Dear Lee,

“Investing in antiques” in the last 30 years has included free and very low-priced things. Only a few are serious collectibles today. Most ended up unwanted and almost worthless. Be careful when joining the craze for a new collectible series. Check this list. How many did you save for a while? How many went up in price and are still popular collectibles? How many lost all value? The dates are the years the collectible first became popular, sending prices up, and then the end of the fad. Many are still being made. We remember:

Plastic purses (late 1940s-1950s)

Metal lunch boxes (1950s-1980s)

Credit cards (very popular in Japan in the 1980s)

Beanie Babies (1993-1999)

Lady-head planters (1950s-1970s)

Cookie jars (mid-1950s-1990, with highest prices at
     1987 sale of Andy Warhol cookie jars)

Limited editions like Franklin Mint’s silver bars
     (1964-2003) or annual plates (1970 to 1990s)

Royal Doulton character jugs (1934-2011) and
     figurines (1890s-2008)

Hummel figurines (1945-2012)

Modern baseball advertising cards (1960s-2010)

Matchbooks (1950s-1990s)

Banana stickers (1960s-1980s)

Tiny car license plate keychains (1938-1975)

Comic books (1950s-2017)

Hot Wheels (1968-2017)

McDonald’s Happy Meal toys (1979-1990s)

Avon bottles (1960s-1980s)

Sugar packets (1970s)

Precious Moments (1978- 2008)

Hummel (1942-2008)

Bing & Grøndahl Christmas plates (1895-2017)

Royal Copenhagen Christmas plates (1908-2017)

Wells Fargo Tiffany fake belt buckles (1960s-1970s)

Trolls (1959-2000 – started going up again in 2010)

Stickers, (1935-2015)

Longaberger baskets (1998-2005)

Pogs (1990s-2017)

Pokemon cards (Japan 1995, U.S. 1999-2017)

Some that lasted only one year: Chia pets (1977), Tamagotchi (1990-2000, the pet you had to feed, etc.), Pet Rocks (1975), Garbage Pail Kids (1985), and Hatchables (2016). I’m sure I’ve forgotten others.

Today just about everything listed here is almost impossible to sell. Is there a way to know what is only a fad? We just went to a charity auction and there were collector plates for $1. Most fads die in a few years, and, like the collector plates, are almost impossible to sell. A few, like Hot Wheels, have gone down in price but later gone up as new collectors search for early examples.

I wrote this letter because of an online article I read this month about a very rare white Valentino Beanie Baby worth $25,000. But it has to have a heart-shaped tag with two misspelled words, a 1993 “tush” tag, be stuffed with PVC pellets and be in mint condition. We’ve seen ads offering to sell the bear for $25,000 but we haven’t been able to find anyone who bought the bear for anywhere near that price.