We are venturing to Boston once more for a visit with John, Rachel and Anya (now 3 ½ ). Anya is such a chatterbox. When talking on the phone I can now understand what she is saying to us. She called a couple of days ago to say how excited she was for our visit.
We had a garage sale a few weeks ago. Jamie finally cracked open the numerous boxes of Beanie Babies she had been collecting since they were so popular in 1995 to 2000. Jamie has lots and lots of them including many duplicates. When she saw that we were selling our treasures for pennies on the dollar, she decided to join in the fun. She put some “Beans” aside and marked them at fifty cents. That is a big step for her. She loved them so much and cherished the time she had been collecting them. She had taken the specials ones to her house and had them decorating every visible space on shelves and across her mantel.
When I saw how many bears she was putting in the pile I was surprised and it had been so hard to find those. Some we even paid a premium. She put some of those aside to send with us to Boston for Anya. I don’t know that she needs 30 or so “Beans”, but maybe her friends will enjoy them also.
We spend so much time over the years collecting what we think is interesting items. The more scarce the object, the more desirable. We would travel from shop to shop looking for just the right one that we had been looking for. I remember when we traveled to Alaska on a cruise to see the glaciers calving. Our cruise ship stopped off in Juneau. I remember a little doorway of a shop with Beanie Babies hanging in the window. I found some of the very early ones manufactured, so I jumped at the opportunity to help fill Jamie’s collection.
I soon learned two things. You can’t keep up with the marketing and creation of products from a company as large a TY and you can’t keep up with compulsive collecting with a person with those tendencies. As Jamie was diagnosed with mental illness in 2000 we learned to curtail the collecting of Beanie Babies. We packed hundreds and hundreds in large plastic boxes and stored them in the garage. Some came out to Jamie’s house to decorate her place for various holidays. The rest have been waiting for over a decade to be sorted and dispersed.
About 30 of them were packed in a large suitcase and taken to Boston for Anya. Of course, too many for one child at one time. Anya and her mother agreed to 4. When Anya opened the luggage, she was delighted to see the array of stuffed animals and little outfits for them. She picked out 4 as agreed, gave a couple to her cousin and tucked the rest away for other children or other days.