Monday, July 13, 2015

Costa Rican Clay Dolls

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I am in Costa Rica at the moment visiting in-laws. Yesterday, we visited the Volcan Poas, and of course, the accompanying gift shop. I discovered some cute and unique clay dolls there, so I wanted to share with a short post. 

At first, I thought the dolls were made of wood and that the clothing was cloth, as many beautiful handicrafts here are made of wood. When I picked one up, however, I realized they were completely made of clay, except for the hair.
Close up of a clay doll with traditional Costa Rican costume

A more colorful doll, painted to resemble the traditional and colorful oxcarts

The dolls are designed to represent the culture of Costa Rica, and they do that as well as a doll can. Read more about them from the info card:

I really liked these dolls but at a whopping price tag of $25 for the smallest doll, I had to pass. Tomorrow, we head to Playa Coco, and if I encounter some for a better price, I'm sure one will be making its way back home with me. 


 

Monday, July 6, 2015

Valuing Your Collection (Monetarily)

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As I continue my series on financial matters related to doll collecting, I want to talk about valuing your collection. If you think your doll collection is worth more than $1,000, you should commit to an annual valuing/revaluing exercise. What do I mean by this? Doll values in the market fluctuate, sometimes wildly, and it's important for many reasons to have a good current picture of what your collection is worth. A few of these reasons include insurance, calculating your net worth, and making arrangements in the event you pass from this world. As someone who collects dolls for the fun of it, I admit it can be daunting to go through and revalue a collection annually. Regardless of the lack of fun this activity provides, I think it is an important task that should be completed. What follows is an explanation of how I revalue my collection. While I'm sure there are other ways to do it, this is the method I use.

The first thing to consider is what time of year you plan to revalue your collection. I like to revalue mine somewhere around Christmas, as this generally is when things fetch the highest value. I would stay away from summer months, because sales seem to slump that time of year.
It's the most wonderful time of the year ... for finding doll values.

The hardest thing you will have to do in the process is create a list of every single item of monetary value in your collection. I have lots of dolls that are very sentimentally valuable to me, but are devoid of any resale value. I do not include these in my revaluing process. I keep a running spreadsheet using Google Sheets to keep up with what I have. I create a new tab for each year so I can track fluctuations in my collection. If you would like a copy of the template I use for this, feel free to comment below with your email address and I'll send it to you. This will at least help you get started.

Once you have your list of dolls and doll accessories ready to go, just do an eBay Completed Listings search to get an idea of the value of each item. Keep in mind that you should compare the value of your item to one in similar condition that has sold (i.e. do not compare a gently played with doll to a mint in box doll, they aren't the same thing). I have two examples of this to show you. The first example is this:
Small World England Doll that my Grandma gave me

I simply do an eBay completed listings search and come up with this:

Sold dolls

My doll is not mint in box, but he is also not missing accessories like the doll sold at the bottom. This is not a scientific process, but I would value my doll somewhere in the middle of these two. I would feel comfortable putting a value of $150 on the doll I have. This doll was an excellent investment, as he was only $25 in the store, and is now worth quite a bit more (thanks Grandma!).

The second example is this doll:
Via-E Alexis doll

This is a Via-E Alexis doll (see here for a complete review of this doll). I personally love this doll as I think she is so unique in the 18" doll world. Regardless of how much I love her, what's she worth? A completed listings search yields NO RESULTS. I paid the introductory rate of $95 for Alexis back in the day. She now sells for $114 on Via-E's website. The factor that makes pricing this doll difficult for me is that quite a few Alexis Factory Seconds dolls were sold on eBay for $40-something dollars. This really annoyed me at the time and I thought it devalued the doll I had purchased. I do have a first edition doll, but considering all the factors, I would value this doll somewhere around the $80 range. This was a bad investment, but I'm okay with it, because I really do love this doll. 

Valuing and revaluing your doll collection can be a daunting task, but don't let that sway you from the mission. Pick a week or two, and fill in your values over that time. You don't have to do it all in one sitting, I certainly don't. With this kind of data, you will be much more likely to recover insurance money in the event of a catastrophe (check to see what your homeowner's insurance covers, or even get special collectibles insurance). And in the sad event that you pass away, how will your loved ones know what is a fair price to get for your items? With the proper documentation in place, whomever you bequeath your collection to will be armed with knowledge needed to sell it. Now, I have personally instructed my husband to build a mausoleum to hold my remains and my doll collection (hahahaha!). But no, seriously, I hope through this post the importance of knowing the value of your collection has hit home. I would be happy to hear from anyone who decides to do this! Good luck!


Saturday, July 4, 2015

Dolls As An Investment

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Many of us collectors spend more money on our obsession...er...hobby than we would care to admit. For the advanced collector, however, collecting isn’t just about which new doll you can afford. It’s about smart investing. That’s right, investing. People invest in all sorts of things: houses, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, art, property, and so on. When you’re buying a new doll, you’re making an investment, whether you realize it or not. Some people may buy a doll with no intention of ever re-selling it, but for every doll purchase I make, I consider it an investment. I think it’s very important for collectors to understand how some doll purchases may affect your financial future. In the next week, I want to explore several topics specifically related to dolls and finance. Today, we are going to examine a very basic approach to investing in dolls.
How to spend this dough?

