As soon as Sara Gruen’s husband showed her what “Hatchimals” were, she saw this year’s Cabbage Patch Kid, Furby, Tickle Me Elmo, Teddy Ruxpin, Beanie Baby and every other must-have Christmas present rolled into one.

Judging by the public’s reaction thus far this shopping season – parents scrambling to get their hands on the $59.99 spotted eggs with creatures inside that were selling out and facing substantial markups online – her “Spidey sense” served her well.

So, she did what anybody with a nose for fundraising and the patience for online auctions would do the day after Black Friday: She bought 156 of them.



Gruen – a New York Times best-selling author from Asheville, N.C. – wasn’t looking to turn a profit.

She planned to use the proceeds to help fund the defense of “an innocent man who’d run out of options while serving life without parole.”

She can’t say much about the case, beyond the fact that she’s working on a “Making A Murderer”-type docuseries about a man for whom she’s already racked up $150,000 in debt working on his behalf. She said everybody who pays attention to that legal genre will soon know his name. You can't put a price on righting legal wrongs, she said.



Sure, spending $23,595.31 on toys – at an average price of $151 and change – may strike people as an insane idea. Considering their resale-market value, though, the idea makes sense.

“It never occurred to me that I’d have trouble getting rid of them,” she recalled over the phone on Monday. “They were already selling at double, triple the manufacturer’s suggested retail price, but I figured I could sell them at a profit and put a dent in the extremely hefty lawyers' fees.”

That's the type of thing that tends to happen when manufacturers can't keep up with demand, and post disclaimers on their websites saying they're sold out for now, but that "we have increased production and a whole new batch of Hatchimals will be ready to hatch in early 2017."

At the end of her four-day purchase binge, she learned some harsh realities about listing numerous toys-of-the-season for sale on websites like eBay, Amazon and Bonanza. “It never occurred to me that I’d have trouble getting rid of them.” – Sara Gruen