If you had not started collecting BJD would you still be a doll collector?

I doubt I would be. Maybe I would have ended up trying out Monster Highs, but I can at least nowadays tell without getting one that I wouldn't enjoy having any of those, similar to how with some specific BJDs I can tell I wouldn't want to own it myself even if I enjoy looking at it and what other people have done with the doll.

 

Doubtful. ^^" I was never that interested in most 'regular dolls'. I can't really explain, but BJD are just different for me.

I'd still be a collector, though.

 

I think I would, but surely more reasonably. I had dolls before BJDs (some strange rag dolls, Little Apple Dolls, a Bleeding Edge...) and I would surely have continue in the same gothish-creepy-cute dolly collection.

 

I used to collect G1 monster high, but G3 only the occasional doll speaks to me. I bought 2 shadow high dolls I thought looked cool, but I’m not really a collector when it comes to fashion dolls. I wanted to customize MH dolls into some of my characters back in the day, before I discovered BJDs, so maybe I would have gone down that Route? Or gotten into more expensive fashion dolls, but I don’t think I’d have nearly the collection that I have now. I also think I’d have a lot more savings, but probably I would have just found something equivalent to sink all my money into.

 

I would still be a doll collector if I was not a BJD collector. I still enjoy my Rainbow High and Disney ILY 4Ever dolls. I remember being OBESSED when Lily Cheng came out. I've sold a ton of my playline dolls to focus mostly on BJD / Vinyl though.

 

Not at all. BJDs are my only doll thing, and I'm not interested in dolls outside of ABJD. But I love this hobby, so I'm glad it exists and I found it

 

Absolutely! BJD is a progression of my childhood love of fashion dolls, and my teenage love of Pullip. I've mostly left Pullip behind in favor of BJD, so without them I'd likely just be back to collecting and customizing Pullip.

 

Yes, I would. I started collecting dolls a bit earlier than bjds. I stopped buying more bjds awhile ago because I am really happy with the ones I have. But, I still occasionally buy playline dolls.

 

I would think so? Before I found BJDs I collected mostly anime figures like figma and nendoroids. That kind of led to obitsu fashion dolls and eventually I started seeking other types of fashion dolls. Then I found out about dolfies and that led me down the BJD rabbit hole I think if I never got into BJDs, I would have just collected more of other dolls. I still want an Azone doll so its not like my interest in dolls outside of BJD is gone

 

I think, if I had not found BJD I would probably have spent more on dolls rather than less.

I came in via several different doll types, but my main early interest was in antique dolls and while there are certainly affordable options out threre, I think I would have eventually graduated towards the big names and those can easily cost several times that of what even an expensive BJD does.

If not antiques, I would gravitate towards modern porceline art dolls and those can, again, cost a lot more than a BJD does.

The fact that you can modify and actually play with a BJD helps to keep down the urge to just aquire more and more. I spend most of my doll time making stuff for my dolls and just having fun posing them and making up stories for them. I often justify the money I spend on dolls by the hours of entertainment I get out of them. If you divide the cost of a doll by hours of fun and then compare that to just about any other entertainment, the dolls seem like a pretty good deal.

I am also into doll making and now I make mostly jointed dolls cast in polyurethane, but if that had not been a choice I would likely eventually have made my way to porceline myself. Heck, I still might do that some day. Not sure wich is the more expensive hobby in the long run, but I'm fairly sure the profit margins are larger for porceline dolls, even if the start up costs are also higher. Neither is a get-rich-fast thing, that's for sure.

 

Oh yeah I was collecting other types of dolls before bjds
So I would definitely be collecting some type of doll if it wasn't bjds

 

Yes, I was collecting other dolls from a very young age and came across BJDS while searching for a wig to restore another doll. I was immediately intrigued by the articulation and the adult like figures. Collecting dolls is an expensive hobby no matter what doll you decide to collect. I have not purchased a resin doll recently, but have purchased several vinyl dolls, mostly for my grandkids.

 

I have a feeling I would have stumbled on Nendoroid dolls/Obitsuroids eventually... having a lil guy version of my favorite fictional characters, how could I not? XD That's half the reason I haven't done much with my resins lately; I'm really focused on my lil guys!

