by magkelly » Fri Oct 05, 2012 8:09 am
I don't have an enormous amount of money to spend on doll stuff. I'm lucky most months if I can spend $25 on a doll or stuff for dolls. I do however have an elderly aunt and elderly parents who like rewarding me for taking care of them all the time by getting me Barbies here and there which is nice, lol. I do the thrifts and the flea market a lot, make my $$$ stretch. Ordering dolls and their stuff online that's usually for Christmas and birthday. I can sew a bit so I tend to make a lot of my doll clothes. I sell off a lot of the original outfits put that money back into doll bodies. Fact is I don't need any more dolls. I've got multiple dolls in almost every Barbie and Ken sculpt there is.
I've got a fleet of Barbie, Liv, MT and Bratz dolls, half a dozen MH kids, ditto on Jem, and more 16"-20" girls and boys than I can comfortably display in my current space. I've been collecting for a long, long time and it shows. Even on my tiny budget a person can accumulate a lot over the years. There comes a time in any doll collector's life where it's not about "need" it's just about "want" and I passed into the latter stage a long while back I will admit. Nobody needs hundreds of dolls and several huge boxes of clothes, shoes and props. It's an addiction and I have no problem admitting that I'm addicted. The way I look at it if it's not drugs, it's not booze or nicotine, I'm doing okay. If the worst addictions I can claim are chocolate, cola, old camera gear and dolls then I'm not exactly living life on the wild side, shrug. I'm not like most of the very serious doll collector's that I see on boards like this dropping thousands every year though. I can't afford to do that. Two or three hundred maybe, but not thousands.
My roommate is totally cool about the doll thing. She has her things she collects too and we're non-judgmental type friends. My BMF he's a bit creeped out by the dolls and admits it but he knows I like them and has actually bought me dolls in the past. He's come to respect what I do with my dolls, but he's not about to sit down and play with them even if I would let him. My BFF she's a doll collector now herself, my doing, so I have no problems there. If anything she's way too much of an enabler when it comes to my doll habit now. My family supports it, but they're more amused by it than truly understanding of it. One of my nieces gets it. She's a kid who collects dolls and who likely will her whole life. The other one likes to play with them but I don't think she'll be as into it once she gets into her teens. I could be wrong but I don't think she got the doll collector DNA, though she does like her little Ty stuffies...
I'm very much looking forward to my Delilah's but I'm also a bit worried that the American semi-BJD's will be a little like a gateway drug. Get me spending more on them and their wardrobe than I do on myself! I've already spent a good chunk of time looking at cool colored wigs in their size, at $20 pairs of shoes and $10-20 pairs of eyes and I don't even have them yet, laugh. I don't "need" to buy them anything but I just know I eventually will. BJD stuff, it's just too cool and too darned tempting!!!!