Over a week ago, Bobby Bones purchased Raymundo’s bins full of Beanie Babies and Barbies for just $100. Beanie Babies are all over the news lately because they’ve been selling for thousands of dollars, especially some particular ones.
So we brought on Dr. Lori V, who used to be a professor at several universities including Penn State University. She has a background in Art History and museum experience. While she was a professor, people kept asking her to value their items so she stopped teaching and decided to take on appraising full time, which she has been doing since 1998. Dr. Lori has been doing appraising for so long that she has lots of stories of success and of course item fails. She shared that at a big event in the Midwest, a guy brought her a Ball canning jar glass and it said 1858 on it. She told him it was worth about $6, because that’s just the year the company was established and of course, he was upset at the appraisal. Another situation, a gentleman drove 10 hours to one of her events from Rhode Island to Virginia. He brought a painting that he had purchased for $275. Turns outs, it was a real Renwah painting worth more than $2 million. While some appraisers get money off of their clients, Dr. Lori doesn’t, she’s only an appraiser, not a broker.
While on the virtual appraisal call, Dr. Lori took a look at all of Bones’ new Beanie Babies collection. He had a few specific Beanie Babies that are worth more than others. After having Bones check all the tags on the Beanie Babies and verify some specific markings and words, she was able to let him know how much some of them were worth. In his collection is Cubby, and that Beanie Baby is worth $250 on its own. Poly Platypus is another one he had, and that particular one is worth $200. Then there is the Princess Diana Limited Edition Beanie Baby, which right now would go for about $175, but if Bones sells it next year during Princess Diana’s 20-year anniversary of her death he would likely get $500 off of it. Bones had a few others that were decent value: white bear worth $50, the crab worth $35, and the Santa bear worth $25. She noted that if he tried to sell his collection as a whole, he would likely get more money with those as part of it. She also shared that her numbers are based solely on what people are paying, because people can list them at thousands of dollars, but her numbers are based on actual sale records.
If anyone is looking to purchase specialized items like Beanie Babies, Dr. Lori shared that people take her shopping with them so they don’t get scammed. Some general terms though to avoid being scammed by a purchase, she said it’s a good idea to do a lot of historical research on the items you are wanting to buy and have an understanding of how photography works. Things can be easily doctored so knowing how they can be doctored will benefit a buyer. She noted that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is.