I was never into Barbies, though Monster High might have tempted me into trying out customs. But most of the collecting aspect of those hobbies just isn't for me- it's the custom aspect that really draws me in.

 

I've never been interested in dolls. BJDs are the first.

 

Definitely. It all started with Pullips and Disney Dolls for me. Without BJDs, I'd probably collect those instead.

 

Absolutely! I collected pullips before actually commiting to a couple resin BJD years later and to this day I still collect other types of dolls!

 

Unlikely, I'm fairly picky when it comes to dolls...I like them large and most importantly, very customizable. Most other dolls don't match the criteria for me.

 

Probably not! When I was a kid, I was much more interested in the tiny little clothes Barbie had than the actual Barbies. And I love watching MH custom videos, but had no desire to get them for myself. The customizability and presence of BJDs just make them stand out, and make me want them when the other dolls I've seen just don't appeal to me!

 

Probably not. I have really high standards for aesthetics (not trying to say there's anything wrong with other dolls). I don't think I'd be able to care enough about non-bjds. Plus I like making stuff for them.

 

I actually got super into rag dolls at one point, after feeling super dejected seeing the prices of BJDs for the first time! I love my girl and I even got the faceup experience embroidering her face on her head. I still love her even after I got my first BJD!

(Also if anyone was wondering, almost all rag doll sellers on Etsy are Eastern or Central European, which I found really interesting lol)

 

I only ever sold mine via word of mouth so never got to redress the balance in favour of the UK, but I hadn't thought to mention that in addition tot he tother non-BJD dolls I bought (including rag dolls) I'd have been adding my own rag dolls to the collection as well.

Dolly One-Leg (the first rag doll I made for myself rather than for someone else) is still the leader of all my dolls and bears to this day. Art one staage she had a fan group who demanded i bring her along to historical reenactment events.

Teddy

 

Absolutely! BJDs aren’t even my main focus, really – I’m mostly an antique doll collector. And I’ve been into dolls my whole life, from the play dolls of my childhood like American girl and Barbie to the collectibles I have now. What sets BJDs apart for me is how easily I can take them out and do things with them compared to the other dolls in my collection. They are fragile and expensive, yes, but I won’t be destroying an irreplaceable 150 year old piece of art if something happens to them.

(although two out of my four BJDs are porcelain right now, so I guess I have to be a bit more careful with those than the resin ones. But since they are off-topic, I won’t dwell on the subject!)

 

Not at all. I hadn't touched a doll in 20+ years when I got my first BJD. They really opened me up to collecting other things too.

 

Before I got into bjds, I collected Barbies, so I would probably still be getting those! I had always wanted a silkstone back then, and honestly I still think it would be cool to have one now. I also want to complete the star wars line still!

 

Probably not. I've had, or rather tried, other types of dolls over the years since getting into bjds but I've never been that interested in any and ultimately they either end up in storage forgotten or sold. Even if I might like them visually I just don't enjoy them like bjds.
Before bjds I was not much of a doll person at all, not even as a child. So if I was not into bjds I would maybe have had a couple of dolls or a few figures because they're cute but I wouldn't be collecting or enough into them to call it a hobby.

 

Yes, even if I had not gotten into BJD's, I would still been a doll collector. I started collecting Barbies, and after I outgrew playing with them, I didn't have the heart to discard them, leading me down the path to collecting vintage Barbies from the 1960s, the Golden Age of Barbie. At this time, researching vintage Barbies led me to collect vintage dolls from the 1950s to the 1970s. My interest then went further back in time to collecting German / French dolls that were made pre-1914. This interest in bisque-headed dolls with composition ball-joined bodies from the late Victorian period routed me to the porcelain dolls of Enchanted Doll by Marina Bychkova. When ED released a line of resin dolls, I was intrigued by the durability of resin and started to look at comparable dolls. This led me to find Angel Egg dolls by Marmite Sue, which had a similar aesthetic, and I started collecting fashion BJDs. After all these years, I feel that I have come full circle.

