Princess the Bear (PVC Pellets, Indonesia, No Space)

Princess was the first Ty Beanie Baby made to raise money for charity, released in October 1997 in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales. The scale of what it raised is easy to underestimate: Ty donated $2,004,850 to the Diana Memorial Fund in May 1998, and a further $8,039,513 that November.

It is also the Beanie Baby most often misrepresented. Princess is regularly advertised as rare and enormously valuable, and it is neither. Ty produced millions of them, and that includes the early China versions that listings tend to single out. What separates one Princess from another is the pellet type, the country of manufacture and the tag spacing, which is why this record describes one specific combination rather than Princess in general.

Documented oddities are mostly mismatched tush tags, with examples carrying tags belonging to Bones, Erin, Halo, Iggy, Puffer, Quackers and Smoochy.

Counterfeits are unusually well made here, and they copy the made in China no-space swing tag and the PVC tush tag deliberately, so tags alone will not settle it. Fabric colour varies legitimately, so judge the shape instead: fake ears are squarer than round, the eyes and nose are oversized, and many counterfeits use a fabric closer to flannel than to plush.