Bankrupt By Beanies, A Documentary About One Family’s $100,000 Obsession With Beanie Babies

This is like admitting to a drug addiction.

In 2009, filmmaker Chris Robinson created Bankrupt By Beanies, a short documentary about his family’s $100,000 obsession with collecting Beanie Babies during the height of the craze. In a recent interview with Dazed Digital, Chris shares some of the lengths his father went to obtain the seemingly-valuable Beanie Babies:

My dad always had a man on the inside that would let him know when new stuff was coming in. I’m pretty sure they held a stake in Ty, because there were many times that my dad would go even further than usual and buy fifty instead of the usual five, all based on some “hot tip” he got about whatever new Beanies were coming out. He would load up the Suburban with every neighbor kid he could find and head down to the local Hallmark store with a wad of ten-dollar bills in his pocket. Everyone was instructed to not acknowledge each other and just get in and out as fast as possible. After we loaded up at one store we would just head to the next and repeat the process over and over.