September 3, 2025 • 14 mins
If you have a child, or have left the house in recent months, chances are you’re familiar with Pop Mart’s blind box sensation the Labubu.
This week on the Bloomberg Australia Podcast, host Rebecca Jones speaks to Ainsley Thomson in Wellington about why the toothy plush toys have developed a cult following and investors are diving in.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
I'll talk about potmark now. Oh no, I mean that's
I know where this is going. Oh, I just got
to talk about it right.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This week we're diving into one of the most surprising
investment frenzies of twenty twenty five. And no it's not stocks,
bonds or even bitcoin. It's plush toys. If you don't
know what a la booboo is now you will in
just fifteen minutes time.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So buckle up, it's blind box time. Do you know
what these are?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
These cute little furry creatures are called laboo boos and
it's the latest item that's been taking over the internet.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
La Boo Boo has become a global pop culture sensation,
but other Chinese companies are looking to give Popmart's famous
dolls a run for their money. Hello, I'm Rebecca Jones.
Welcome to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. Today we're talking about
those toothy, wide eyed creations from China's PopMart International. I'm
of course talking about La Boo Boos. They have gone
(00:57):
from mystery blind boxes in Beijing males to the hottest
global collectibles, with rare additions selling for tens of thousands
of dollars at auction, investors, celebrities and everyday fans. They're
all piling in, But the question remains, does it have
Disney level staying power or are they just beanie babies
(01:19):
two point zero. To help answer that and more is
Bloomberg's deputy team leader for Wealth coverage, Ainsley Thompson, who's
been following the rise of the labooboo economy.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Ainsley, welcome back, hello, and thank you rebeca.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
You like me, Ainsley, have got kids who may or
may not be into school ground trends, but labooos really
have become more than just the latest footy or Pokemon
card craze, haven't they? And see what exactly is a
laboo boo? And how do they become such a global phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, I don't know about you, but for me it was,
you know, two months ago, I'd never heard of a labooboo,
and then some it was all my children could talk about.
And I'm sort of embarrassed to say it took me
a while to get my head around what these things were.
I couldn't kind of understand them. Are they toys? What
exactly do they do? What is the point of them?
I mean, is this how our parents felt about my
little ponies and Cabbage Patch kids. I have no idea
(02:16):
but to break it down. What are laboo booths? I
guess they are little dolls. They are fluffy, they are
little monsters, and they've got lots of teeth, and they're
pretty cute. And they're made by a Chinese company called PopMart.
The most popular form they come in is key chains
and key changes is probably another concept that people won't
have heard of before.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Many people want to heard of.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
You hang them on your bag and that is the
form of la booboos that people want. Those retail at
the PopMart stores for about thirty to forty Australian dollars.
They do come in other forms. You can get figurines.
I made the mistake bought my kids figurines. Apparently that
was the wrong thing to buy them. You can get
bigger kind of plush toys. But the key chains are
(02:59):
the really popular ones.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
That is incredible because if you have children, you'll know
that their school bags are literally full of these key
chains are kin to like a you know, a janitor
or someone who works at the county jail. They just
love them, right, so per keychain we're looking at about
thirty dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I mean they have all these key chains, but they
don't really have keys. They just have the chains rights
to all of us, all of us parents. Okay, so
the keychains are the really popular ones, right. As you
mentioned in the introduction, they come in blind boxes, and
this is really important because it's kind of feeding this frenzy.
People don't know what they're getting, and to make it
(03:39):
even more confusing, some labooboos are rarer than other la booboos,
so you may get really lucky and get a blind
box with an extremely rare la booboo in it, which
is in theory worth a lot more money than a
run of the mill laboo boo. And the blind boxing
is also feeding it, feeding the frenzy because of the
unboxing trend. You don't just open your labooboo, you film
(04:02):
yourself and you put it on TikTok or social media.
So that's helping create this whole kind of ecosystem of frenzy,
you know, of this viral trend that people want.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
To be part of.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
So this does seem like the perfect mix of fun
and almost like toy roulette. If you'd like, and so,
how do you get your hands on one of these labooboo.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
It's really hard to get hold of them. I have
these limited drops, so the shops will have them and
stop for I mean a really short period of time.