To understand investing as it relates to dolls, it’s important to understand investing in general. When someone makes an investment, the intention is to grow their wealth by earning interest on the money they have invested. The riskier an investment is, the higher the potential for significant gains or losses. There is what is known as a risk free rate, which is set by the government (through something called T-bills). This rate is typically around 3%. This means if you invest $100 for a year at the risk free rate, you would earn $3 (this is why people often go for riskier investments, in the hopes of earning returns higher than 8%). This leads us into something called the time value of money principle. Basically, this principle says that $100 today is worth more in the future because it can be invested and earn interest. A very simple example of the time value money principle is this: if you have a $100 bill that you keep in a shoebox for a year, you have actually lost $3. You have lost $3, because if you had invested that $100 at the risk free rate, you would have earned $3, therefore creating the loss. Now all of this is fairly boring, and I know you came here to read about dolls. So let’s talk dolls.

Before you purchase a doll, you should carefully consider several things from a financial perspective. In order to fully illustrate this concept, I’m going to use a personal example from a recent purchase. About a month or so ago, I purchased this Little Darling doll painted by Joyce Mathews:

I paid $850 for the doll. Gasp, yes. That is a lot of money, and I know it. I don’t just willy nilly throw away money like that, so I took into consideration the five points below:

  1. Always research the current selling value of the doll you are about to purchase. Is the doll worth more on the secondary market? Does the doll retain at least 80-90% of its value on the secondary market?
  2. If you had a financial emergency, could you liquidate the doll right away for a fair price?
  3. If you invested your money at the risk free rate, what would it be worth in a year?
  4. If the value of the doll were to drop dramatically, would you be okay with knowing you spent more money on the doll than it is worth?
  5. How many of the dolls are available? Is the market flooded with these dolls, or is it a limited edition (and by the way, 1000 is not what I really consider limited. I think 100 or less is a good number).

So I really answered all of these questions before purchasing the doll for this example. Here were my answers:

  1. The average selling price of the last 4 Little Darlings sold by Joyce Mathews is $1622.47. Yes, it is that high.
  2. If I had a financial emergency I feel certain I could liquidate the doll immediately for over $1,000. All of the dolls mention above were on auction for 1 week, and each sold for an astounding price.
  3. My $850 would be worth $875.50 in one year.
  4. This one is the hard one. I feel like as of the moment I bought the doll, she was worth about $1500. Will Little Darlings decrease in value over the next 10 years? It is very possible. Will I keep her for that long? I think so . I feel like she is a “forever” doll here. This can often be the hardest question to answer for me, as my taste changes from year to year, and I become interested in other things.
  5. I do not know exactly how many of these dolls are out there, but they are not readily available, and I feel sure there are less than 1000 of them. This gave me additional confidence when buying the doll, because there is a sort of exclusivity to having one of her dolls, particularly because it is notoriously difficult to get on her order list.

Now let’s look at an example of a bad investment. One of mine is the Barbie and Ken Star Trek 30th Anniversary gift set. This is not technically my own investment, as my mom bought it for me back in 1996, when I was a high school freshman. I used to collect Barbie pretty much exclusively, so I have quite a few of the collectible Barbies. Unfortunately, the Barbie craze was all the rage, so there are LOADS of them out there. I couldn’t remember the original cost, after all, my mom bought it for me, so I consulted my handy Barbie Bazaar from March/April 1996 and found this advertisement:

So they originally sold for $69, let’s say $70 to make it easier to do this math. Now, the average sold price on eBay for the last couple of months is $12....yes, $12. You can hardly buy a new play Barbie from Walmart for that price. Let’s now calculate the loss on this investment. It’s easy to want to say well, $70 - $12 = $58, so the loss incurred is $58. Well, that’s too easy. We have to consider the time value of money. If I had invested that $70 back in 1996 at the risk free rate of 3%, the value today would be $122.75. This makes the real loss $122.75 - $12 = $110.75. Ouch. This can be very painful, especially as the price of dolls continues to go up. Dolls are also like any other investment: it’s very hard to predict the future, and who knows what the market will demand? Barbies may have a sudden resurgence due to some societal factors, and those collectible Barbies from the 90’s may become a gold mine for those who have a storage building full of them (fingers crossed!).
Waiting for their day to shine...

The point of this entry is to educate my fellow collectors, and enable you to make thoughtful financial decisions when it comes to your doll purchases. Stay tuned throughout this week as I will do a few case studies in good and bad investments, and I’ll choose some of my personal picks that I think are smart purchase choices.

*Disclaimer: I am not an investment expert. I do work in the financial industry and have an understanding of how money works. Do not use this is a permission slip to cash out your 401k and buy a bunch of dolls. That’s actually the worst thing you can do.*




Friday, July 3, 2015

Little Darling Dress by Darling Lil' Bee

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Today, I received a new Little Darling dress from Darling Lil' Bee. I just love this dress so much I wanted to do a post about it. 
Elsa, modeling her new dress 

What I really like about these outfits is that each one includes a pair of shoes. This makes my life so easy, as I am one of those who will just let my dolls go barefoot if I don't have matching shoes. The dress is great quality, and the back buttons up...yes buttons!
Buttons!!

And it even has a tag...like all designer clothing should: 

I am really happy with this dress and highly recommend Darling Lil' Bee for all your Little Darking costuming needs. I just earned some eBay bucks, and I know where I'll be spending them!