For people new to the Blythe hobby, there’s a lot of ideas that they have about Blythe that may be wrong. I know I’ve made some mistakes and I’m sure that other people have made mistakes as well. Some misconceptions are costly (in terms of just time and money) while others are just for your own personal preferences, so you can take what I say with a grain of salt. But these are just five of the more common misconceptions that I think a lot of people going into the Blythe hobby have about these pretty dolls.

Buying a lot of cheap Blythes, because that other one is just really, really expensive.
I’ve seen a lot of people do this. Some people start off buying regular releases of Prima Dollies or Simply dolls because they are meant to be ‘basic’ Blythes for new collectors (and they’re also meant to be mostly stripped down dolls for those who customize the Blythes). Let’s say each doll that you buy is $100 (and, for the most part, Simply and Prima dolls go for around that much, depending on the conversion rate). Let’s say that you buy 5 of these. Awesome, now you have 5 Blythes. You may not love them all, but you have five. But then there’s two Blythes that you really love that are going for ~$250 each. For the same amount of money you spent on five less-loved dolls, you could have gotten the two that you really, really love. It’s worth it to find the doll that you really want and then to get her rather than to get dolls that you may not love as much or a doll that you’re only looking at because of her low price.

Quantity over quality, when it comes to clothing.
I’ve done this plenty of times! In the beginning, I was all about getting a big wardrobe of clothes for my dolls. It didn’t really matter if it all completely fit well or not, but at least my dolls were dressed! I spent a lot of time needing to work on the raw seams with fray check on some of those clothes that I bought though, and sometimes the quality of the material just doesn’t stand up to the very mild abuse that I put it through. I did learn though that sometimes it does take a little bit more money to get something really nice, but it’s well worth it if you consider the time, talent/skill and energy put into crafting a doll dress. If you want to make all your own doll clothing, that’s cool too – but you’d probably want to make sure that the material is something that will last, won’t stain your doll and take your time with making it. After all, you’re the one that needs to put up with your dolls as critics.

eBay is the only place in the world where you can find Blythe.
Wrong! Maybe this was mostly true in the past, but there are a lot of options now. You can buy newer releases of Blythe directly from the Junie Moon webshop. You can also look at the buy/sell/trade forums on boards like This is Blythe and Blythe Kingdom. There is also a Blythe Livejournal community. Some customizers also sell directly off of their own websites or via sites like Etsy. There are even some physical stores that retail Blythe, if you happen to be travelling to a bustling metropolitan in Asia.

Customizing dolls is totally and utterly easy.
Maybe for you it will be! Maybe this mostly just applies to me, because I’m an absolute chicken when it comes customizing my dolls. The most that I’ve done (besides some Kenner restorations) is sleep eyes, gaze lifting and eye chip changes. If you’re inclined to start customizing your doll, be sure to look at posts about how to do it.

There’s some things that I do know though: use chalk pastels (not oil pastels), don’t use cosmetics for humans, if you’re going to dye a doll’s hair you shouldn’t use a pot that you also use for food (and if you did use it for food at one point, never use it for food again!). Oh, and don’t use Gorilla Glue. Every time you use Gorilla Glue on a dolly, it makes a Kenner cry.

Blythe is a great way to invest money.
If you’re looking for investment options, I would like to turn your attention to either real estate or the stock market. Blythe, while lovely and charming, probably isn’t the best way to invest your money if you’re looking for any kind of a relatively quick turn around in terms of value. If you wanted to use Blythe as an investment, you probably should have bought a hundred or so minty Kenners back in 1973 and kept them in a temperature controlled room and just start selling them slowly via eBay. But nowadays, it’s harder to predict which doll will be highly valued as the years go by. Popularity of certain Blythe releases can fluctuates. For a while, one of the cheapest Blythes available was Mademoiselle Rosebud and Pow Wow Poncho (Takara, not ADG) at around $60-70USD. Now they’re a bit more. But it’s hard to predict who will become popular. Blythe does retain her value fairly well, as far as reselling a doll you currently own to get money for something else, but she’s probably not the best way to go if you’re looking for an investment.

Also, even if you invest money into NRFB (never removed from box) Blythes, it’s hard to see if your dolls will be worth more in the future. NRFB Kenners also had similar problems as their out-of-box counterparts. Some Kenners had pelvic cracks, yellowing, frizzy hair – all while in their plastic wrapped boxes.

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What kind of misconceptions did you have about Blythe when you first started in the hobby?