Forums » Smalltalk » AMA - I'm an adult who collects dolls

People seem to think it's a bit wierd for a grown adult to collect dolls.
I get a lot of questions irl. Lol.

So AMA. It's all good.

Nah, I've met others who do. I have a friend (also an adult) who's mother was very excited to show me her Barbie collection, for example, and even more adults collect other toys (actually, that same friend - his parents's primary source of income, if I remember right, is his dad selling toy cars to adult collectors). BJDs seem to have a huge following in particular!

Is there a specific type of doll that you collect, or some particular feature you look for? Is there something that made you decide to collect dolls?

Do you interact with them (for example, I know a big part of the appeal of BJDs is customization, posing for photos, etc; and I see no issue with adults even just playing) or is it more of a hands-off collection?

Is it a very large collection, and/or have you invested a lot into it?

Well the interesting thing is that as a kid I had very little interest in dolls. I found them uninspiring and kinda boring.
But as an adult I discovered a whole lot of doll lines that had come out in my teens that were substantially more interesting than the bland ol' barbie of my youth lol.

These days my biggest collection is probably Sindy. With her a lot of my interest stems from her history. Vintage dolls tell you a lot about fashion trends and beauty standards from any particular period and I find that facinating. I prefer Sindy to Barbie because I find her a little more grounded in reality for the most part with fashions that are more "regular joe" kind of fashion to Barbie's "hollywood glam"
Also vintage barbies are kinda angry looking and not very friendly to my eye. Heh.

I came into dolls via Sindy and Bratz Boyz (Loved me a whole line of boy dolls hahah) and then Monster High came out and became a bit of an obsession. It was such a fun line.

I also have bjds now but that came a lot later into the whole thing.

In terms of interaction, I restore vintage dolls. So that means getting dolls with tlc needed and cleaning them, destaining them, rerooting them, restringing even. I quite like dressing them, though I tend to pick ONE outfit and that's it. I was never good at hair stuff so not much hair play happens beyond making it look less terrible lol.
I do sometimes repaint dolls.

I don't see the point of having toys if you aren't going to at least interact with them sometimes you know?

It's a large collection and very varied. I have as I said, bjds, sindy dolls ranging from 1963 all the way up to 2021, Makies (3d printed dolls), Monster High, Bratz... and so on. I also have a fair few Living Dead Dolls which appealed to my love of horror.

Most of them are in storage because I haven't got the space to display them all, which makes me feel a bit guilty but I like to hope that one day i'll have the space to have them out to be enjoyed.

I don't like to think about how much money they've cost over the years lol. Thankfully i'm pretty stingy and kinda prefer played with dolls to mint ones so that helps cut the costs down.

So what if you collect dolls? At least you have an interesting hobby. People tend to frown on whatever they deem is not “normal” to them. But who cares. Normal is boring.~