Out with the Old, In the with slightly less Old

Hello everyone,

After coming back for December I wanted to touch base before seemingly falling silent again. I enjoyed blogging and sharing those calendars with you all, but as you all could see lots of time I'd fall behind and would struggle to get caught up. I don't think I'm ready to commit to a lot of blogging, but I would like to be more active than last year. Right now I'm thinking about aiming for two blogs a month, one where I talk about what happened the previous month and a dolls only blog. I'm thinking where I do a doll review, a doll introduction, or just doll opinions. If for some reason you miss my unique voice in my habit of being 10 years behind trends I do have a Tumblr now and am much more active on it: A Bit of Aubrey's Mind Tumblr

But this post I also wanted to talk about my collection.

Right now my collection is in a bit of a change of focus.

I have a LOT of dolls and I'm at the point where I think I'm ready to scale back some and let a few go. I do plan on buying some still, but I want to be more focused on choosing what I buy and buy things I want instead of things I get a good deal on.

For a long time I've been very focused on vintage, but for right now I think I have enough. In all of December I bought one vintage doll and even before that my vintage buying had slowed down a lot. I have been purchasing a lot of newer modern dolls, but really scaled back on vintage. For the past couple of years I had a pretty big focus on Japanese exclusive dolls, and while there's still several I want to get honestly they are way out of my budget at this time. However I do want to focus some time on getting some European exclusive vintage dolls that are pretty high on my want list. Luckily Europe mostly got clothes which aren't of interest to me. Right now my biggest wants from Europe are the Hawaiian Superstar Barbie, German Francie, and Superstar faced Equestrian Barbie. There is also two dolls I am looking for that were Mattel made but produced in Europe. Those I've been on the hunt for but haven't found for sale yet. I know they do exist because I've seen examples of them online. If I do find them, I'll talk about them but I'm keeping quiet about the details since I think they're very uncommon and don't want to create competition for myself. Hawaiian Superstar and Francie are both going to be pretty expensive so I'm going to have to save up for those. That's part of my goal to focus, by not buying the 5 inexpensive dolls that I kind of want I can afford the 1 expensive doll that I really want.

I'm also getting more into South Korean fashion dolls. Someone on Tumblr posted some pictures of a couple and I've fallen down a bit of a rabbit hole. I am by no mean an expert, but from my research for play line fashion dolls there's two main ones in South Korea, Mimi and Jouju (or Juju as I've also seen). They are very similar to the Japanese fashion dolls I already have but they're different enough to want to add them to the collection. Mimi reminds me of a Jenny and Licca hybrid. She's an older teen like Jenny, but her face paint reminds me of Licca. There's a couple of Mimi dolls I like and have been doing research on. Jouju is very similar, but looks to be a cheaper doll. Her face paint looks more like decals and her hair seems thinner and a cheaper quality (it also might be nylon). I'd still like a couple of them to experience them in person. Would either of these dolls be of interest to people to see reviewed? Luckily there is a decent amount of these dolls available online. Information is hard to find, but I think the online prices are fair. It's around the retail prices with 10 dollars added in for international shipping. It seems expensive to me, but I guess the market is higher priced in South Korea than in the US.

There's also several Mattel dolls coming out that I want. Usually I just want dolls for their shoes or for their articulated bodies, this has not changed but there are a couple dolls I am looking for. I am still on the hunt for the newest Look doll, the sweater dress doll, but she's been sold out everywhere and I don't know if she's coming back to retail prices. I'm also looking for the boy from the Skipper babysitter line. Someone on Flickr did find him in their local Walmart but I don't think he's been widely released yet. I am also looking for the curvy Made to Move doll, but so far she's only been seen in Australia. I'm going to be buying a lot of Barbie clothes this year. I'm still on the hunt for the remaining Hello Kitty sets I haven't found yet. That line is going to be very expensive for me. I'm also looking at some of the not yet released Care Bear sets, and I know I will be buying every single Mario item that gets released. Part of me only wants to collect the things I know I'll use but I worry that once they stop getting produced they'll be much more expensive to get so I should get them all at retail prices while I can. 

I think I'm moving away from Silkstones again. After buying pretty much all of the 2016 line, I only bought four Silkstones in 2017 and two of those were older releases that I got super cheap. I do like the articulated bodies proportions, but the construction leaves much to be desired. Lots of times the joints are hard to move, or frozen and they are just so fragile. I have not broken one but I have seen some stress marks appearing on joints from limited posing. Also, I think I have enough of them. I think I have 20 of them and while I don't think I'm ready to start selling them, I do think that I'm ready to stop getting more. For a while they were dolls I used to replace vintage when I couldn't afford it, but now I have plenty of vintage so I think it's time to cut back on them. I do usually buy the "budget" Silkstone doll, but we'll see what happens this year.

I think I'm also going to be taking a break from Integrity. I cleaned up at their Holiday sale and got several dolls I wanted and several dolls that were cheap enough to justify getting. I usually only get the homme dolls so I think I have enough for now. I am getting the urge to get another Poppy Parker, but that's pretty low on the list. I do have a spare body (I might have two) so if I can't resist getting one I can at least just get her head.

I'm also going to try stop buying so many articulated dolls. For several years now I've been hoarding doll bodies and I think it's time to rethink how many I have compared to how many I'll actually use. It's good to have an assortment, but there's only so many I'll logically use, especially since the material they're made of will eventually start aging and break down. Like I said I am looking for the curvy made to move doll, but I'm going to try to cut back on buying new dolls just for their bodies. The majority of the dolls I have are on bodies I'm happy with. There's no need buying so many that I know I'll never use, even when I keep some for spares.

I know there's going to be some surprise purchases, some impulse buys, and some over shopping, but if I can at least try to keep things in order that would be great.

Here's to a new year, and a constant collection!