THE STRANGEST FINANCIAL BUBBLE IN A AMERICAN HISTORY episode artwork

EPISODE · May 4, 2026 · 47 MIN

THE STRANGEST FINANCIAL BUBBLE IN A AMERICAN HISTORY

from Sleepy Stock Market · host Sleepy Stock Market

THE BEANIE BABY BUBBLE: HOW A $5 TOY CREATED KILLERSTy Warner Made $700M. His Collectors Lost Everything.In 1998, one man's pre-tax income from a children's toy exceeded the combined revenue of Mattel and Hasbro — and people were killing for it. Ty Warner launched Beanie Babies in 1994 at just $5 each, then engineered artificial scarcity through 'retirements' that turned plush toys into a billion-dollar mania. By 1999, the bubble collapsed almost overnight, wiping out 99% of collector value while Warner walked away with a $6.5 billion fortune. The first internet collectibles craze ended exactly the way the NFT bubble would two decades later.🎧 Part of the Sleepy Stock Market series — financial history told as documentary audio.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━SLEEPY STOCK MARKETFall asleep to the greatest stories in financial history.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━#BeanieBABies #TyWarner #CollectiblesBubble #1990s #FinancialCrash #NFTBubble #eBayHistory #PopCultureHistory #InvestingMistakes #EconomicBubble

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THE STRANGEST FINANCIAL BUBBLE IN A AMERICAN HISTORY

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