It's so hard. I've been we've been on a waiting
list for ages. We've never even had the call. You know.
It's there's queues outside the pop marks. You can't just
you know, roll up to a Popmark and expect to
get a La buobuo keychain. It's just not going to happen.
(04:44):
And so that is also helping build this whole frenzy
around them, the fact that they are so hard to get. It's,
you know, this artificial scarcity which makes them more desirable,
a bit like diamonds and airline tickets. You know, we
want it because we can't have it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
There is a new PopMart store here in Melbourne on
Berck Street mall and I have on good advice from
the twelve or so adult I might add journalists that
work in the Melbourne bureau that there is consistently a
queue of about twenty people lining up out front trying
to get the hands on one. Is it a similar
similar thing over in Wellington where you are.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
We don't actually have a PopMart store in Wellington. I'm
sorry to say.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
They are sold at some department stores here, so we
can get them. In Auckland there is a PopMart store.
But when I have been traveling in Australia, I made
a special trip to PopMart store in Sydney, and I
also did so in Singapore. I sort it out. I
was quite overwhelmed. I didn't know what I was doing
or and that's when I got the wrong la booboo.
(05:45):
But anyhow, I tried my best.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It does sound a bit risky from a parent view
at least, but also from an investment angle, which is,
of course you know what you and I talk about
all day long, and see what are collectors or let's
call them investors, actually betting on. Is it the rarity
of these laboo boos or their tradeability or both?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I think it's both.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
So people are trying to buy them at retail price,
so you know, there's sheet to forty dollars, and then
they're selling them on the secondary market for a big markup.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
And so you know eBay.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
In New Zealand, the equivalent of eBay is called trade
me and all these secondary markets are trying to sell
us these laboo boos for sometimes really inflated prices, and
on trade me they were selling for around eight hundred
to nine hundred dollars a couple of months ago. Wow,
so you know it's a big markup. So people are
betting on that. So there's those people who are thinking, okay,
(06:40):
this could be a get bit of a get rich
quick moment, you know, sell them on quickly on the
secondary market. And then there's other people who are thinking, okay,
this could be a long term investment, something like you know,
raar baseball cards which keep growing in value rather than
losing their value that you know, they're sought after collectible,
rather than the more of the beanie baby type thing,
(07:02):
which you know, lost its value once that market crash.
We don't yet know which camp leabooboos are going to
fall into. Is it going to be you know, the
rear basebook cards, or is it going to be is
it going to be the beanie baby?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I know we've done some reporting on this recently, and
you know, in some of the experts that that we've
talked to at Bloomberg say that you know, without that
strong backstory like your Pokemon's and the Disney characters. Labooboos
could indeed be a fad. What other financial experts saying
Ansley about whether or not PopMart has the depth to
(07:36):
sustain this growth.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That you know in the long term. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
They don't have the backstory that the Disney characters have
or even you know, Pokemon, even Hallow Kitty and things
like that. Yeah, but in a way they kind of
reverse engineering it. So there's now a pop Land in Beijing,
which is, you know, a theme park for PopMart figurines,
and they also have a film studio, So this could
(08:02):
be something, and you know, we could I guess it's
likely that there's going to be a TV program or
a film or something like that. I also think that
there's a generational shift here. It doesn't necessarily make sense
to us. We look at the Disney and the Hello
Kitties of this you know, of the world, and think
it needs a strong character link in this story, whereas
children and young adults are creating their own narrative on
(08:25):
social media, their own story, and they're looking at it
a different way to how we look at it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
You know, I am interested in bringing this a little
closer to home.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Kids at my children's school are obsessed with La booboo.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
One child that I know, who is nine years old,
can even spot a fake by sight. She's probably gonna
fool I learned that just yesterday. Look, we're on a
very steep learning cave. Let's let us just say that
other people at our market here in Australia and news
and treating laboobus as like just a fun collectible or
(09:04):
are people seeing it as an investment opportunity.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I think there's a bit of both.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
For the children, our children, et cetera, it's you know,
it's a bus parents, it's a fun way, you know,
we can make them smile. We can get them a
la boo boo if we can manage to do so.
For other people, it is definitely they're seeing it as
some form of investment in a way to make money
or even a store of value for the future. There's
also a really interesting thing happening around labuboos, which is
(09:33):
the labuobuo economy, and that is this kind of subset
of industry that's being derived from the actual dolls. We're
seeing la booboo clothing for the dolls, not for the humans,
for the dolls. There's a huge market in that in
China and this I don't know if this is happening
in Australia and New Zealand, but it's certainly happening overseas.
We're seeing people rent out their services to go la
(09:55):
booboo hunting, so people don't have to stand in queues,
et cetera, so they'll do it for you. People can
also rent la boo boos so they can film for
their social media, etc. So you know, there's this whole
kind of subculture happening there as well, which I don't
know that we really see around other collectibles to this extent.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
When we come back, let's dig a little deeper into
the fundamentals of pop mart the founder and why or
why not? Even if you're sat on Collins Street or
Martin Place, you should be thinking about getting your mit
some one of these famous blind boxes. You're listening to the
Bloomberg Australia Podcast. Welcome back to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast.
(10:38):
You're here with me Rebecca Jones, and this week I'm
talking to Ainsley Thompson, who co leads Bloomberg's wealth coverage
in Asia Pacific, Ainsley, when we talk about alternative assets,
fuzzy little guys with goofy faces and weird teeth isn't
really the first thing that springs to my mind, But
you know that said pop Mark. Just having a look
(11:00):
at the financials, they're breaking records right like, the market
value is around fifty five billion US dollars and its founder,
a chap named Wang Ning It has become one of
the world's richest millennials. Could this be China's first real
pop culture expert success?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Is definitely looking that way. We've seen, you know, big
successes out of other Asian countries Japan with Pokemon and
Hello Kitty, et cetera, and obviously South Korea with k
pop and squid games and all that sort of thing.
From China, bar are some breakthrough success of video games
and some films. We haven't seen anything on the scale
(11:42):
of this before. And it's really really hit home in
Middle America, which I think is you know, it's a
it's a big deal people. You know, there's a store
opening in Ohio.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You just you know, it's unexpected that this would be
such a huge success, you know, Middle America, and you
know it's been called organic soft diplomacy. So it's not
like the Chinese state is behind this company as such
and is orchestrating this, but it is, you know, this
kind of cultural push by China. I guess you know,
it's showing their creative side and it's winning fans the
(12:14):
world over.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
So if you are listening and wondering whether or not
to invest in either PopMart or Labooboos themselves, what is
the key takeaway?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
It's difficult to say at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I mean, we really can't say if it's going to
be the as we're saying before the rear baseball card,
that this keeps growing in value, or if it's going
to be the Beanie baby. My colleague Karen Lee spoke
to Jimmy Dale, who is head of investor Behavior at
National Australia Bank, and she said, unlike traditional assets like
property or companies, which have an expected value, there's no
(12:50):
expected value for essentially a soft toy. I mean other
than selling it to a charity shop. There's no like
kind of intrinsic value there. So you know, it depends
if it holds up on the secondary market. Well, yes
there is, but otherwise, you know, it's a fad and
Dale is encouraging younger investors to ask this simple question,
which is this a smart place to put your money?
(13:11):
And I think you know that goes a long way,
doesn't it, you know, And the old advice, which is
always can you stand to lose it? So if you invest,
you know, fifty dollars in the labubo, you know, probably
for most people that's not such a big deal. But
if you're putting in thousands and thousands, maybe it's you know,
a more serious question.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And good luck to us trying to get that one
past our kids. But in other words, enjoy the fun,
but don't get the house on it. Absolutely. If you
found today's conversation insightful, be sure to follow the Bloomberg
Australia Podcast wherever you listen, and for the latest on
alternative assets, including our fairy friends, the La Booboo, and
(13:50):
all the latest reporting from Ansley Thompson, head to Bloomberg
dot com.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
This episode was.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Recorded on the traditional lands of the Runs Read People,
produced by Paul Allen and edited by Ainsley Chandler and
Chris Burke. I'm Rebecca Jones and I'll see you next week.
