The great teddy bear shipwreck mystery

In 1903, 3,000 teddy bears were sent by ship from Germany to America only for them to disappear. Some claim the bears were the first ever made and would now be the most valuable in the world. So what happened to them?

In the Steiff museum, in the German town of Giengin, the mystery of the missing bears is explained to the visiting children with a tale that they were lost at sea.

The idea of shipwrecked teddy bears captures the imagination, but is it true?  

So how about that theory about the bears being lost at sea? Gunther Pfieffer, author of four books about Steiff bears, does not believe it.

"The mystery first appeared in 1953 with the 50th anniversary of the teddy bear. A clever employee of the marketing department was writing a little festival book and that's the first time this story came up...