Sources close to the company reported that Wizards of the Coast executives were visited by the ghosts of Beanie Babies past, present, and future.
“First, a gigantic translucent blue stuffed owl came to me in the middle of the night,” said WotC executive Milly Nielson. “Suddenly it was day, and I was staring at a line of people outside of a large building. At first, I thought we were at a Magic: The Gathering event. There were creepy dudes with stuffed walruses standing in line outside of a convention hall talking about the secondary market and products they were speculating on. It wasn’t long before the neon clothes and big hair told me we were in the 90’s and this wasn’t an MTG event. It was a toy fair, and everyone here was looking for the next hot Beanie Baby. I began to laugh, knowing just how much money all these idiots were going to lose. These kind of ghostly visitations were supposed to come with some sort of lesson, right? Not sure what it was supposed to be.
“The next day a large stuffed crocodile came into my bedroom around midnight. Suddenly we were outside of an LGS. Players were laughing about cheap collector’s booster boxes at less than $200 and how they were going to make a ton of money off of them. Secret Lairs kept falling from the sky as people willingly threw money to obtain large hordes of product in their basements and storage units. Wizards of the Coast was on track to meet and beat every sales goal given to it. Life was good. I asked why the crocodile would show me such a thing. I knew of all of this as I was the architect of most of it. We had recently discovered that high price tags meant high secondary market value even if those products aren’t game pieces. They just need to look like Magic cards and we can sell them for thousands as useless collectables. I asked again what the lesson here was supposed to be. The crocodile looked at me incredulously. I guess he didn’t know either.
“The large stuffed bunny was next. It was sometime in the future because vehicle charging stations were everywhere. We were outside of the same LGS, only people were pulling up with boxes upon boxes of cards. Binders were out and people were shouting prices. I thought we were at some kind of swap meet, only to realize everyone was trying to sell as much product as possible. People on their phones we’re shouting out new low prices for historically valuable cards causing even more people to arrive with cards by the truckload. Distributors were returning product to our warehouse and Prime Day was basically a booster box fire sale. Before I knew it I was swimming in a sea of cards, unable to breath and thrashing about, gasping for air before I awoke in my bed.
“The ghosts were trying to tell me something. Yes, Beanie Babies experienced a collectable market crash due to an inundation of product and immediate collapse of secondary market value. These stuffed animals had no intrinsic value beyond what people were willing to pay for them and no use beyond sitting on a shelf. Overnight, people were unable to sell their worthless toys they had spent thousands on. They gave me a very valuable gift indeed. A warning from the past and a vision of a dire future should we not heed their warnings. Well, it’s a good thing they’re totally wrong since Magic cards are nothing like those stupid toys so that will never, ever happen to us.”