I'll talk about potmark now. Oh no, I mean that's
I know where this is going. Oh, I just got
to talk about it right.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This week we're diving into one of the most surprising
investment frenzies of twenty twenty five. And no it's not stocks,
bonds or even bitcoin. It's plush toys. If you don't
know what a la booboo is now you will in
just fifteen minutes time.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
So buckle up, it's blind box time. Do you know
what these are?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
These cute little furry creatures are called laboo boos and
it's the latest item that's been taking over the internet.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
La Boo Boo has become a global pop culture sensation,
but other Chinese companies are looking to give Popmart's famous
dolls a run for their money. Hello, I'm Rebecca Jones.
Welcome to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast. Today we're talking about
those toothy, wide eyed creations from China's PopMart International. I'm
of course talking about La Boo Boos. They have gone
(00:57):
from mystery blind boxes in Beijing males to the hottest
global collectibles, with rare additions selling for tens of thousands
of dollars at auction, investors, celebrities and everyday fans. They're
all piling in, But the question remains, does it have
Disney level staying power or are they just beanie babies
(01:19):
two point zero. To help answer that and more is
Bloomberg's deputy team leader for Wealth coverage, Ainsley Thompson, who's
been following the rise of the labooboo economy.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Ainsley, welcome back, hello, and thank you rebeca.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
You like me, Ainsley, have got kids who may or
may not be into school ground trends, but labooos really
have become more than just the latest footy or Pokemon
card craze, haven't they? And see what exactly is a
laboo boo? And how do they become such a global phenomenon.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Well, I don't know about you, but for me it was,
you know, two months ago, I'd never heard of a labooboo,
and then some it was all my children could talk about.
And I'm sort of embarrassed to say it took me
a while to get my head around what these things were.
I couldn't kind of understand them. Are they toys? What
exactly do they do? What is the point of them?
I mean, is this how our parents felt about my
little ponies and Cabbage Patch kids. I have no idea
(02:16):
but to break it down. What are laboo booths? I
guess they are little dolls. They are fluffy, they are
little monsters, and they've got lots of teeth, and they're
pretty cute. And they're made by a Chinese company called PopMart.
The most popular form they come in is key chains
and key changes is probably another concept that people won't
have heard of before.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Many people want to heard of.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
You hang them on your bag and that is the
form of la booboos that people want. Those retail at
the PopMart stores for about thirty to forty Australian dollars.
They do come in other forms. You can get figurines.
I made the mistake bought my kids figurines. Apparently that
was the wrong thing to buy them. You can get
bigger kind of plush toys. But the key chains are
(02:59):
the really popular ones.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
That is incredible because if you have children, you'll know
that their school bags are literally full of these key
chains are kin to like a you know, a janitor
or someone who works at the county jail. They just
love them, right, so per keychain we're looking at about
thirty dollars.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
That's right.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
I mean they have all these key chains, but they
don't really have keys. They just have the chains rights
to all of us, all of us parents. Okay, so
the keychains are the really popular ones, right. As you
mentioned in the introduction, they come in blind boxes, and
this is really important because it's kind of feeding this frenzy.
People don't know what they're getting, and to make it
(03:39):
even more confusing, some labooboos are rarer than other la booboos,
so you may get really lucky and get a blind
box with an extremely rare la booboo in it, which
is in theory worth a lot more money than a
run of the mill laboo boo. And the blind boxing
is also feeding it, feeding the frenzy because of the
unboxing trend. You don't just open your labooboo, you film
(04:02):
yourself and you put it on TikTok or social media.
So that's helping create this whole kind of ecosystem of frenzy,
you know, of this viral trend that people want.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
To be part of.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
So this does seem like the perfect mix of fun
and almost like toy roulette. If you'd like, and so,
how do you get your hands on one of these labooboo.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
It's really hard to get hold of them. I have
these limited drops, so the shops will have them and
stop for I mean a really short period of time.
It's so hard. I've been we've been on a waiting
list for ages. We've never even had the call. You know.
It's there's queues outside the pop marks. You can't just
you know, roll up to a Popmark and expect to
get a La buobuo keychain. It's just not going to happen.
