number of collectors -- many of whom drifted away, when they could no longer afford to throw away any more money on stuffed toys; while others finally came to the realization that they had been conned, and stopped feeding their addiction.
And so, nearly 30 years later, the market has become flooded with unwanted, overvalued stuffed animals, the values of which have plummeted drastically since the market for Beanies has disintegrated due to massive lack of interest.
The only way that Beanies would ever become a future collectible in 2124 is by deliberately destroying over 95% of the current Beanie inventory.
And maybe not even then.
But I'm willing to take that chance. Anyone got a match?
