I have always been the sort of person who likes to collect things. Ever since I can remember I've been collecting something. As a child I went through a number of collections. Stamps, coins, pin badges, erasers and all the other things that kids collect. In my teens I went more for paper. Collecting things more personal to myself... schoolwork, artwork, diaries, letters etc. I also started collecting teddy bears. I can't even remember how it started - I think maybe I collected them from places that I visited on holiday and so forth. I had amassed over 100 by the time I left home and all but a few moved to my parents' loft. This didn't stop me adding to the collection though. And sometime in the mid-nineties I added several small, colourful bean bag toys to the collection. Beanie Babies. I didn't realise that there was a whole world of Beanies (and indeed other products by Ty Inc.) for some years. It was pure fortune that I kept the tags attached (removing the tags from Beanies reduces their value) - I think I liked the poems written inside! Eventually collecting the bears from Beanie Babies progressed to collecting cats, dogs and pretty much anything that took my fancy. I've well over 600 of them today!
Last year my collecting began to slip. The website that I'd been running for five years had to take a back seat as my work life took up more time than I had to give. As the website slipped so did my ability to keep up with the news. I no longer had any idea what was happening in the Beanie world. I only bought about a dozen Beanies in the whole of 2007. Most of the Beanies on display at home went into storage and the whole thing pretty much ground to a halt. I was quite relieved to hear the news recently that the whole Beanie Babies range is being retired in anticipation of Beanie Babies 2.0. This gives me an ideal moment to call a halt to my collection and close that chapter of my life.
Last year my collecting began to slip. The website that I'd been running for five years had to take a back seat as my work life took up more time than I had to give. As the website slipped so did my ability to keep up with the news. I no longer had any idea what was happening in the Beanie world. I only bought about a dozen Beanies in the whole of 2007. Most of the Beanies on display at home went into storage and the whole thing pretty much ground to a halt. I was quite relieved to hear the news recently that the whole Beanie Babies range is being retired in anticipation of Beanie Babies 2.0. This gives me an ideal moment to call a halt to my collection and close that chapter of my life.