8 Valuable Toys From Your Childhood Worth a Fortune Today

A special kind of gut-wrenching regret comes with finding a now-pricey favorite childhood toy for sale. Valuable toys are a dime a dozen if you know what you're looking for, and with decades' worth of fun-loving, questionably safe toys to rifle through, you're bound to find one you've managed to hang onto. So grab your dusty toy boxes because it's time to hunt for some old buried treasure. 

If there was ever a toy that encapsulated older generations' trust (or lack of oversight, some would say) in young kids to not burn their fingerprints off, it was the Easy-Bake Oven.

Released in the 1960s, vintage Easy-Bake Ovens do well on the resell market. In particular, boxed ovens with all their accessories are worth the most. For example, this 1973 Easy-Bake Oven with unopened mixes and accessories sold for $89.88 on eBay. Typically, vintage Easy-Bake Ovens can sell for about $50-$100.

Coming in at the tail-end of the 1970s are the ever-popular tie-in Alien merchandise toys manufactured by Kenner. These Xenomorph action figures may not instill the same stomach-bursting fear that the film's extraterrestrials did, but their connection to the cult classic makes them rather collectible today.

While a lot of factors go into adding to and detracting from their value, they can sell for upwards of a few hundred dollars. One 18" Xenomorph from 1979 sold for $195 on eBay.

Related: 11 Dangerous Toys From the 70s That We're Surprised We Survived

Characters in the 1980s were stylistically in two camps; realistic humanoid figures or cutesy small characters. Strawberry Shortcake obviously falls into the latter. As with so many popular American toys, Kenner Products took the greeting card kid and transformed her into a marketable doll.

This shortcake universe expanded over the 80s, and the original dolls are worth serious money today. For example, a Banana Twirl doll sold for $573.46, and a sealed Mint Tulip doll sold for $600 online. When boxed and in pristine condition, these dolls will easily sell for $400-$600.

When it comes to action figures, no decade can hold a candle to the 1980s. From Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to Transformers, these malleable toys are highly sought after today.

Among the many Saturday morning cartoons that spawned action figures, one of the most valuable is Thundercats. If you can stumble across the main characters still in their original packaging, you have thousands of dollars on your hands. For example, one sealed and carded Lion-O from 1985 sold on eBay for $5,649.

Related: 10 Forgotten 80s Toys Full of Weirdness & Wonder

If you were a kid in the 1990s, then you spent many a summer afternoon cooling off your neighborhood friends in a Super Soaker battle. First released in 1990, these super-powered water guns were a massive hit, and they inspired all the pump-action, high-powered water guns we see today.

Super Soakers made in the 90s can be worth about $100-$200 in full working order. Three zeros for a water gun you haphazardly tossed into the garage every day? Astounding. Yet this 1997 Super Soaker CPS 2500 just proved it can and does happen when it sold for $96 in 2023.

If you didn't get a Sky Dancer for the winter holidays circa 96, then you've probably seen home videos of people's getting caught in trees, burned in open fireplaces, and so on. The appeal? Rapidly yank on the doll's string to send her flying through the air.

Unboxed Sky Dancers are worth the most, at about $100-$250, but unboxed ones do alright at around $50 a pop. For example, this unboxed 1994 Sky Dancers doll sold for $46.99 online.

Related: 9 Notorious Forgotten 90s Toys We'd Still Play With Today

Step aside Barbie and Polly Pocket, Mary Kate & Ashely are in the building. Barbie launched the fashion doll craze, but none of these iconic playthings were quite like the Mary Kate & Ashley dolls that broke onto the scene in the early and mid-aughts.

Mary Kate & Ashley Olsen — now known for their luxe fashion brand The Row — had a series of hit films that spanned their adolescence and young adult years. These fashion dolls are just one of the many tie-in toys birthed from their filmography, and they're worth about $50-$100 today.

For instance, this unopened Mary Kate & Ashley doll set from the 2004 New York Minute movie recently sold for $78.

If you grew up in the 2000s, you probably haven't been able to get the sound of kids slamming tiny Tech Decks skateboards onto their desktops scrubbed from your brain. Tech Decks were fully customizable fingerboards. We're talking new trucks, decks, and wheels.

Of course, X Games, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater video games coupled with a general rise in extreme sports in the 2000s made it the perfect time for a toy like this to hit big.

With so many Tech Decks available, the real value comes from either quantity or unopened special boards. If you have a huge collection, you can sell them for a few hundred dollars as a batch or part with a rare sealed board for the same price. Take this sealed 2001 PIG skateboard, for instance. It sold on eBay for almost $200.

Related: 10 Creepy Toys That Kept Millennials Up at Night

If there's anything to learn from these valuable toys of yesteryear, it's that you should think twice before tossing out your old childhood playthings. Whether you have a pile that includes your great-grandparent's favorite toys or a small collection you've held onto for sentimental reasons, it's worth doing some internet sleuthing to see if they're worth parting with today.