I’ve seen this brand pop up a handful times (mainly because they made a couple Kyogres) and the very few listings I’ve found of them are some of the single most expensive plush toys I have ever seen. Of the three I have seen there is: a 28 inch one on eBay for almost $1,600, a velvety one on Mercari Japan for $5,300, and another velvety one on Mercari Japan for $18,400.
Like, sure they must be pretty rare or exclusive but that much? Surely those are just wishful sellers, not the actual worth… right? I don’t really know the pokémon plush market, I’m just haven’t really seen any others get that high. Are there any plush experts out there who could explain the hype? These seem crazy.
So I can only comment so much on the price, but the Tomy Heartland plush specifically are all pretty old at this point, all of them being made during the Gen 3 through the Gen 4 era and always have been quite rare. The big ones often had wiring in them that would commonly deteriorate. I do not have any information on their distribution except the were exclusive to Japan.
In my opinion, the two Mercari Japan listings are way too much. Just listings where they almost certainly never expect to sell it but if there is so few on the market they hope someone will just buy it. But I also confess I’m not sure why there are two variants of this plush. I don’t believe any other Heartland Pokemon plush have two variants.
The $1500 one is more within the realm of possibility. I haven’t really followed the individual price of all the big Heartland Tomy plush so I’m not sure if this one is significantly rarer than the others, but to my knowledge the most expensive Heartland Tomy plush typically range from $500-$1000 in my experience. I will emphasize that my pricing information might not be the complete picture though.
I also thought it was a little odd that there were two, but I don’t really know much about them so I just chalked it up to that. I had only heard about the 28 inch one until the velvety ones showed up in a search. At first I thought they could just be the same ones but cleaner/better condition, but the fabric texture looks completely different and they have slightly different tags:
