I was looking through sundries listings the other day (a very dangerous thing to do) and I was looking at the costs of a Blythe dress. I went through and counted up the prices of 50 different dresses from all types of makers and types and the average price that it came out to be? $10. I did not count stock clothing or other more mass-produced brands (eg. Moxie clothing, vintage Skipper and Francie, Sugar Mag).

$10.

Now these dressed that I was looking at were all hand-crafted by people in the doll community. Some dresses had snaps, others had velcro. Some were very intricate, others were a bit more plain. Puffed sleeves, short sleeves, long sleeves or no sleeves. There were collars, and collar-less varieties.

But the average price, after counting 50 different dresses, was $10.

I think that one that really stuck with me the most was a handknitted dress that was being sold for $3. I’m a knitter, so I know roughly how much time (or at least a range) that a knitted item in that thickness of yarn can take to do. And $3 is a pittance for what it is worth, in my eyes. But I also know that pricing has to be for what the market will handle. You could figure out hourly wages, costs of supplies and overhead and then come up with a price for your item – but if nobody buys it, is it really worth it?

And then I considered what it’s like when I make something. So I decided to consider my costs and steps when I sew a doll dress.

A lot of my fabrics that I use are discounted, roll-ends or ‘sample swatches’ from the fabric store and then the other half of my fabric stash is from old clothes or thrifted things like sheets or pillow cases. So let’s say that the cost of my fabric per dress is between $0.25-$1. And that’s overestimating it. But let’s give it a cost of $1

Then comes the cost of thread. I spend maybe $1 on a spool of white thread. But it also gets used for other projects as well, but for sake of argument, I’ll consider the cost of buying a new spool of thread, so $1.

And then time. From cutting, fray-checking, sewing, ironing, and finishing (sewing on snaps, hah), I’m going to estimate (and I’m probably underestimating because I’m probably slower than I really am) that I take approximately 1.5-2 hours per dress. Thank goodness I don’t sew dolly frocks for a living. But let’s say it’s 2 hours. Minimum wage here has been going up, so it’s about $10/hour.

And then there’s costs of packaging – I don’t sell dresses that I make, but I’ll guesstimate a cost of approximately $1 per dress to go into packaging and shipping materials (but not including shipping itself).

So there’s $1 + $1 + ($10/hr * 2hr) + 1 = $23.00. And I’m using inexpensive fabric too – no super cute prints and assuming that I need to buy the fabric new, without using existing fabrics in my stash.

$23.

Now I realize that those selling sundries usually aren’t selling things that they’ve  made – that’s what online shops are for. But it really makes you wonder, considering doll dresses on Etsy, Artfire and eBay generally aren’t averaging $23, they’re much closer to my original estimate of $10.

What do you consider to be a “fair price” for doll clothing?

What do you expect to be able to get for $10 when shopping for your doll’s clothing?

What styles of dresses (not caring about designers here) would you consider ‘worthy’ of a $23 (or higher!) price tag?

People are always talking about the most that they’ve spent on a doll, I want to know what is the lowest amount that you’ve spent on a doll that you bought. Gifted Blythes (if you’re lucky!) do not count as you didn’t buy those. So what I’m interested in is how much you’ve spent on a doll that you’ve bought for yourself. Petites can count, but you should also include the price of a Neo in there as well!

My ‘cheapest’ Blythe so far has been my Love Mission, at the time I believe I spent ~$150USD on her, not including shipping. She was also NRFB and came quite speedy via EMS! She had arrived in under a week and I still have her today. Of course, writing this just makes me realize that I have a rather pricey collection… Oh dear.

What is the lowest amount you have spent on a Blythe?

A while ago, there was a Twitter conversation happening regarding custom work and the current high prices that a customized Blythe fetches. Now, not all customizers actually charge this much for their work. A lot of the time, the high prices happen as a result of the work being auctioned by the customizer or through second market pricing.

I’m a firm believer that a good custom Blythe is art.

Just like how you wouldn’t just offer a few dollars for a masterpiece of an oil painting, you wouldn’t offer a few dollars for a gorgeous customized doll. That said, customs can be fairly expensive. When I first started in the Blythe hobby (in the long ago year of 2009), customized Blythes went for what I considered to be a lot of money ($300+). Now, not all customized dolls went for this much, just like how not all customized dolls today go for $600+. But a lot of them did (and do). I thought that customized dolls were pretty (I still do), but they weren’t something that I was actively looking to add to my collection.

And at eleven dolls, they still aren’t going to be something that I’m looking to add to my collection, if only because I’m feeling overwhelmed.

