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Every kid's shoebox of commons was going to pay for college. Junk-wax-era baseball cards — Topps, Fleer, Donruss, Score, Upper Deck — were printed by the billions while Beckett price guides promised the binder was a portfolio.
Ty Warner's small, under-stuffed plush animals launched in 1993 with a genius (and cynical) business strategy: artificial scarcity through deliberate 'retirements' sparked a mid-90s speculative mania. Kids and desperate adults bought price guides, protected tags with plastic sleeves, camped out for McDonald's Teenie Beanies, and treated them as retirement investments before the bubble collapsed around 1999.