Every day, there is someone listing a doll for sale. Reasons for these sales range from being bored with the doll to having some kind of emergency that money could fix, or at least help. People have all sorts of rationales for which doll gets listed. If you’re having financial crisis, listing a custom by someone sought after or a Kenner is a good idea. Some people go with the ‘last one in, first one out’ idea where the newbie is the one that gets the boot for no reason other than being new. Some people decide to focus their doll family more and more as time goes on, realizing that they’re madly in love with custom dolls and not stock, or vice versa.

Never for sale!

For my dolly family, most of my dolls are stock, or mostly stock. A few eye chip changes here and there does not a ‘custom’ doll make. Some people would call me a purist because of that, the idea that because I preserve the dolls in their original (or mostly original) state that I don’t like or appreciate customs. Which would be a lie, because I adore the one full custom that I have. But purist or not, I would have a hard time figuring out how to ‘shrink’ my doll family right now. If I had to, it would really depend on why I’m refining (or downsizing) the doll family. Reasons give rise to motivation, and that would probably help to narrow down the choices even more for me. For reasons where I’d need money, I’d probably try to sell the most expensive ones first, or even just popular stock dolls because they’d be sought after. Seeing as how I don’t have a translucent doll or a BL, that really limits my options. I know which dolls that I would absolutely keep though – and mum’s the word on who I play favourites with (besides Primrose, everyone knows that I love her).

How do you go about “refining” your dolly family?

Photo by Juliet/mydollies4.

As a follow-up to last week’s QOTW when I had done some Blythe-by-numbers for you all, the magical average cost of a customized Blythe was $599.50USD. Granted, there was a huge range in cost, variation in customizers and the range of customizing that was done to the dolls. Some were simplistic with a little light carving here, a haircut, and some chips were changed. Others are complete changes in hair (mmm, fluffy mohair…) and handpainted chips, not to mention some extreme carving was done to the dolls.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t see myself ever paying more than $1000 for a customized Blythe doll unless she was something very special. Perhaps a doll with a long, fluffy mohair or alpaca reroot. But then she’d have to have all custom, handpainted eyechips, themed charms and perhaps a very detailed face-up. I’d expect for that premium price tag that shipping (insured, of course) might even be included or at least partially included, and the base doll would have to be a legitimate Blythe rather than a factory or another type of fake. Would that be considered too picky? Then again, I’m not really in the position these days to purchase a customized Blythe – secondhand or otherwise. My personal maximum would likely be around $600. It seems to be the “going rate” these days, and for that much money, the majority of customized dolls are well within my grasp. Not that I can afford a $600 doll at this moment, but it is nice to dream! And setting limits for myself also gives me a reality check. Why look beyond my means when there isn’t the cash flow for it? As it is, I’m currently musing about getting my first BL, and have since becoming a Blythe enthusiast nearly five years ago. Not a customized BL, but a stock one. One of these days…

Luckily for the majority of people who are in the market for a custom doll, there are many available at various price ranges – depending on what you’re looking for in the doll, and the artist behind the work. Dolls get priced at such a diverse range of prices. Some people only price for cost of materials, neglecting to take their time into account, while others price what the market will bear. Why go under if people are willing to pay more, and why price it higher if nobody will dare to fork up that much for it?

What is your maximum for a customized Blythe?

Occasionally I see posts online about how people feel that $X is too much for a Blythe doll when just a few years ago, the norm was $Y. Are customized Blythes really that expensive nowadays? I decided to do some investigating! I went onto the popular Facebook group, Dolly Adoption, and decided to add up the prices (without shipping) for the first 30 dolls that I saw being listed and calculate the average. To make it fair, I only looked at customized Blythes – no Middies, no Icy dolls, no dolls that were being listed as “factory” or “TBL”. If the price was marked down, I use the lower price as it clearly wasn’t selling at the higher price. I converted all prices to USD, when needed.

Some numbers for you all:

• The lowest price was $125, the highest was $1275
• The average was $599.50
• The mode (value that showed up most frequently) was $300 (at 3 times in 30 listings)
• Only two listings were at or above $1000
• Half of the listings were below $500

Obviously there are varying factors for what makes a customized doll worth it’s value. Was the base doll used expensive to begin with (customized anniversary dolls, I’m looking at you!)? Was the hair rerooted? What was it rerooted with? How extensive is the carving and make-up? Is there art on the eyelids? Is there a non-stock body? What is the doll’s theme? Is this reflected in the charms? What kind of eyechips does she have? Are they handpainted? And, the most important question of all, who customized her? Because the name means a lot – much like how a luxury sedan costs more than the run-of-the-mill minivan, the artist behind the doll adds value to the doll while an unknown customizer won’t fetch as high of a price. As customizers become more skilled, they should charge more for their work, much like how if you have more relevant education under your belt, your employer should, in theory, be upping your salary. But what a customizer charges and what the market will pay are two very different things – hence the reason why some dolls stick around for quite a while, waiting for someone to snatch them up.

What is the most, or the least, you’ve ever paid for a customized Blythe doll?

I confess, I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to Blythe. Then again, Blythes aren’t a necessity of daily living, so I guess we’re all a bit spoiled in that regard when it comes to being able to own the luxury that is Blythe…

Of all of my Neo Blythes only two were bought second-hand/used – the first being my Velvet Minuet, Kindred, and the second being my mohair Friends with Blythe custom, Halo. All of the rest of them? They were all NRFB. Which led me to thinking – I’m probably not in the norm when it comes to Blythe collectors, or there wouldn’t be such a busy doll marketplace for used and customized Blythes. So clearly if I’m not in the norm, I must be the odd one out. Which leads to more thinking about the idea of who buys what kind of dolls.

I have 11 Neos – 2 were secondhand (stock used and customized), 9 were NRFB (never removed from box) and I had the pleasure of taking off all that tape. I also have 3 Kenners – all of which were bought used and definitely not with stock clothing or boxes. Oh, and 1 Middie that was NRFB, and 2 Petites (one used, one NRFB – both gifts).

Do I just love to torture myself with a bunch of tape, ties and really bad box hair?

The answer is: probably.

Do you buy NRFB, minty, or bait dolls?

I regret to confess that the majority of my dolls have boring things on their pullstrings. That is, most of them have their pull ring (and that’s it). A select few have some charms and I’m actually looking to continue on with getting beads and other charms for my dolls so that they can have something cute on their strings. I recently gave some of my dolls a few more charms, nothing too extravagant but just a little something for them. Prior to Blythe (and my obsession with yarn), I made a lot of jewellery (I still do!) so I have a lot of beads leftover that still need to be put to use. Hence the use of some of them as pull charms, because why not?

The only doll that really has any theme to hers is Mollie, who was my Christmas doll back in 2012 so she has Christmas-themed lampwork beads on her string. Her “twin”, Moxie, recently got a few beads as well – because I couldn’t very well favour one twin over the other, right?

Does your Blythes’ pull charms have a theme?