This rare bear was a complete surprise. Ty had gotten into the habit of releasing a yearly exclusive at the Hong Kong Toy Fair. His first release, the 2010 bear, went unnoticed until the 2011 bear was released well over a year later. It turns out he created a bear for the Kids Russia Toy Fair – the largest toy fair of Eastern Europe. The bear went unnoticed until well into 2018. A top Russian vendor brought one to market. He confirmed only about 50 examples were made. Extracting pieces from a market as nebulous as Russia, so removed from all other international Ty markets, is astonishing.
Rarity Tier: ELITE RARE
With an estimated 50 examples (at most) made, this piece qualifies as an “Elite Rare” piece. Of those ~50 examples, only 10-15 bears were salvaged from the fair. All others seem to have been discarded/lost. There is very little chance more examples will surface. The salvaged examples were all accumulated by this single Russian vendor with the foresight to see how rare and limited this piece was. This vendor combed the entire fair/Ty vendors who visited the Ty booth. They secured all possible examples.
The novelty of this piece paired with the burst of known examples hitting at once, sold in 2019-2020, tempered rarity perceptions and has kept the price of this piece ahead of items like Coral Casino and just behind a Chef Robuchon bear. But with almost all of surviving examples now placed in permanent homes, when demand increases for this bear, with no examples available, the price should begin to acclimate to the rarity of this piece – perhaps the biggest sleeper piece in the hobby. No examples of this piece are expected to randomly surface from old collections like you see with billionaire bears and as you see seldomly with employee teddies and rep bears. With time, the price of this piece will match the Chef Robuchon bear + brown nose MC bear variations.
Rarest Beans 