(04:44):
And so that is also helping build this whole frenzy
around them, the fact that they are so hard to get. It's,
you know, this artificial scarcity which makes them more desirable,
a bit like diamonds and airline tickets. You know, we
want it because we can't have it.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
There is a new PopMart store here in Melbourne on
Berck Street mall and I have on good advice from
the twelve or so adult I might add journalists that
work in the Melbourne bureau that there is consistently a
queue of about twenty people lining up out front trying
to get the hands on one. Is it a similar
similar thing over in Wellington where you are.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
We don't actually have a PopMart store in Wellington. I'm
sorry to say.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
They are sold at some department stores here, so we
can get them. In Auckland there is a PopMart store.
But when I have been traveling in Australia, I made
a special trip to PopMart store in Sydney, and I
also did so in Singapore. I sort it out. I
was quite overwhelmed. I didn't know what I was doing
or and that's when I got the wrong la booboo.
(05:45):
But anyhow, I tried my best.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
It does sound a bit risky from a parent view
at least, but also from an investment angle, which is,
of course you know what you and I talk about
all day long, and see what are collectors or let's
call them investors, actually betting on. Is it the rarity
of these laboo boos or their tradeability or both?
Speaker 1 (06:07):
I think it's both.
Speaker 3 (06:08):
So people are trying to buy them at retail price,
so you know, there's sheet to forty dollars, and then
they're selling them on the secondary market for a big markup.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
And so you know eBay.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
In New Zealand, the equivalent of eBay is called trade
me and all these secondary markets are trying to sell
us these laboo boos for sometimes really inflated prices, and
on trade me they were selling for around eight hundred
to nine hundred dollars a couple of months ago. Wow,
so you know it's a big markup. So people are
betting on that. So there's those people who are thinking, okay,
(06:40):
this could be a get bit of a get rich
quick moment, you know, sell them on quickly on the
secondary market. And then there's other people who are thinking, okay,
this could be a long term investment, something like you know,
raar baseball cards which keep growing in value rather than
losing their value that you know, they're sought after collectible,
rather than the more of the beanie baby type thing,
(07:02):
which you know, lost its value once that market crash.
We don't yet know which camp leabooboos are going to
fall into. Is it going to be you know, the
rear basebook cards, or is it going to be is
it going to be the beanie baby?
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
I know we've done some reporting on this recently, and
you know, in some of the experts that that we've
talked to at Bloomberg say that you know, without that
strong backstory like your Pokemon's and the Disney characters. Labooboos
could indeed be a fad. What other financial experts saying
Ansley about whether or not PopMart has the depth to
(07:36):
sustain this growth.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That you know in the long term. You're absolutely right.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
They don't have the backstory that the Disney characters have
or even you know, Pokemon, even Hallow Kitty and things
like that. Yeah, but in a way they kind of
reverse engineering it. So there's now a pop Land in Beijing,
which is, you know, a theme park for PopMart figurines,
and they also have a film studio, So this could
(08:02):
be something, and you know, we could I guess it's
likely that there's going to be a TV program or
a film or something like that. I also think that
there's a generational shift here. It doesn't necessarily make sense
to us. We look at the Disney and the Hello
Kitties of this you know, of the world, and think
it needs a strong character link in this story, whereas
children and young adults are creating their own narrative on
(08:25):
social media, their own story, and they're looking at it
a different way to how we look at it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
You know, I am interested in bringing this a little
closer to home.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
Kids at my children's school are obsessed with La booboo.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
One child that I know, who is nine years old,
can even spot a fake by sight. She's probably gonna
fool I learned that just yesterday. Look, we're on a
very steep learning cave. Let's let us just say that
other people at our market here in Australia and news
and treating laboobus as like just a fun collectible or
(09:04):
are people seeing it as an investment opportunity.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
I think there's a bit of both.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
For the children, our children, et cetera, it's you know,
it's a bus parents, it's a fun way, you know,
we can make them smile. We can get them a
la boo boo if we can manage to do so.
