Libearty the Bear Beanie Baby

Libearty was the first Beanie Baby bear to wear a flag, and the first Ty Beanie Baby of any kind to carry a fourth generation swing tag. He was made for the 1996 Summer Olympics, and the earliest tags print his date of birth as Summer Olympics 1996 rather than a date.

There is an odd detail on those tags. They carried the Ty website address at the bottom, and Ty covered it with a blank sticker or cut the section away entirely before the bears shipped.

One myth is worth clearing up. Sellers sometimes advertise a brown-nosed Libearty as exceptionally rare. Every Libearty was made with a brown nose, so it is a description of the toy rather than a variation.

Genuine oddities do exist: upside-down flags, missing flags, a beanine misspelling on the tush tag, and bears wearing a Garcia tush tag. Counterfeits are common and the flag is usually the tell, with too much white between the stripes or a wide white band top and bottom. Others give themselves away with a nose that is too dark, fabric that is not smooth, a rosy red ribbon in place of bright red, a gold-yellow star on the swing tag, or the word freedom misspelled as freedem in the poem.