Hopefully this group therapy site can help us cope with our overwhelming compulsion to live with beanie babies and their Ty relatives. We bought our first few beanie babies and attic treasures in 2002 to brighten up my dreary office and suddenly (years later) we find ourselves sharing space with thousands of TY stuffed kids and critters forcing us not only out of the office but also out of our house.

We got a bigger house but we're close to being out of room again. To make things worse, Ty keeps producing new beanies and Karen Brit insists on publishing new lists of beanies we don't have in our collection yet.

We're collectors, not investors. We started collecting because the beanies made us smile and that is still what drives us today. When we acquire duplicates or extras, we sell them on eBay or donate them to charities like orphanages.

All-in-all, Ty collecting continues to be fun, time-consuming and expensive, but for some reason we just can't stop. Then Sondra says, "why don't we get the collector's cards as space holders for the beanies we don't have yet like Humphry and Royal Blue?" That was three months ago. Now I'm out of drawer space and find mself up at all hours of the night searching for unopened boxes of Ty Series 1 collector's cards on eBay. I told you ... there's no end to it.

Add to that the paranoia of expecting Ty's secret agents to show up at any time to confiscate our Tyra with Pom-Poms, and you begin to understand.