 

Hmm, probably not! I love monster high customs, but they're normally not my personal style. I'm happy just following artists who create them.

 

I don’t think so, I’ve had plastic fashion dolls as an adult but I lost interest in them

 

I collected other dolls and figures before bjds and still have other collections. Many of us collect other types of dolls now as can be seen in the brigadoon section show us your off topic dolls. I would likely have some other doll collection still if I did not get into bjds. Probably have more money too!

 

BJDs are very unique for me.

With my other dolls I’m usually one-and-done: I own one Disney designer doll (my favorite princess!) and one limited edition Barbie (a collab with my favorite movie series).
I am really into collecting anime figures as well, although I don’t interact with them in the same way as my BJDs

What’s so appealing to me about BJDs is I LOVE making characters and dressing them up. My dolls rarely share clothes because they all have unique styles and personalities for their wardrobes/hair/eyes. I’ve worn lolita fashion for close to ten years and I think my love of dressing up myself definitely extends to my dolls— I can put them in different, niche street fashions and outfits I wouldn’t necessarily wear myself.

Without BJDs I know I wouldn’t be as much of a doll collector (unless there was another type of doll I found equally appealing, but I haven’t found it yet )

 

I probably would've kept collecting plushies and articulated anime figures (which are basically dolls anyways), and then likely bought some of the obitsu 20-30 cm figures to build my own characters. I actually cancelled a preorder on an Edward Elric action figure (the one that had real fabric clothes and tons of little details) to order my first BJD.

 

Yes! I've always been a doll collector of various types and I'll pretty much try anything once to see if the doll is a good fit. Getting into BJDs was a no-brainer for me, yet I also wouldn't give up collecting other dolls either. Different types of dolls fill different roles for me.

 

I have collected action figures for a long time and so even if I didn’t collect BJDs I would likely still collect action figures. Although my interest in BJDs slightly took over from those figures and I sold a bunch of them on to make room for my growing BJD collection. I have several other collecting hobbies aside from these things so I would absolutely always be a collector of something

 

I got my very first little doll when I was 7 years old, it was an inexpensive rubber doll, I love him to death. I took him everywhere even to school, almost lost him, he stayed home ever since. He had lots of wear and scratches.
Throughout his life, I found him a wife, 3 children and home made out of cardboard box.
Since then I have gotten through many different kinds of dolls, I have discover BJD in 2008.
He is the start of doll collecting journey.

 

Yes. I still collect other kinds of dolls besides BJDs. The BJD collection is bigger now than my 16" fashion dolls. It used to be the other way around but I still love them and will buy one if I get a sweet deal on an old doll. Most of my BJDs are minis so often they share clothes so it works out fine.

 

Nope! I’m not a ‘doll person’, actually disliked them as a child. I am however a sculptor and artist BJDs are what got me into dolls at the older age of 34.

 

Yes, I collected playline fashion dolls as a kid then I started collecting the disney limited edition dolls for awhile before getting into the bjd hobby. I think if I wasn't collecting bjd's I would probably be collecting other dolls like monster high, disney, etc.

 

No. Other dolls just don’t scratch the itch. As a little kid l had 3 mine dolls and 1 very old and very beautiful from 1930ies that my mom had second hand in her childhood. But they all were babies or toddlers. Not much you can do with them. Put a bottle to their lips, shake them a little, wrap them to sleep. Barbie dolls exist since 1950ies but they came to my country only around mid 1990ies, my daughter was more or less growing out of active doll age already. At first l was amazed that finally there’s a doll that is not a baby. But quite soon realized that the size puts a lot of limitations to the clothes that can be made for Barbie. 55-75 cm tall dolls that can be customized, hold positions, that’s a dream come true.

 

Probably not, there are some other dolls I like, and I've gotten other various dolls here and there, but it doesn't spark anything in me as far as "this is a hobby"

I could see myself having a pullip or an azone or something if BJDs were just not a thing, or maybe having some kind of mannequin monster, but overall, no, I like BJDs, not just whatever random fashion dolls are out there.

