Yahoo Finance Collector Craze: 5 Hyped Items That Ended Up Worth Nothing
When fads become frenzies, fortune hunters hoard collectibles thinking they'll find the one that puts their kids through college.
The kids usually wind up taking out student loans.
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That's because irrational outbreaks of trend-based buying can inflate the price of things that have no real value beyond what the craze of the time assigns them -- and, when the fever breaks, the collectors who invest the most usually get stuck holding the hot potato.
The first example in the modern era is Tulip Mania, which swept Holland during the Dutch Golden Age in the mid-1630s. Wild speculation sent the price of tulip bulbs skyrocketing so quickly that panicked buyers scrambled to get their hands on as many as they could.
It was the world's first speculative asset bubble; and, when it burst, legions of investors were stuck with mountains of flower bulbs whose only saving grace was that they were technically edible.
Roughly 400 years later, collector crazes continue to lure fortune-blind treasure hunters looking to cash in -- only now you can buy online.
Junk Wax Era Baseball Cards
Old, rare and pristine baseball cards from the 1960s, '50s and earlier can be worth a fortune because no one ascribed value to them in their time.
But by the 1990s, sports cards had emerged as potentially valuable collectibles, which flooded the market with buyers who hoped their Cansecos, McGwires and Griffeys would become tomorrow's Wagners, Ruths and Mantles.
Producers responded by shipping as many cards as they could print, and today nearly everything from the so-called Junk Wax Era of the late '80s and early '90s is worth about what you'd expect to get for a small cardboard rectangle.
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Beanie Babies
No one paid much attention when Ty Warner introduced Beanie Babies in 1993. But, according to Vox, the billionaire toymaker's brilliant marketing tactics soon fueled a collective delusion and the small $5 plush toys became one of the first e-commerce sensations. eBay auctioned off $500 million in May 1997 alone -- 6% of its total annual sales.
It was a frenzy more than a bubble, with smuggling busts, custody cases and even one killing all attributed to insatiable demand from Beanie Baby who thought the right one could fund their retirements.
But, just like the Junk Wax Era, the bottom dropped out when hyper-saturated supply collided with quickly waning demand. Beanie Babies crashed when the dotcom bubble burst in 2000, and today all but the rarest are little more than used stuffed animals.
Pez Dispensers
Pez dispensers might be history's greatest stocking stuffers, but there's a reason that lots of 60 sell for $20 or less on eBay.
The Netflix documentary "The Pez Outlaw" revealed a dedicated collector base willing to pay big money for the right dispensers, but it also showed that many counterfeits are hiding in plain sight.
Like Junk Wax cards and Beanie Babies, a few of the rarest and best-preserved Pez dispensers can sell for thousands; but, in most cases, the value is mostly nostalgic.
The most obsessive fans amass collections of more than 15,000, but their heirs almost certainly would trade those hunks of cheap imported plastic for the money spent to buy them.
Pogs
About six months ago, a Redditor expressed disbelief at the extraordinary asking price for a rare, vintage Pog listed for sale. The seller wanted $18.
Unlike Pez dispensers and baseball cards, Pogs are not enduring. Like Beanie Babies, the animated milk caps were an intense time-and-place fad that tricked people into thinking they were collectibles.
According to Retropond, 350 million were sold when the trend peaked in 1994. But one year later, Plastics News reported that demand had cratered and The World POG Federation had declared bankruptcy. There were simply too many Pogs and too few buyers who wanted another.
Nothing has changed since.
Hot Wheels
Like Pez dispensers, Hot Wheels cars can undoubtedly be called cool, nostalgic and fun to play with -- but nearly all are worth less than their owners paid for them.
Collectible Insurance Services profiled Hot Wheels, and the dynamic is similar to "Stars Wars" figures. The earliest models have a telltale trait -- in this case, a red stripe on the tire -- that designates them as part of a special run that ended before they were worth anything.
Like early Kenner series "Star Wars" figures, Red Stripe Hot Wheels made within 10 years of their 1968 debut can be worth big money. But when they went from being toys to collectibles, a collector craze took over and Mattel responded by flooding the market with mountains of nearly worthless model cars.
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