BEANIE BABIES BARTERED FOR DRUGS

BOSTON (AP) - Happy the Hippo has become a crime statistic.

The floppy stuffed toy being offered for $900 at a Beanie Baby show in
Andover was stolen. Up the highway in Nashua, N.H., hundreds of the cuddly
dolls - some valued at more than a thousand dollars - have also
disappeared.

Some have even been bartered for heroin.

``I know that it's not just happening in Nashua,'' said Nashua Detective
Timothy Goulden, who is investigating three separate Beanie Baby heists
totaling more than $15,000. ``I think we're probably a microcosm of the
entire United States.''

A couple in Nashua was recently arrested for forging $2,400 in checks to
buy the stuffed animals. They told police they used the money they made
selling the toys to buy heroin.

Ty Inc. of Oak Brook, Mass., brought out the first Beanie Babies -
characters like Squealer the Pig and Kip the Cat - in 1994. More than 100
different versions have come out since and stores can't keep them in stock.
Versions that have been retired command high prices from collectors.

``Beanie Babies are so innocent and childlike, and heroin is so evil - it's
the perfect dichotomy,'' Goulden said.

Nashua collector Jean Marie Diorio, who was selling Happy the Hippo, lost
more than $5,000 worth of dolls to a thief who broke into her car. The
homemaker said she started selling Beanie Babies to raise money for a down
payment on a house. She noted that the dolls, which have no serial numbers,
can be traded without a trace.

``There's no way they can tell it's mine,'' she said of people who would
buy her stolen goods. ``If you put your name on it it's worthless, like
putting your name on a baseball card.''

Waldo Copley, a professor of criminology at Metropolitan State College of
Denver, said the Beanie Baby crime wave is understandable. But he said it's
not an easy way for thieves to make a buck.

``There aren't very many fences who will give you a whole heck of a lot of
money for a bag full of Beanie Babies,'' he said.

Copley said the market for secondhand Beanie Babies is limited mostly to
collectors, who pay the highest price for dolls that are out of production
with price tags still attached.

In Nashua, collectors have been the biggest victims.

Two weeks ago, thieves broke into a kiosk at the Nashua Mall and stole
nearly 90 dolls valued at more than $4,000. In March, another collector's
home was broken into and more than $5,000 worth of dolls stolen.

Nashua is not the Beanie Baby crime capital.

In January, authorities investigating an alleged stolen goods fencing
operation in Columbus, Ohio, came upon several hundred Beanie Babies worth
an estimated $20,000.

Most of the toys were taken from a vehicle belonging to a toy distributor
who was in town for a Beanie Baby convention.

Last summer, a 77-year-old Illinois man was charged with stealing more than
$6,000 worth of Beanie Babies recovered in a Chicago-area storage locker.