This page is meant to tell you a little bit more about myself, and my family.
My name is Nicole Moran, and I am a 29 year old housewife and proud mother of 3.
from right - A.J. (6), Selina (8) and Daniel (2)
I was born and raised in Augsburg (a medium size town close to Munich), in Germany.
This was also where, 10 years ago, I met my husband - Joe - he is in the military, and was at that time stationed there.
My Beanie addiction started back in September of 2000. One day my daughter came home from school and wanted to know why all her friends had Beanie Babies and she didn't. So, as a totally Beanie uneducated mother, I made myself go on the Internet, to see what I could find out about Beanie Babies.
Soon I found the TyTrade page - where I tried for days to order Speckles for my daughter, unsuccessfully. I guess they just didn't like my Debit Card.
I think it must have been during my second week of trying to order that I notice the Olympic Challenge. Never one to ignore a good contest, I called Selina and A.J. over to each give me a guess on the medal count.
And after that - like it happens so often with contest - I forgot all about it!
A few weeks later came the big surprise - e-mail, from TyTrade! My husband almost deleted the e-mail - you know "it's just junk mail, honey". But I was thinking "Ok, so what did I do wrong now?" I thought it must have to do with me trying to order Speckles like thousands of times and them wondering if I really wanted all those Beanies. But it actually was from "auctioneer" at TyTrade, telling me that I won, and to get with them to arrange for shipping of my price.
I won? What?
I had to go back and check on the contest just to see what I was getting. In my ignorance I had no idea how rare Ty signed Beanies where. I thought "cool, now I got 12 Beanies to give to my daughter for Christmas".
At that time I didn't know anything!
I started reading on Ty's Daily Tymes. People all over where wondering who won the contest - I just couldn't help myself - I DID, I DID!!!!
Lot's of people offered to buy them from me, or sell them for me. I was told that these Beanies where so rare that they would easily sell for $1000 - $2000.
Wow! I just couldn't believe it. So, now the question was - do I want to keep them, sell them or keep some and sell some? How do you go about selling such rare and expensive Beanies? I spent many hours on the Internet trying to figure out what to do next.
Finally I decided no matter if I where to keep them or sell them, the first step would have to be to get them authenticated. So that's what I did. I sent them all to Becky E. from www.truebluebeans.com and had them authenticated.
By the time I got them back, I realized that I would have to sell at least some of them. We where still trying to pay of all the bills that my husband got stuck with after his first marriage, we where paying child support for my husbands son, and we hadn't even started to think about putting money aside for the kids college fund, our retirement found or for a down payment on a house for when we get out of the Army.
So I put up my first auction on e-bay. I got pretty lucky there and sold "Rabbit" for $1100. This auction also helped me meet some great people who ended up buying some more of my Ty signed Beanies.
I sold "Pig" and "Tiger" to Linda (she don't want her husband to know just how much she paid for them, so let's just say she paid $850 and a bit more - LOL - for each of them).
Than I put up "Snake" for auction, but for some reason nobody wanted to buy it. But that was OK, because once again this auction helped me meet my next buyer. Carole ended up buying "Dragon" for, lets just say around $850 - LOL.
"Dog" went up for auction next - once again, it didn't sell. I don't think selling on e-bay agrees with me - LOL. But it did make Jenny e-mail me. She had a buyer, that wanted to stay anonymous, interested. And so I ended up selling "Dog" to Jenny for $850.
Marie from www.aboutbeanies.com had noticed all my auctions, and ended up e-mailing me to ask for "Rat". Marie just loves rats, and ended up buying the Ty signed "Rat" for $875.
Next I just had to try and auction off "Snake" again. This time I let my husband do the honor of setting up the auction, and he forgot to put in a reserve. So Hale was the lucky winner of the Ty signed "Snake" for $650.
You would think that after selling all these Beanies I would be well on my way to pay of my bill, but sadly we are only half way there. It hasn't help that Ty has been coming out with so many new cute Beanies. I have been trying my hardest to slow down on my Beanie buying, but like all you true Beanie addicts know - it's very hard!
So, now you know how I ended up with all these great Ty signed Zodiac Beanies, and why I am trying to sell them (at least all but one - which ever is left at the end is the one I will keep for myself - as a Beanie addict I just have to have at least one Ty signed Beanie in my possession)
Thanks for taking the time to read this - I hope you enjoyed reading all about my Ty signed Zodiacs.
If you still have questions feel free to e-mail me at: