With Valentine's Day approaching, collector's items like this could prove the ideal gift...

With Valentine’s Day getting closer, lockdown means people are looking for alternatives to the traditional meal and are purchasing gifts instead to say ‘I love you’.

This has expanded from traditional flowers, chocolates and jewellery to balloons and cute stuffed teddy bears.But what if your cuddly gift ended up being a major, if fleeting, investment?

That’s exactly what happened to the Ty Bears.

They were part of the ‘Beanie Babies’ universe, the very first boom and bust internet investment sensation.

It all began in 1983 when 39-year-old former aspiring actor H Ty Warner sank his life savings into launching a stuffed toy company, using plastic pellets instead of conventional stuffing.

Common today, this was revolutionary at the time, giving the toys a soft, less stiff feel: much more fun to play with and comforting to hold for children and adults alike.

With bright colours, plush fur, and soft, huggable bodies, they triggered a worldwide collecting craze.

Using smart marketing like only selling via small shops and quickly ‘retiring’ popular lines, Warner created massive demand and secondary market inflation, as collectors pulled every trick in the book- including turning to counterfeiting and crime- to own every variant. After flooding the market, the ‘Beanie Bubble’ spectacularly collapsed in the early 2000s, leaving many investors bankrupt.

Some Babies and Bears however still change hands for tempting sums, so if you come across any, such as this cheery gang in the centre, priced at £3 each, it’s worth looking twice for insider clues. Always check for an identifying ear tag, the first thing most children ripped off their bear.

Some ‘Valentino’ bears, with tag typos and up to four manufacturing errors, including brown noses instead of black, fetch thousands of pounds today.

While Warner’s capricious marketing makes almost ‘limited edition’ hard to determine, there are some genuine examples.

The special edition purple ‘Princess Diana’ bear, released in 1997 to raise money for the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund, frequently ranks among the most expensive vintage Beanie Babies, one selling for more than $10,000 recently.