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The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

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Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#61

Post by hunter2_ »

echelon wrote: post #50
brimble wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Builders have been working as fast as they can (and sometimes faster than they should) around here non-stop since maybe 2011 or 2012, and it's not enough. Tons of new neighborhoods, probably half the apartment buildings I know of were put up in the last ten years, and so on, but house prices and rent are nuts and still increasing faster than inflation anyway. We're at the end of what sure looks like about a decade-lo…

> Something else is going on. Growth. In the last 40 years, the US population has picked up 100 million people. 227M vs 329M [1]. By 2050, the US population is estimated to be 379 million (+50M), and by 2100, it will be 434 million (+ an additional 55M) [2]. That's a lot of housing need to fill. [1] Google "US population"; I'm not sure if these figures includes those here on non-permanent visas, but if not, it would…

Do you think education could also be a factor? More university degrees than in prior decades leading to relatively fewer people with low wages in cheap apartments and more high earners desiring luxurious housing, which takes more material and labor to construct? And of course the pandemic generated a desire to get into less-dense spaces with home offices.

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#62

Post by adam_arthur »

erehweb wrote: post #56
adam_arthur wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, bubbles can surely happen even in the era of widespread information. Look no further than housing. A few points on housing: - real home prices have now surpassed the 2000s peak - household formation and population growth has been decelerating, while building has been accelerating. - there are 1.1 homes per household, same as the year 2000. We are not at historically low supply as some claim. Only low in terms of…

Has building been accelerating in the areas where people want to live, though? e.g. lots of Californians wanting to move to MT or ID, but is building catching up there?

Most building is concentrated in the migration destinations. You can find the breakout on the FRED website for different metro areas.

I would be particularly concerned about sustainability of prices for places like Boise or Phoenix. Lots of building there, and prices are far detached from local median wage.

Also lots of land and few regulations preventing further building.

Phoenix was one of the places hit hard in GFC. Prices fell 50-70%

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#63

Post by a_shovel »

This leads to a pretty interesting comparison between plain cryptocurrencies and NFTs.

Cryptocurrencies are beanie babies: Once available for a trifle, their value has ballooned based on speculation. But that already happened, you missed out on it, and it has no bearing on their future prospects. And if a bunch of people ever feel the need to cash out at once, they'll find out just how much value they really have when there's nobody buying.

NFTs are Collector's Edition items: Their original purchase prices are artificially inflated (normally by distributor's decision, for NFTs by wash trading). An association with some pop-culture property or pretty artwork attracts eyeballs to it. You could buy it, or you could just get the regular edition (which, for online artwork, is free.) And the price they're available for doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what you'll be able to get for it.

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#64

Post by [deleted] »

sjg007 wrote: post #59
Lerc wrote: post #6

The current state of NFTs etc. amazes me in the context of Beanie Babies. So many people have learned nothing. Granted the time gap means these are entirely new people making those mistakes. We have such a degraded level of discourse now that if it were used in the Beanie Baby craze there would be people arguing about whether all soft toys are evil.

Non-fungible tulips.

[deleted]

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#65

Post by [deleted] »

technofiend wrote: post #16
Lerc wrote: post #6

The current state of NFTs etc. amazes me in the context of Beanie Babies. So many people have learned nothing. Granted the time gap means these are entirely new people making those mistakes. We have such a degraded level of discourse now that if it were used in the Beanie Baby craze there would be people arguing about whether all soft toys are evil.

>So many people have learned nothing. I would argue considering the plethora of NFT offerings both legitimate and plagiarized that many people learned trying to manufacture the next Beanie Baby is better than investing in them, sort of like selling shovels in a gold rush is more reliable than digging for gold.

[deleted]

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#66

Post by closetohome »

erehweb wrote: post #47

Lot of people making comparisons to crypto / NFTs etc. Looking at it from another angle, what are the best examples of things that lots of people thought were bubbles, but turned out not to be?

This is going to sound ridiculous, but ecommerce? Between the .com crash, and a few high-profile failures like Kozmo, Outpost, and Pets.com, there was definitely an era of skepticism about the whole idea. Also keep in mind Amazon didn't show a profit for the first 10-15 (?) years. They had a decent reason for it (reinvesting it all back into the business) but they took a lot of criticism for it.

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#67

Post by lowercased »

jpm_sd wrote: post #7
jdkee wrote: post #2

Relevant portion of the article: "According to economists David Tuckett and Richard Taffler, we often view a hot new financial opportunity as a “phantastic object,” or an unconscious representation of something that fulfills our wildest desires. These objects are “exciting and transformational.” They appear to “break the usual rules of life and turn aspects of ‘normal’ reality on its head.” They promise something far…

I think the most relevant portion of the article is: "There was one person who emerged handsomely from the Beanie Baby bubble: Ty Warner. Aside from getting caught secretly hoarding $107m of his Beanie Baby riches in an offshore Swiss bank account, Warner has kept a low profile over the years — but he’s quietly amassed a fortune the size of Djibouti’s GDP. Today, the 73-year-old Beanie Baby inventor touts an estimate…

I did some tech consulting and dev work for them around the peak of the craze. I never met Ty personally, but was in their office multiple times. One Christmas (98?) everyone got a bonus of their salary, IIRC. The money was just... pouring in at that point. I'm sure it's died down since then, but the stories were... nuts.

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#68

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

throwanem wrote: post #43
Lerc wrote: post #6

The current state of NFTs etc. amazes me in the context of Beanie Babies. So many people have learned nothing. Granted the time gap means these are entirely new people making those mistakes. We have such a degraded level of discourse now that if it were used in the Beanie Baby craze there would be people arguing about whether all soft toys are evil.

The difference is that stuffed toys have value independent of speculation.

Are you saying that my monkey jpeg is not worth 350,000 US dollars?

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#69

Post by ratg13 »

throwanem wrote: post #43
Lerc wrote: post #6

The current state of NFTs etc. amazes me in the context of Beanie Babies. So many people have learned nothing. Granted the time gap means these are entirely new people making those mistakes. We have such a degraded level of discourse now that if it were used in the Beanie Baby craze there would be people arguing about whether all soft toys are evil.

The difference is that stuffed toys have value independent of speculation.

A better comparison is purchasing a star, or a plot of land on the moon.

Re: The Beanie Baby Bubble of '99

#70

Post by nonameiguess »

adam_arthur wrote: post #22
pushcx wrote: post #9

There's a great history of this, The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute by Zac Bissonnette. It's a quick read, almost entirely original reporting. Aside from the colorful characters, it's really compelling to see the way some individuals' and limited information combined with mass media fell together to create the bubble. It seems like it couldn't have happened at any other time because…

Oh, bubbles can surely happen even in the era of widespread information. Look no further than housing. A few points on housing: - real home prices have now surpassed the 2000s peak - household formation and population growth has been decelerating, while building has been accelerating. - there are 1.1 homes per household, same as the year 2000. We are not at historically low supply as some claim. Only low in terms of…

Whether or not housing prices are in a "bubble" in the sense that the prices are going to correct and drop at some point, they're not a bubble in the Beanie Baby sense of seeing 10000% price appreciation in the span of a few years. Nobody's 4-bed condo is selling for $500 million. There needs to be some acknowledgement of the gap between probably mispriced and tulipmania. Conversely, if prices correct, they're still going to be back where they were in another decade because houses have actual value. You're never going to see a bag full of 150 4-bedroom condos being thrown away on an episode of hoarders because the owner can't even sell them for a few bucks each. There's a difference between "price is going to drop a bit for a while" and "will totally collapse and be worth marginally close to zero dollars for the rest of time."
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