diff --git a/plugins/outputs/opentsdb/opentsdb.go b/plugins/outputs/opentsdb/opentsdb.go
index ce797e10f2e5d78029dbc4e71eeb200179af6aa7..84ff99058c1f64874faa845b0cd143b495cda99c 100644
--- a/plugins/outputs/opentsdb/opentsdb.go
+++ b/plugins/outputs/opentsdb/opentsdb.go
@@ -157,6 +157,15 @@ func (o *OpenTSDB) WriteTelnet(metrics []telegraf.Metric, u *url.URL) error {
 		tags := ToLineFormat(cleanTags(m.Tags()))
 
 		for fieldName, value := range m.Fields() {
+			switch value.(type) {
+			case int64:
+			case uint64:
+			case float64:
+			default:
+				log.Printf("D! OpenTSDB does not support metric value: [%s] of type [%T].\n", value, value)
+				continue
+			}
+
 			metricValue, buildError := buildValue(value)
 			if buildError != nil {
 				log.Printf("E! OpenTSDB: %s\n", buildError.Error())