Beanie Baby Boom

Last year at this time, Melinda Madrigal, owner of a doll store called Cookieland Express in Camarillo, had a good stock of Beanie Babies on hand. The only problem was, “I couldn’t sell a one,” she said.

Last April, however, “Sales started going crazy in our area. Beanie Babies became a craze here, as it had been back East for five years,” she said.

This weekend, kids interested in Beanie Babies and other doll-collecting trends can do some major shopping or “just looking” at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, during the Ventura Dolls & Bears Supplies & Crafts Show and Sale.

Madrigal’s theory about the local Beanie Babies craze is that kids who went East to visit grandparents at Christmas a year ago discovered that little ones in places such as Michigan, Ohio, Florida and elsewhere were collecting dozens of models of these toys--at $5 to $20 each. (Each has a name, such as Batty, Baldy, Crunch, Inky, Pinky, Snort, Spinner or Zip.)

It seems that it took local kids until spring to get their parents to subsidize the collecting habit to any major extent. “There are 130 different ones to collect. [Now] kids don’t stop at a dozen or so. They buy by the armfuls now,” said Madrigal.

The craze, she said, has been fueled by “media horror stories [about] people lining up at 1 in the morning at stores in Florida awaiting a new shipment of Beanie Babies.”

This weekend, local kids who’ve never been east of Piru and have no interest in humid Florida, but who want to find out the latest about collectible bears and dolls, can do so by visiting the show at the fairgrounds.

Madrigal will be exhibiting at the show, along with dozens of other California dealers, including representatives of Just for You (Simi Valley), Just Peachey Dolls, Etc. (Port Hueneme), KDM Books for Doll and Teddy Bear Collectors (Ventura), Tandy Leather Co. (Oxnard) and Treasures ‘n’ Things (Ventura).

Randi Miller, the Rancho Santa Fe-based organizer of the show, said the proportion of dolls to bears will be 50-50, with prices ranging from about $5 to hundreds--even thousands--of dollars for items of keen interest to collectors.

Miller, who has been presenting these shows periodically in Ventura for six years, said that having expensive items on display “lets people see what they can look forward to collecting.”

The Treasures ‘n’ Things booth, to be presided over by Antoinette “Toni” Mitchell, will provide such a glimpse, Miller said. Serious American collectors have been paying as much as $85,000 for an original Steiff teddy bear dating from when Theodore Roosevelt was alive.

For the uninitiated (or sticker-shocked), KDM Enterprises, operated by Kathy MacIsaac, offers reference books with pricing information on this hobby. Thanks to MacIsaac, folks can browse KDM’s wares before the show on the World Wide Web at https://www.imall.com/stores/kdm.

According to Madrigal of Cookieland Express, “For Beanie Babies you [normally] have to go to an authorized dealer,” but they will be available at the Ventura show, and at reasonable prices, she said. You can check out her own prices on the Internet, at www.cookieland.com. For collectibles such as Barbie dolls and other brands, she recommends visiting one of the mass market stores for a price comparison before buying anywhere else.

BE THERE

Ventura Dolls & Bears Show and Sale; Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.; Seaside Park, 10 W. Harbor Blvd., Ventura; admission $2 for kids 6-12, $5 for adults. Information: (Seaside Park events) (805) 648-3376.