Most teddy bears are worth US$5 to US$40 — and if yours is a shop-bought plush from the last forty years, that is the honest answer. The bear in the attic becomes interesting at the other end: a genuine pre-1950 mohair bear with its maker's mark starts around US$50–150, and the top of the market is real money. The auction record for a single teddy bear is £110,000 (US$171,600) — "Teddy Girl", a 1904 Steiff sold at Christie's in London in December 1994, and not beaten since.
We measured 2,378 de-duplicated live teddy bear listings across twelve eBay searches in the United States and Germany on 7 October 2026, plus 224 dealer listings on a US antiques marketplace, and split them by era, by maker and by material. Everything below is an asking price, not a sold price.
If you want the short version: era decides the band, the maker's mark decides whether you get the top of that band, and the words "rare" and "retired" decide nothing at all.
What we measured, and what it does and does not tell you
- eBay United States — ten searches, 1,963 unique bear listings kept after de-duplication. The collectible pool (antique, mohair, vintage and tagged searches combined) came to 767 listings with a median ask of US$53, half between US$22 and US$125, and 29.5% asking US$100 or more.
- eBay Germany — two searches, 415 unique listings. The generic Teddybär search asks a median of US$80 and the Steiff search a median of US$100.
- Dealer retail — four searches on Ruby Lane, 224 unique antique and mohair bears, median US$180, half between US$91 and US$345. Twelve listings asked US$1,000 or more; the highest was US$5,200.
- Auction tier — LiveAuctioneers holds 4,199 archived price results for "steiff teddy bear", 696 for "antique teddy bear" and 665 for "artist teddy bear". Individual realised prices sit behind their subscription, so we quote counts, not prices.
Prices were converted at HK$1 = US$0.1274 (eBay shows a Hong Kong connection the listings in HKD) and €1 = US$1.1252 for the German searches.
One methodological warning, because it matters if you do this yourself. Steiff is the only bear we have now measured twice: on 3 October, pooling ten US searches gave a US$75 US median; today a single broad US Steiff search gives US$125, while Germany returned US$100 both times. The American figure moves with how many cheap modern listings you happen to pull. One search is not a market.
The bands, and what sits in each
US$5–40 — mass-market plush. This is where the overwhelming majority of teddy bears live. A measured 198 Build-A-Bear listings asked a median of US$32; 218 Boyds Bears listings asked a median of US$13, with 90% under US$40. If your bear came from a gift shop or a charity shop in the last forty years, this is its band.
US$40–150 — collectible modern brands and clean vintage. A British Charlie Bears search returned a median of US$145 with 68% asking US$100 or more. Artist-made and one-of-a-kind bears — mohair, hand-finished, often signed — came in at a median of US$99 across 180 listings. Vintage-but-not-antique bears (1950s–1980s mohair) sat at a median of US$66.
US$100–300 — genuine antique mohair. This is the first band where the bear has to prove itself. Listings described with an era in the 1900–1930 range asked a median of US$140 across 43 listings, with 18.6% above US$300; the 1930–1950 group matched it at a median of US$142 across 52 listings. The named British and German makers cluster here: Chad Valley, Merrythought and Farnell together, median US$145 (n=55), Merrythought alone US$119 (n=23), Schuco US$130 (n=10).
US$500+ — the top of the market. Only 5.6% of the whole collectible pool asked US$300 or more, and the four-figure listings were almost all early Steiff. The highest asking price in our US sample was US$1,281 for a 20-inch early Steiff mohair bear with its button, c.1910; behind it, a 1920s Steiff with a boot-button eye and an "FF" button at US$1,074.
Dealer retail runs at about 3.4× the eBay median — US$180 against US$53.
The five things that actually decide the price
- Era. The single strongest lever in the data. Pre-1930 bears ask roughly twice the 1950s–80s group, and both are far above undated modern plush.
- Maker's mark. A bear that can be attributed to a named factory — Steiff, Bing, Schuco, Merrythought, Chad Valley, Farnell, Ideal, Rushton — is worth a multiple of the same bear with no attribution. Steiff listings in our pool asked a median of US$97 against US$53 for the pool as a whole.
