Old toys and books in your loft could be worth £400K – from Harry Potter editions to Beanie baby toys
EVERY parent knows what it’s like to end up with a heap of unused bits once your little ones have outgrown them.
While some might give toys, books and even clothes away, many parents store them in boxes out of sight where they often sit for years to come.
But, it seems, you could be sitting on a gold mine with those forgotten kids items as Harry Potter books and Beanie Babies, in particular, could be worth an unfathomable amount if sold today.
So before you throw out age-old items you’ve rediscovered during a clean out, you might want to think again and consider selling them online.
But what should you keep an eye out for? Storage expert, Vlatka Lake from Space Station, has revealed the old items that regularly sell for three, four, five and even six figure sums – cha-ching!
As one of the best-selling literary series of all time, it’s likely you’ve got at least one Harry Potter book hiding away somewhere, if not sat on your shelf.
But if you happen to have the complete set, of the wizarding series, Vlatka suggests holding onto them just in case.
According to a list of criteria from Abe Books, original versions can sell from as little as £200 to over £40,000 – so they’re definitely worth keeping for a rainy day.
While stuffed toys seem little more then, well, stuffed toys, it seams Beanie Babies, which were all the rage back in the nineties, can sell for up to a whopping £350,000.
A whole host of the stuffed toys, including Peanut the Elephant and Peace Garcia, regularly go for four figure sums online, while a 1997 bear commemorating Princess Diana once sold for £350,000.
Another popular children’s toy that could make you money in the long run is Lego, and as one of the most popular children’s toys across the world, plenty of households are bound to have old boxes of the stuff.
There is a big demand for rare individual Lego blocks, however, and old Lego sets can also sell for a lot more now than when they were brand new.
The 2007 edition of the Star Wars Millennium Falcon, for example, is available on Amazon for more than £7,000, which is 20 times its original value.
But it’s not just children’s toys that could make you a few extra pounds, as, ironically, old money can actually earn you more than what it’s worth.
But not all money, unfortunately, particularly rare coins such as 20 pence pieces with no date on them and two pence coins from 1983 with the words ‘New Pence’ on them – which can sell for hundreds of pounds… EACH.
While it’s suggested you old onto such items for as long as possible, there are plenty of places to sell your old stuff, with the likes of eBay and Amazon giving you access to thousands of potential buyers from all over the world.
There are also websites that specialise in buying specific items, such as books and coins, but if you are selling online, it’s important to do you research and compare various sites to ensure you get the best price.
If you don’t have any items that could potentially net you hundreds of pounds in today’s market, the experts say to look out for items that are predicted to increase in value in the future.
Such things could include first edition versions of modern books with the likes of The Da Vinci Code and Game of Thrones tipped to increase in value over the coming years.
Original versions of tech like the Amazon Echo could also net you a small fortune in years to come – likewise with first edition Play Stations and Xboxes.
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