For other people, it is definitely they're seeing it as
some form of investment in a way to make money
or even a store of value for the future. There's
also a really interesting thing happening around labuboos, which is
(09:33):
the labuobuo economy, and that is this kind of subset
of industry that's being derived from the actual dolls. We're
seeing la booboo clothing for the dolls, not for the humans,
for the dolls. There's a huge market in that in
China and this I don't know if this is happening
in Australia and New Zealand, but it's certainly happening overseas.
We're seeing people rent out their services to go la
(09:55):
booboo hunting, so people don't have to stand in queues,
et cetera, so they'll do it for you. People can
also rent la boo boos so they can film for
their social media, etc. So you know, there's this whole
kind of subculture happening there as well, which I don't
know that we really see around other collectibles to this extent.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
When we come back, let's dig a little deeper into
the fundamentals of pop mart the founder and why or
why not? Even if you're sat on Collins Street or
Martin Place, you should be thinking about getting your mit
some one of these famous blind boxes. You're listening to the
Bloomberg Australia Podcast. Welcome back to the Bloomberg Australia Podcast.
(10:38):
You're here with me Rebecca Jones, and this week I'm
talking to Ainsley Thompson, who co leads Bloomberg's wealth coverage
in Asia Pacific, Ainsley, when we talk about alternative assets,
fuzzy little guys with goofy faces and weird teeth isn't
really the first thing that springs to my mind, But
you know that said pop Mark. Just having a look
(11:00):
at the financials, they're breaking records right like, the market
value is around fifty five billion US dollars and its founder,
a chap named Wang Ning It has become one of
the world's richest millennials. Could this be China's first real
pop culture expert success?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Is definitely looking that way. We've seen, you know, big
successes out of other Asian countries Japan with Pokemon and
Hello Kitty, et cetera, and obviously South Korea with k
pop and squid games and all that sort of thing.
From China, bar are some breakthrough success of video games
and some films. We haven't seen anything on the scale
(11:42):
of this before. And it's really really hit home in
Middle America, which I think is you know, it's a
it's a big deal people. You know, there's a store
opening in Ohio.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
Things like that.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
You just you know, it's unexpected that this would be
such a huge success, you know, Middle America, and you
know it's been called organic soft diplomacy. So it's not
like the Chinese state is behind this company as such
and is orchestrating this, but it is, you know, this
kind of cultural push by China. I guess you know,
it's showing their creative side and it's winning fans the
(12:14):
world over.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
So if you are listening and wondering whether or not
to invest in either PopMart or Labooboos themselves, what is
the key takeaway?
Speaker 1 (12:25):
It's difficult to say at this point.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
I mean, we really can't say if it's going to
be the as we're saying before the rear baseball card,
that this keeps growing in value, or if it's going
to be the Beanie baby. My colleague Karen Lee spoke
to Jimmy Dale, who is head of investor Behavior at
National Australia Bank, and she said, unlike traditional assets like
property or companies, which have an expected value, there's no
(12:50):
expected value for essentially a soft toy. I mean other
than selling it to a charity shop. There's no like
kind of intrinsic value there. So you know, it depends
if it holds up on the secondary market. Well, yes
there is, but otherwise, you know, it's a fad and
Dale is encouraging younger investors to ask this simple question,
which is this a smart place to put your money?
(13:11):
And I think you know that goes a long way,
doesn't it, you know, And the old advice, which is
always can you stand to lose it? So if you invest,
you know, fifty dollars in the labubo, you know, probably
for most people that's not such a big deal. But
if you're putting in thousands and thousands, maybe it's you know,
a more serious question.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And good luck to us trying to get that one
past our kids. But in other words, enjoy the fun,
but don't get the house on it. Absolutely. If you
found today's conversation insightful, be sure to follow the Bloomberg
Australia Podcast wherever you listen, and for the latest on
alternative assets, including our fairy friends, the La Booboo, and
(13:50):
all the latest reporting from Ansley Thompson, head to Bloomberg
dot com.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
This episode was.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Recorded on the traditional lands of the Runs Read People,
produced by Paul Allen and edited by Ainsley Chandler and
Chris Burke. I'm Rebecca Jones and I'll see you next week.
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