- Material and stuffing. Mohair bears (the pre-plastic plush made from goat hair) asked a median of US$79 across 278 listings, with 40.6% above US$100. Wood-wool or excelsior stuffing is a pre-1950 signal; foam is not.
- Markings and paperwork. A bear with its button, ear tag and chest tag intact is a different object from the same bear without them. Glass eyes mean pre-plastic and skewed high (median US$69, n=21). Boxed examples asked a median of US$120 with 86% above US$100 — but that is only seven listings, so treat it as a direction, not a number.
- Condition, completeness and size. Bald, flattened or replaced mohair is the biggest deduction — replacement fur is worse than honest wear. Over-restoration (repainted eyes, new stuffing, re-stitched seams) is discounted heavily by collectors who use the surface evidence to date a bear.
What does not decide the price: the words "rare", "retired", "HTF" and "hard to find". They appear on a large minority of listings and, when we measured them for Boyds Bears, the premium was a dollar or two — the sellers writing "rare" were simply the ones already pricing higher.
A ten-minute identification routine
- Turn the bear over and look at the left ear. A metal button crimped through the ear (Steiff, from 1904) dates the bear before you read a single tag. Script lettering with an underscored "f" is c.1905–1950s; raised lettering is 1950s onward. Our Steiff teddy bear guide covers the button, the coloured ear flag and the model medians in full.
- Look for a sewn label on the foot, leg or back seam. Chad Valley, Merrythought and Farnell all labelled their bears; a burgundy woven paw label reading "Charlie Bears — bears with personalities" identifies the modern British brand instantly, and its swing tag carries the bear's name, collection and edition number.
- Read any tag number. Boyds prints a style number and often an edition code such as 2E/3879 — the number after the slash is the total production run. A run of 500 is interesting; a run of 5,000 is not.
- Check the eyes and the stuffing. Shoe-button eyes and glass eyes are early; plastic means recent. Squeeze the body gently: wood-wool crackles and is stiff, foam is soft and uniform.
- Measure it — size moves the price within the same maker and era — then match it to the bands above.
Repro, resale and the honest traps
- Reproduction bears are sold as antique bears. Reproduced mohair plush and deliberately aged buttons are a real market; listings that admitted to being a repro or replica asked a median of US$55, but the ones that don't admit it are priced as originals.
- A replaced button is worse than no button. Collectors treat a moved ear button or a tag transferred from another bear as a defect, because it destroys the dating evidence.
- Retail mark-up is not value. A dealer's US$900 ask and a private seller's US$300 ask on the same bear do not make it a US$900 bear.
If you want company on a genuine antique bear, our guide to valuing antique dolls sets out the same evidence-first method for bisque and composition, and every measured guide we have published is filed under our value guide.
Where to see bears like these in our shop
We keep a small, checked stock of bears rather than a bulk catalogue — 70 pieces with bear or plush in the title at the time of writing, priced US$40 to US$1,642 (median US$77), including 31 Steiff pieces between US$41 and US$117 and 22 Charlie Bears between US$40 and US$239.
A few current examples: a Steiff mohair teddy with its ear tag and chest tag still attached, an artist jointed bear set with its original hang tag, and a white curly mohair angel bear with gold wings and bow. Browse the rest in our plush and teddy bear collection.
One note for collectors outside the United States: every price on this site is shown in Hong Kong dollars as "$". We ship worldwide from Hong Kong and quote in USD on request.
Not sure what you have? Send us a photo and any mark, tag or label text through our contact page and we will tell you what the market is paying — whether or not you buy anything.
Get notified when rare bears and dolls arrive:
Related reading: Are Gund bears worth anything? The 2026 numbers: we measured 514 live Gund, Ganz and Dakin listings — 86% asked under US$50, and the median Gund bear asked US$23. The guide sets out the four exceptions that beat that (sealed-code Webkinz, Snuffles anniversary editions, 1950s–60s rubber-face bears and 1980s Dakin) plus the 60-second tag check that tells you which band a bear falls into.