Collecting is a play experience that runs from early
childhood through old age.  It involves a
fascinating string of emotions and actions that include desire, coveting,
satisfaction, self-congratulation, zealotry , seeking, finding, categorizing
and displaying.  Whether it is baseball
cards, stamps, coins or, yes, Beanie Babies, it can fascinate, intrigue and
when taken too far even ruin.   

Who knew that toy collecting could have such serious
results?  That was what went through my
mind this week as an article and a video prompted me to think about Beanie Babies and
their fallen status as a collectable.   

One was the sad / funny / bizarre / much too-human story of the
Robinson Family who have showcased their mania in a mini-documentary entitled
“Bankrupt by Beanies.”  The other is a
new play about hoarding  called The
Capables.  I will write about the latter
in my next posting; for now let’s focus on “Bankrupt by  Beanies.”

This documentary, 
filmed by one of his sons, 
describes how Christopher Robinson, formerly a soap opera star, took the
family on what can only be described as a maniacal quest to collect five sets
of every possible Beanie Baby.  The
purpose was to buy them as an investment and then sell them to pay for each
child’s college education.  One senses in
seeing the video that there more than investing going on; something more like
mania. 

Robinson forced his children to spend much of their free
time, even taking them out of school, to stand in line when new pieces came
out.  He even forced them to pretend not
to know each other, in order to fool store proprietors who were allocating one
to a customer. 

I suggest that you take 8 minutes and 29 seconds to watch this
short video.   You will learn more than
about one family; you will learn about what a thin line exists between healthy
collecting and delusion.