Love the Hunt

You may have noticed my recent post about my 50s doll haul.  One thing about me is that I love the hunt, so I'm frequently thrifting and checking sites like Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for local doll lots and finds.

I've always enjoyed thrifting, but I've gotten more savvy at it in the last ten years or so.  Knowing what you're looking for when you go to the thrift store really helps.  Plus, it helps to know what thrift stores frequently have vintage dolls.  There's a thrift store right around the corner from me that often has vintage dolls in the case, for instance.  I guess the neighborhood must be full of older people selling their things... or kids moving their parents into assisted living and getting rid of their things.  Maybe some of it is adult children going through their parents' things after they've passed, too.

In addition, I've learned through collecting more modern dolls how often vintage doll lots are listed for sale locally by people who don't really care how much the dolls are worth.  One lot I picked up once was owned by the seller's great-aunt-in-law who had gone into assisted living, for example, and another time I picked up a woman's own childhood dolls.  The lot the other day belonged to a woman about my age (I'm 42) who was selling her childhood dolls.  Given how many of the dolls in that lot were from right about 1954, I'm wondering if they were her mom's once upon a time.

I'm sure there are often sad stories between why the dolls end up being sold or given away, but I like to think of myself as fixing them up for a new life as collectors' dolls.  I hope their former owners would appreciate me making them beautiful again and either loving them myself, or passing them on to another collector to love.

All the thrifting I do has taught me to love the hunt.  Once upon a time I only ever bought my dolls on eBay or in doll stores.  Sometimes they needed to be fixed up, but they were much more often in collector doll condition that way.  Plus you tend to pay more when you buy dolls that are properly identified and marketed to a national (or international!) audience.

Thrifting and doll hunting is much more of a crapshoot - I never know when I open Marketplace what I'll find, or whether they'll have any dolls when I walk into the thrift store - but it's so satisfying when you do find a doll.  Plus the prices are typically a fraction of what you'd pay on eBay or purchasing from another collector.

Do you thrift or check local sales sites such as Marketplace and Craigslist?  What treasures have you found?

50s Doll Haul

I have collected 50s dolls for 22ish years now, but it was only recently that I learned to watch local listings for local finds - or perhaps it's just been that Facebook Marketplace has more recently provided a good place to buy and sell dolls.  Modern dolls come up more often as parents get rid of their kids' toys, but sometimes vintage dolls come up, too.

In any case, recently I picked up a whole under-bed plastic bin full of small 50s dolls, plus a couple of more modern 8-inch Madame Alexanders.  I bought it from a lady about my age (early 40s) who was selling her childhood dolls.  I don't know the story or why she had some 50s dolls, but I saw them and snapped them up.

The pictures were all group pictures and didn't do a great job of showing the dolls, but I knew there were some treasures in there, so I couldn't wait to get home and go through everything.  Sure enough, in that box I found a 1954 Muffie in a correct dress...

Two 1954 Vogue Ginny dolls, one in a 1955 dress and one in an unidentified ski outfit...

A 1954 or 1955 Madame Alexander straight legged walker Alexander-kins...

A couple of other 50s/60s off brand dolls...

A couple of Vogue Ginnette dolls...

Plus some Ginnette clothes, a couple of newer Madame Alexander dolls, and some other miscellaneous dolls and things.

All the dolls need to be cleaned up and restrung, and need some other small repairs here and there, but overall it's a great find!  I will take after pictures once I finish their glow ups.

Website Overhaul... Again

I've been working a lot on my visual branding lately, for this and other sites.  I wasn't happy with the website overhaul I did on this site a couple weeks ago, so yesterday I decided to work on it some more.  I knew better now what I wanted from the template, so I tried out a couple of different templates and designed a header image in Canva before finally settling on an overall appearance for my website.

I know this has been a rather ignored site for a long time, so I'm trying to revive it with a whole new look and some fresh posts.  I am planning to overhaul my restringing ebook as well to reflect my branding, and after that I'll look at getting back to work on the expanded restringing ebook and other tutorials I wanted to offer eventually.

I have some new posts coming soon, including an exciting thrift store find and a couple of glow ups!

Making Progress

I've mentioned a few times that I'm doing some updates to my blogs and websites, including this one.  I had been thinking about moving to another hosting company, but ended up deciding not to, at least for now.  But since the blog was very old and outdated, I needed to transfer it over from my hosting platform's FTP publishing, which Blogger no longer uses.

Well, I've finally finished the long, tedious task of transferring all of this blog's photos over from the original platform, which is a big deal, as it was a big job and also a big problem if you tried to view any of my older posts, as the images simply weren't loading.  That was a walk down memory lane for me, though, as I had to open up nearly every single one of my old posts.  I didn't read each one closely, but I read enough, and loaded enough old pictures, that it was quite the revelation for me.

It would have been a shame to lose all the old content, but in some ways, I wish I could have scrapped it all and started over.  Those posts were 13 and 14 years old, and I can totally see the difference: in my writing, in my doll repair projects, and especially in my pictures.  I take far better photographs now.  I was almost ashamed to repost some of those, they were so much beneath my current standards, but I wanted to be true to the original content.

I also found some inaccuracies.  For instance, I've since bought a book on Elise that does a better job of dating Elise ballerinas, and I think it's more accurate than the old information.

So while I'm glad to have all the old photos back up finally, there's still a lot to do.  I need to work more on the appearance of the website, plus I have new post ideas and updates and want to post better photos as well.  I can't forget too that I still need to figure out a new way to automate selling my ebook.

So, stay tuned for more changes in the coming weeks, and thank you for your continued patience!

Thanks for Your Patience!

Fixing up my website has been an ordeal.  I had to move the blog, so all of the pictures were lost and I'm adding them back in manually.  When I moved the blog, I also renamed the website to DIY Doll Stringing (from Doll Stringing Extravaganza), and overhauled the appearance of the entire site.  I am not yet satisfied with how it looks, though, so I'm going to tweak it a bit more once I have all the pictures uploaded again.

I also rewrote several sections of the website, including my doll stringing ebook's sales page.  I'm also in the process of making some updates to the ebook, which will be ready soon!

Thanks for your patience while I make all of these changes.  It'll be a little while before everything is completed, but we're getting closer!

Site Under Construction

Don't mind my mess!  This website is temporarily under construction while I change hosts and update the site.  The buy buttons have therefore been disabled temporarily until I get everything fixed.  In the meantime, if you'd like to buy my ebook on how to restring a vintage strung doll, contact me at admin at doll stringing dot com.

Merry Christmas, from my dolls to yours!

I have had a busy year and haven't been blogging or even working on my dolls very much — until recently. I have several projects I am currently working on or planning to work on, so hopefully there will be new stories to share very soon.

Here are a few of my Christmas presents to myself:

A bent-knee Cosmopolitan Ginger in the Disney mouseketeer outfit, and a Ginger clone in a MIB A&H Julie outfit...

...and a mint, unopened canister of Ginger shoes, part of a fantastic lot of Ginger dolls and outfits that I was lucky enough to win on eBay.

Have a very merry Christmas — and may there be dolls under your tree!