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photo by Jim Craven Sharlotte McKinney hopes her two Furbies will bring a big price, but so far the bidders are non-existent. Furby sellers still waiting Buyers hold off on high-priced toys By Bill Varble Psst. Hey, buddy. Wanna buy a Furby? With Christmas approaching and the doll du jour all but impossible to find, the free market is rearing its head. Stores are sold out, sure, but you hear of Furbies in classified ads, Furby radio give-aways, even Furby auctions. Asking prices for the high-tech doll -- a hirsute troll with a beak-like mouth and no arms -- are heading up, up and away. Lisa Vargas, of White City, is running a classified ad for two of the creatures. Her asking price is $150 each. Jim Daniken, of Central Point, says his wife is asking $100 each for the two Furbies she's trying to sell. There's one in the paper for $250. The toy retails for about $25. Sharlotte McKinney, of Central Point, tries one of the more original approaches: an auction. In a sale she advertised in a classified ad, she puts two Furbies up for bid between noon and 2 p.m. Saturday at the neighborhood tavern where she works in Medford. Half-way through the auction, there are no bidders. Furbies, in case you've been in Kosovo the last couple of months, are this year's must-have toy in the Beanie Babies and Tickle Me Elmo tradition. The eyes, mouth and ears move. They dance. They have a vocabulary of 800 phrases. The north Medford Fred Meyer store got 60 the night before Thanksgiving and sold them almost immediately. Wal-Mart sold 47 the day after Thanksgiving within minutes after the store opened at 6 a.m. Toys 'R' Us even put up a sign a couple weeks ago, saying, "We have no Furbys." The rush for collectible toys has led some store managers to limit sales, including KayBee Toys (two per customer) and Fred Meyer (one). But with Christmas still two weeks off, it's not clear that the toys' incredible popularity is translating into those top-dollar prices yet. Vargas says she got 25 or 30 calls the first four days but hasn't sold a Furby. Nobody quibbles about price, she says, but a lot of people ask about colors. She says the hottest hue seems to be your basic black. "I think it's ugly," she says with a laugh. She hopes to sell the things next week. McKinney scored her Furbies at Costco earlier this month after the store announced it would be selling 286. When she got in line at 7 a.m., the line went down the side of the building and around back. There was a limit of two. The toys were gone in about three minutes. McKinney paid $20.99 each. Her daughter, Billie, 11, already has a Furby, so any auction proceeds would go toward Christmas. "This is for spending money for her," McKinney says. Each Furby has a name and introduces itself to owners when they add batteries. Billie's Furby is named Gawaino. She accidently woke it up in the middle of the night. "Let's party," it said. She said she wanted to go back to sleep. "You're boring," Gawaino said. McKinney says one woman got mad at her when she refused to sell her one. "They're awfully cute," she says. "They kiss you. They call you by name." McKinney says she probably wouldn't pay the prices being asked now. "God gave us lips," she says. "Sometimes we have to say no to our kids." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA