Fads come and go, as they’ve done for as long as popular culture has been a thing. For example, as Smithsonian reported, for a time in the 1930s and 1940s, people swallowed live goldfish, for reasons that perhaps made sense at the time. Similarly, for a while in the early 21st century, reports The Wall Street Journal, people were “planking” — which is to say, lying perfectly still while only their heads and feet were supported, similar to a plank resting on two supports.

Sometimes, fads focus on collectible merchandise. Cabbage Patch Kids were huge in the 1980s, for example, while decades earlier, kids eagerly sought out spinning tops, marbles, jacks, celebrity-branded lunchboxes, or other trinkets.

For a while in the 1990s, Beanie Babies — plush and colorful toys produced by manufacturer Ty — were all the rage, according to Yahoo! Finance. Consumers gobbled up the popular toys, and soon a secondary market emerged, as collectors tried to get their hands on rare specimens. Sometimes, different creatures could bring in thousands of dollars on the secondary market.

That was 30 years ago, however, and most Beanie Babies that didn’t wind up in the dump are locked away, in closets, forgotten. And regretfully for collectors, only a few specimens are still worth much of anything.

Some beanie babies are quite valuable, most are monetarily worthless

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