Not all customs are created equal, just like how not all doll clothes are created equal. What you can buy from one customizer will not be the same as from another; but many people have been pricing their work at prices similar to the “greats” or “popular” customizers. It’s a hobby, but for some people it is a job and I respect that. If they can price a customized doll at $500 and have it sell, why wouldn’t they? They’re not going to price it at-cost just because they think it’s the morally right thing to do. Not all customizers do this, of course. Some customizers of lower-priced work are still incredible customizers, but their prices haven’t risen as drastically as others have. Sometimes all it takes is one person having your custom work to make it popular.

I do think that a lot of fantastic customizers don’t get the kind of popularity that they probably do deserve. I look at the work of some people who’s work doesn’t go for $1000+ per doll and I wonder why when their work is a similar calibre as someone’s work who does. The Blythe market can be fickle at times, I think, but I think that people who do create great works of art should charge what they think is fair and what is best for them.

With that in mind, where does that leave the buyers in the community? With the economy down and up and down and up, a lot of people can’t afford customized work, regardless of who’s doing it. Then again, collectible dolls like Blythe are expensive. It’s not a hobby that’s incredibly accessible to a lot of people because of the costs involved in collecting dolls (and their clothes and shoes and the other dolls to go with your first one…).

It may be a pain to not be able to buy some gorgeous new custom, but at the same time… if you look to your own doll family you may see that money available… just in the form of dolls. A lot of people cycle through your dolls – selling dolls and doll accessories in order to afford other dolls and other clothing. I think that’s very admirable – it keeps the money cycling in a way that doesn’t make your hobby more expensive than the initial investment.

Can you afford today’s customized Blythes? How do you feel about today’s customs prices? And what, if you have one, is the ‘ceiling’ of what you’d fork out for a customized Blythe doll?

Back in February I finally got around to organizing some of my doll shoes. Well, I started to do so, anyways. I got as far as the state of organization as photographed above and then I kind of stopped with the organizing. I have a lot more pairs that are still not organized (mostly stock shoes and boots that I’d bought since organizing the collection) and what I was wondering was how other people organized their doll shoes. I know some people use similar boxes with little compartments, and some people have shelves and little displays for their doll shoes so my question this week is…

How do you store your doll shoes?

A lot of people in the Blythe hobby seem to have a grail doll. Like the Holy Grail, it’s a doll that’s either very expensive or somehow otherwise unattainable. I think customized Blythes make either very good (because they really are fairly unattainable unless someone sells) or very bad (because it’s likely you’ll ever get her) grail dolls. But for me, all my dream/grail dolls have been stock dolls. Who my grail doll also changes based on how much I become comfortable with spending on a single doll. Let me go through them with you:

1. At the very beginning of my life with Blythe, Love Mission was my first ‘dream’ doll. I loved looking at photos of her (I still do!) and I got her a month after I started collecting Blythe.
2. My second grail doll was Margaret Meets Ladybug. At that point (and until my first Kenner) she was my most expensive doll. She doesn’t come up as often as some other dolls do for sale, so I had to wait and wait and wait and then I ended up getting her NRFB.
3. Velvet Minuet, oh yes. Velvet Minuet was the newest release when I had first found out about Blythe in 2004. But at that point I wasn’t able to buy a Blythe because of lack of money (and I didn’t have a Paypal account back then either). She was my first second-hand/used Blythe too. I got her off of the forums and I adored her the moment I saw her. She’s also had the best hair out of a lot of my dolls, and (not counting the Kenners) she’s my only pre-loved Blythe.
4. Red-headed sidepart Kenner Blythe, vintage 1972. Like a lot of people, a Kenner was on my wishlist. I wanted one so incredibly bad. I lost so many auctions, missed out on so many ‘for sale’ threads. And then one day I finally one an auction and waited for the longest week of my life to be over to go to the post office and free her from the hands of Canada Post.

I have been incredibly lucky. I’ve managed to get four of the doll that I’ve most wanted in what is considered to be a ‘short’ amount of time in the Blythe hobby. Since 2009, I’ve had a total of twelve dolls in my custody (one recently fled because she was tired of still being NRFB!) and I have some of the prettiest dolls (in my humble opinion) ever.

Have you ever gotten a grail doll?

I think one of the things that we should all remember is how incredibly lucky we are to be able to afford this hobby. Not everyone can afford to spend $100+ on a doll. Not everyone can afford to spend money for a Kenner. Not everyone can afford to send off a doll to get customized. Not everyone can afford to buy doll shoes or commission helmets or dresses. But we can. We can afford to be part of a doll hobby because it’s what we love and what we can do with our time and money. And I think we’re all incredibly lucky to be able to afford to be a part of Blythe.