Your childhood toys could be worth big bucks at auction. Here's what's worth opening those dusty boxes for.
11 Childhood Toys That Are Worth Thousands
Matchbox cars
Matchbox cars might not exist today if it weren’t for a little girl in 1953. At her London school, kids were only allowed to bring toys that fit inside a matchbox. Her father, a partner at a die-casting firm, designed a scaled-down version of the company’s popular road roller model truck that complied with school rules. The miniature car was a hit among her friends, and the Matchbox toy brand was officially launched that year.
Highly sought-after Matchbox toys worth a lot of money include rare models like the 1961 brown and orange Magirus Deutz crane truck, which has been valued at over $11,000.
Hot Wheels
Mattel co-founder Elliot Handler worked with a GM car engineer and a rocket scientist to create a new line of die-cast toy cars that would capture the excitement of custom hot rod culture. When Hot Wheels raced onto the scene in 1968, the cars were faster and cooler looking than any other die-cast cars on the market, including Matchbox.
The first car released from the “Original Sweet 16” series in May 1968 was a custom Camaro, but the most valuable model today is the 1969 pink, rear-loading bus called the Beach Bomb, according to Car and Driver. Only two are known to exist, and if you have one you can expect to get upwards of $175,000.
Pokemon trading cards
American kids first discovered the enchanting world of Pokemon in 1998, as a video game for the Nintendo Game Boy. The trading card game debuted the following year, and everyone wanted the holographic Charizard card (No. 4) from the base set. What made this card one of the toys worth a lot of money? Charizard was the most popular Pokemon, and his fire-breathing dragon card was one of the most powerful in that first set.
Collectors are still hoping to get their hands on Charizard cards today, and for good reason! A near-perfect card sold in 2022 for $420,000 on eBay.
Video games
Since the days of Pong, one of the earliest video games, to today’s hottest PlayStation 5 or Nintendo Switch 2 games, rare or unopened cartridges (aka “carts”) have been highly sought after by collectors. The best ones can sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars at auction.
Nintendo has two toys worth a lot of money on this list. One you’ve no doubt heard of, even if you’re not a gamer: Super Mario Brothers. In 2021, an anonymous buyer purchased a Super Mario 64 cart for over $1.5 million, a record for a game that cost about $60 when it was released in 1996. And just two days before this massive haul, a buyer paid $870,000 for an early copy of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda.
Barbies
Before Barbie, girls played with two types of dolls: Baby dolls and paper dolls. Realizing that girls needed a toy that would allow them to imagine their futures in a different way, Ruth Handler, co-founder of Mattel with her husband, Elliot, created Barbie Millicent Roberts. Toy stores were initially wary about stocking a three-dimensional adult woman doll, but Barbie exceeded expectations, selling 350,000 dolls in its first year.
What’s Barbie worth? Well, she sold for $3 when she debuted at the 1959 American Toy Fair, and an original Barbie in mint condition could fetch over $31,000 today.
Legos
The Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon started breaking records back when it was released in 2007. Costing nearly $500, it was the most expensive Lego set ever at the time, and had the second-most number of pieces at 5,192. Today, this Lego set has an average resale value of around $2,400. The second most valuable? The enormous 5,922-piece Taj Mahal.
Comic books
The first Superman comic book was published in 1939, but the Man of Steel actually made his debut one year prior in the inaugural issue of the Action Comics series. Originally selling for 10 cents, Action Comics No. 1 sold for more than $3 million in 2014, making it the most valuable comic book of all time. The record was previously held by a copy of Action Comics No. 1 owned by actor Nicholas Cage that sold for $2,161,000.
Wrestling figures
If you were a fan of professional wrestling in the 1980s, you might own memorabilia that’s worth thousands now. LJN Toys was the first toy company to produce World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) toys, and some of the most valuable figures come from this era. The Black Card Series in particular holds strong value; Ultimate Warriors could get $2,000.
When LJN Toys closed in 1989, the action figure license went to Hasbro, Jakks Pacific and finally Mattel. The rare Hasbro Kamala Moon Belly variant wrestling figure could go for $10,000 at auction, according to the Sportster trading website.
Yu-Gi-Oh! cards
The Yu-Gi-Oh! trading card game quickly gained popularity among Pokemon players when it made its way from Japan to America in 2002. Kids were drawn to them because they looked cooler, and were more powerful, than Pokemon cards. Today, some versions of top Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, like Summoned Skull and Blue-Eyes White Dragon, have sold for around $1000. The rarest card, the stainless steel Black Luster Soldier, is valued at $10 million, according to TheGamer.
Transformers figures
If you didn’t grow up in the 1980s, and aren’t familiar with Michael Bay’s movie Transformers, here’s the gist of these robot toys: Two factions of a prehistoric alien race crash-landed on Earth and lay dormant for millions of years. When they awoke in 1984, the Decepticons wanted to overtake human society, while the Autobots took it upon themselves to protect us, under the leadership of the Autobot commander, Optimus Prime.
And these are toys worth a lot of money: Mint-condition figures of Optimus Prime have sold for more than $40,000.
Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles figures
In 1984, a new self-published comic book called “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” (TMNT) sold for $1.50 a copy. Forty-one years later, that single-issue black-and-white comic is worth more than 2,000 times its cover price, in part because only 3,250 copies were printed. The toys were produced in mass quantities, but many of them have appreciated in value.
The most valuable TMNT is Undercover Raphael, from 1994. He came dressed in a “real fabric trench coat” (as opposed to Donatello’s molded plastic one), and is worth an estimated $3,500. Cowabunga, indeed!
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Sources:
- Car and Driver: “The Most Valuable Hot Wheels Cars Ever”
- CNET: “Superman’s Action Comics No. 1 sells for record $3.2 million on eBay”
- Forbes: “Charizard Pokémon Card Sold For Record $420,000, How Much Is Yours Worth?”
- Value My Stuff: “How to Value Barbies”
- Brick Economy: “10179 LEGO Star Wars Ultimate Collector’s Millennium Falcon”
- Hollywood Reporter: “Nicolas Cage’s Superman Comic Nets Record $2.1 Million at Auction”
- TheGamer: “The Rarest Yu-Gi-Oh Cards And What They’re Worth”
- Mental Floss: “11 of the Most Valuable Transformers Toys From the ‘80s”
- CBR: “20 Of The Most Valuable Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Toys Ever Made”
- Detroit Free Press: “Rare Hot Wheels, Matchbox car: What they’re worth now”
- New York Times: “Super Mario 64 Video Game Sells for $1.56 Million”
- The Sportster: “10 WWE Retro Figures Worth An Absurd Amount Of Money”
