Doll Collecting Journey

My doll collecting journey began in the mid 1980’s. It took many twists and turns over the years, from Ashton-Drake porcelain dolls to Ginny, Madame Alexander, Barbie and Leeann dolls. With two boys and two cats, the porcelain dolls did not seem like a good option after a couple of years so I moved on to the others.

I remember prior to one Christmas I saw a doll that I REALLY wanted in a local gift shop. Every time I walked past that store with my boys, I pointed it out and mentioned how much I would love to have it. When the boys were in school one day, I went in and purchased it. I gave it to my mother for the boys to give me as a present. On Christmas morning, they proudly regaled the story of how they had made their grandma go to that store and buy it for me. I smiled, knowing full well that I had picked it up myself. It was so cute how they invented that whole story though. It still makes me smile today.

In the late 1980’s Mattel started to bring out ‘collectible’ Barbie dolls starting with the Christmas series. That is when my focus went back to Barbie, mostly because purchasing dolls from the U.S. with the exchange rate and shipping cost became too much to sustain. Ironically, my mother who was so against such a voluptuous and curvaceous doll in the beginning started collecting Barbie too and ended up having more of them than me. Dolls of the World, special anniversary editions, and ultimately vintage reproduction Barbie dolls all graced the shelves in her ‘doll room’. Yes, she had a doll room.

Sadly, none of those dolls were given to me by her husband (not my father) after she passed away in 2018. They were all in pristine condition, never removed from the boxes. He foolishly believed he had a gold mine and could sell them all and become rich. Little did he know that most of them were not true collectible dolls and were worth only a fraction of their original purchase price. A true collectible has a limited production run and is numbered. These dolls were made in the hundreds of thousands and sold all over the world. I guess the last laugh is on him.

I was delighted when I discovered Leeann dolls. The designer and maker of the dolls is Canadian, Denis Bastien. I sold a number of my ‘collectible’ Barbie dolls to make room for Leeann and friends. This is how I discovered how little I could get on the secondary market for them. I did not liquidate them all though. They are packed in boxes in the storage room for now. As I am clearing out a lot of accumulated stuff around here, I will be bringing them back out.