 

Probably yes. I‘ve collected Monster High dolls before i got into BJDs. Though it‘s not a big collection because they stopped producing them and second hand prices were rediciolously high for me as a teenager. When G3 came out here in europe, i already collected bjds and lost interest in playline dolls. But i still couldn’t resist buying Cleo and Draculaura

 

Yes! I've loved dolls my whole life, and collect a variety of other dolls as well. BJDs were a natural extension of my collecting once I was able to afford them. And because of their price, BJDs have also helped me to narrow the focus of my collections. For example: I still have my childhood American Girl dolls and have only added one Doll of the Year for modern clothes and accessories so I can keep my childhood dolls in their historical eras. Interestingly, while I prefer female dolls pretty much everywhere else, I prefer male BJDs. Their clothing is more interesting to me.

 

No, I like dolls but BJD are the only ones I'm intensely interested in. I might have owned one or two bisque dolls at most.

 

Yes! Besides Bjd I also have Barbies, Bratz, Monster High, Living Dead Dolls, and some other random dolls too ^^ I may need more room for all of them as the smaller dolls fight for shelf space.

 

Honestly no. I do have a bit of a weakness for anime/game figures, but I have no issues buying and selling or getting rid of them to keep just the few I really like on my shelves for display. I don't play with or customize them, and I've never really been into dolls the way I'm into BJD's now. Sure I had some as a kid growing up, but they were all second hand in rough shape and just for casual playing. I loved having them but didn't feel a connection to them or make characters for them or anything, which is a huge part of BJD's for me personally. I did have quite a few stuffed animals as well, but again, I've kept the ones I really loved and let the rest go - either to new homes or into storage.

If I hadn't gotten into this hobby, I think I'd just be bigger into gaming. It's hard to imagine though, because all my friends right now I found through this hobby. It's literally changed my life and I can't imagine taking another path now.

 

Probably not. I used to collect a bunch of Monster High dolls when I was younger, but I stopped and never got back into collecting them. I still think fashion dolls look cool, but I’m only interested in collecting BJDs right now when it comes to dolls.

Apart from BJDs, I like collecting anime figures, merchandise (like pins and keychains) for games/anime, and plushies (I have way too many plushies lolol).

 

Honestly, yeah. I started off with fashion dolls and I keep up that collection even while saving for BJDs.

 

Probably not dolls. While I have the soul of a collector, I'm not drawn to fashion dolls, porcelain / artist dolls, or baby dolls like reborns. BJDs scratch an itch in my brain for whatever reason that other popular categories of dolls don't, even if I can admire or enjoy certain qualities. I do collect vinyl figures and blind boxes and I got into those separately from BJDs.

 

Probably not. I have dabbled in fashion dolls and action figures but neither of them scratch the same itch.

 

I definilety would collect another kind of dolls since I LOVE them. I like Barbie a lot, Silvanian Family, Gorgouss, Paola Reina, Monster High so yes, I would have dolls in my life

 

I used to collect monster high, and if I hadn't gotten into bjd I would probably have started collecting some of them again since the new gen 3 dolls all look very nice.

 

I used to collect vinyl dolls - I still have some of them. I also have a ton of Barbie dolls and four dolls' houses in 1/12th scale, so I guess the answer would be "yes".
At some point I thought about collecting antique dolls, but the price kept me from buying any. Now I look at the price of antique dolls and they don't look as outrageous any more. LOL!!

 

Probably. I was enjoying other dolls before I found bjds.
I still have my folk art dolls, Hitty dolls, Tiny Betsy McCalls, Celluloid Dream girls,
and assorted one-offs.

 

I collected fashion dolls long before I knew what BJDs were. I'd still have dolls, just not BJDs probably.

 

Even if I didn’t decide to collect bjds I would have still ended up collecting dolls because I also collect reborns. I am just an avid lover of anything cute and feminine.

 

Definitely - I collected Sailor Moon dolls prior to BJDs, and I was very curious about custom 1/6 and 1/12 dolls from Volks and Azone. They'd have gotten me eventually, haha!

 

I definitely would be. I also have monster high dolls & pullips along with some other smaller dolls too.