(NEXSTAR) — You may have been advised at some point to collect Beanie Babies, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, and waxy baseball cards because they would surely gain value.
Unfortunately, you and countless others were doing the same thing with these mass-produced products, effectively souring the market for nearly all of them.
Sure, some of those items could sell for well over their original price. A Hamburglar Beanie Baby plush bear, still in its plastic packaging, recently sold for nearly $8 on eBay – likely more than the Happy Meal it came in. Some complete sets of Happy Meal toys have also sold for more than $20 in online auctions.
That does not mean all the items you’ve been holding onto for years are worthless. How can you tell them apart from something that will only fetch you enough for a Big Mac on eBay?
It’s often about scarcity, condition, and popularity, Jim Lentz, the director of animation and anime art at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas, explained to Nexstar last year. While he was referencing Disney memorabilia, it rings true across most collectible categories.
Retired figurines have been known to sell for a few hundred dollars. A hard-to-find and hardly circulated penny from roughly 100 years ago could be worth $3,000 or more. An unopened version of one of the most popular video games once sold for $1 million. A highly graded baseball card released 70 years ago fetched more than $12 million at an auction.
These items were meant to be spent, played with, and traded, not held onto, stashed in a box, still in their original packaging. But because they fall in the latter group, they are especially valuable to those looking to collect them.
Another factor that can add a few zeroes to an item’s value is a little harder to predict: nostalgia.
The Star Wars franchise is a great example, according to Justin Caravoulias, consignment director of action figures and toys at Heritage Auctions. While there were plenty of toys produced in the ‘70s and ‘80s to accommodate its massive fan base — something that would otherwise cut into their rarity — most were taken out of the package and played with.
That leaves room for the rarer items — prototypes, the less-produced toys, and those that are still in the package — to fetch “real money” from the still-large “Star Wars” fanbase.
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STOCKTON-ON-TEES, ENGLAND – DECEMBER 01: Hundreds of mint condition and graded Star Wars figures form part of a huge collection of a Star Wars memorabilia and collectables displayed ahead of an auction at Vectis Auction House on December 1, 2015 in Stockton-on-Tees, England. (Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images) -
FILE – A miniature model called “Red Leader,” a X-wing Starfighter from the 1977 film “Star War, Episode IV, A New Hope,” sits on display at Heritage Auctions, Aug. 30, 2023, in Irving, Texas. The miniature X-wing Starfighter used in a “Star Wars” film sold for over $3 million on Sunday, Oct. 15, during a weekend auction of items both collected and created by longtime Hollywood model maker Greg Jein. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File) -
Action figures from the ‘Star Wars’ movie series are displayed during a press preview at Sotheby’s in New York, Wednesday, Dec. 2, 2015. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Nostalgia attracts many collectors to the items they seek out, Caravoulias told Nexstar. As Lentz also noted, “We all collect our childhood.”
Baseball cards have shown how true that can be. If you were a child of the ‘50s, you may not have thought twice about sticking a Topps card in your bicycle spokes. Had you instead collected them as many do today, you could be the second person to sell a Mickey Mantle card for $12.6 million.
Starting a collection of new toys, cards, figurines, and more does not guarantee you a rich future, though. Caravoulias said, “we’ve kind of turned a corner on collectibility” with today’s items.
Caravoulias again pointed to the nostalgia, or lack of it, associated with the newly produced toys and items being purchased purely for collecting now. Instead of being played with like toys of the past, many are putting these new products on shelves and in boxes to be saved for a later date. When an item is saved for its potential future worth, Caravoulias explained, it usually ends up not being worth much of anything.
“You know, people just seem to think that since something is collectible, it automatically is valuable, and that’s not always the truth,” Jordan Hembrough, toy expert and host of the show “Toy Hunter,” told Nexstar in 2022.
It’s also difficult to predict what items will be worth thousands or millions of dollars to future collectors. There may, however, be hints of which categories or franchises could pay off. Hembrough highlighted Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Raiders of the Lost Ark in 2022 when they were largely being revived. Joe Orlando, executive vice president of sports at Heritage Auctions, recently called out game-worn and game-used sports equipment.
Caravoulias suggested Power Rangers, Paw Patrol, and Daniel Tiger while speaking with Nexstar. The common thread among them all, he explained, is that they are (or for “Power Rangers,” were) popular with children but not adults. Your child may want the latest “Paw Patrol” toy, but it’s unlikely that you want to leave it in its package and stash it in your closet. You may, however, be seeking out that beloved “Power Ranger” figurine from your childhood — a sort of foreshadowing of your child seeking out that beloved “Paw Patrol” toy they’re playing with now.
You should not, however, let the lack of a financially valuable future of an item keep you from collecting it, Caravoulias said. You should instead focus on something you enjoy.
“If you can look at a collectible every day and love it, you’ve made the right choice,” Orlando noted.