What Not to Buy

The goal of this experiment is to end the year with a beautiful new doll, so what about the ones in between?  Mistakes will be made, chaos will ensue!  I mean, let's try to help each other keep that down to a minimum.

Here are a few of my tips on what we should avoid buying with our first fifty bucks, and why.  Strictly my own opinion so if you know better please help us out with a comment.

What not to buy:

1) Armand Marseille 370 and 390.  Maybe I am imaging things but these two head molds seem to be the most common bisque head antique dolls for sale, period.  In different sizes, and some certainly more beautiful then others, I see these dolls everywhere.  Turn over an antique doll and she is probably one of these, because of that the market is way over saturated at present.  These dolls are marked AM 370 and AM 390 and have what are known as dolly faces with pretty wide eyes and open mouths with teeth.  By all means buy one for yourself, as there is nothing wrong with that, but if you decide to spend your initially seed money on one you had better be prepared to fix her up in an extremely eye catching way to make any profit.

2) Other common dolls.  Anything you see over and over, going for a little bit of nothing.  You can check the advanced search feature on eBay to see what they have sold for, if anything, in the recent past.  Some very nice dolls have this problem, such as most "collectible" dolls, like modern Barbies, and Madame Alexander.

3) Rejects from the island of misfit toys.  I don't mean to say anything is entirely unfixable, in fact, most disasters can be lovingly restored in the right hands with the right tools, equipment, and know how (and perhaps a few replacement parts).  That being said, do you HAVE the right tools, equipment, know how, and replacement parts?  Is she a doll rare and lovely enough to afford the time and money she will take to bring back to life?  Probably the answer is no.  So please avoid badly broken heads (especially breaks through the face area), missing limbs, composition babies that are badly cracked and peeling, floating heads, etc.  For the time being.

Don't get me wrong, we will be doing a lot of arts, crafts, sewing, and repairing this year!  However, if you are like me a lot of this is new to you and you will have to work your way up to heavier restoration.  Figure out what skills you already have.  For me it is painting, having a good eye (if that can be called a skill), a little sewing, and a little photography.  And figure out what skills you should work on first.  I think we should all work on sewing (if this is not very interesting to you you can take shortcuts by learning to cut down vintage children / baby clothes), and photography with our first couple of projects especially.

4) Something you don't like.  If you don't like it yourself, how will you put your love and energy into fixing it up for someone else's collection?  No, it should be a doll you feel like coddling and working on for a few days or a few weeks, before passing her on to her new home.  So nothing you yourself don't like, but nothing you love so much that you can't let it go!  I have a feeling this will be a challenge at some point or another.  I tend to get attached.

So with that being said, start hunting eBay and whatever local venues you have access to.  Look around at what's out there for a bit before you chose.

Next time we'll talk about what TO buy,  Good luck!