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Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Beanie Babies - second time around

I discovered the world of cute and lovable Beanie Babies a little later than many. I don't collect the collectibles or price check for rarity. One day Lee and I found a cache of used, great-condition Beanie Babies at a garage sale, and we were hooked. They were adorable. They had names. What fun! There were so many. The price was right, and we bought them for our online animal store. Putting them online was a bit labor-intensive because there were so many individuals, but it was fun. Then we saw that people were finding them, and that selling just the right beanie to someone who was looking for it made them happy. It made us happy to know they had found the one they were looking for!

At The Seattle Gift Show several years ago, I learned that the Ty company will only sell to brick and mortar businesses, not to online-only retailers. That's what we were at the time, so as far as buying new beanies, we were out of luck. Since then, we've moved into our own brick and mortar place (actually, mostly wood, on pilings over the Columbia River) but we haven't sought out the Ty company, we still look for great-condition used Beanie Babies that need new homes. We try to keep our beanie web page updated and give you the info you need about the tag condition. We have fun searching out beanies and enjoying them while they're in our shop. We sell them both in the "brick and mortar" shop and on the Internet. One way or the other, come check them out! We keep the prices at a stable $4.00 per Beanie Baby. Sometimes you can find the more unusual ones in our shop, and the price is still the same. We also carry Beanie Buddies when we can find them (the fur is SO soft it's almost unbelievable), Attic Treasures, Teenie Beanies, and other cute animals and characters by Ty. It's so much fund finding new ones!

When we moved into our store, I took the beanies out of their dark, dull plastic bins that had served well when we were only online, and I put them into a bright purple display box in our showroom. It's so colorful, it's a delight to walk into our shop each day and see their adorable faces looking at me! The picture below was taken in poor light at the end of the day. As soon as I can, I'll try to remember to get a nice new photo that shows the colors!