Will Fayetteville get first shot at Beanie Baby museum?

“A few Beanie collectors remain, and I went to Fayetteville, North Carolina, to meet the most fanatical of them… a 64-year-old man who owned a collection of 16,000 Ty products and lived with his 32-year-old daughter, who made a full-time job of cataloging her father’s Beanie Babies….

“Their house would be roomy inside if it weren’t for all the Beanie Babies — Leon [Schlossberg] has to remove hundreds of Beanies from the bed  each night before sleeping in it….

“Leon assures me that Ty products are not the driving force behind his life. The driving force, he explains, is the Ty Museum he will build….A trailer stocked with rare Beanie Babies will travel to schools to raise awareness for the Ty Museum, whose location will be determined by tax credits and taxpayer matching funds….”

— From “The Great Beanie Baby Bubble: Mass Delusion and the Dark Side of Cute” by Zac Bissonnette (2015)