Tell me your cool 2nd-hand bjd stories!

Once got a tan pukifee body at a good discount cuz their dog chewed the head I boiled it and a lot of the dents flattened out except some really bad gouches. Not a fun story lol

My best buy is definity my realpuki obi. The seller bought the cutest little crocheted hat for him as well as a vest & shorts. He's been my little travel buddy ever since. I even took him to Hawaii!

 

It was my most positive memory I think. When my doll Sven, arrived from a seller on eBay (he's Doll in life Rydel), I opened him up and was filled with this overwhleming warm feeling and a powerful odor of Nag Champa. Sven basically remains my favorite to this day. It's a good thing I like Nag Champa myself and it brings so many happy memories or I think the box opening might have been more unpleasant. The odor was so strong!
He was also strung I think with bungee cord, that striped stuff. So he was a funny little fellow.

 

I recently got an adorable Volks school A boy. Somehow further up the line he’d been dyed BLUE! The previous owner managed to remove the bulk of the blue color but there were still blotches of blue all over him. When I got him I went through a whole cleaning and stain lifting process. He’s a beautiful doll now, though I always give him blue eyeshadow for his faceup as a bit of a nod to his past lol.

 

My two favorite secondhand gets are a Resinsoul Mei, and a Gray Plumage Gumu.
Both I got super cheap like half or less of their retail price. Yes even for being cheap sculpts. Though were they anything fancier I'm sure someone would have gotten to them before me.
The Gumu works great for a character, though I've been stuck in finding a body. The RS Mei also got my best faceup for the longest time. Now it's chipped though, and I need to redo it.

And since we're talking about smell, the Mei had a strong, strong whiff of hand sanitizers etc. Of all smells, at least it signaled that the seller cared to keep her clean in peak world-pandemic.

 

I can't say it's a cool memory, but one of my boys came with a treasure trail (and more). I knew he was blushed but not that blushed

It didn't stick around long and the only blushing remains on the feet of that body.

 

@pondkoi honestly a lot of people would have been averse to it or worse The whole box was pungent but just proof it was meant to be. Yes I'm very lucky not to have been allergic! I am however very easily upset by odors so it was lucky it was that particular fragrance

 

I once saw a doll someone else found in the knock-off-saturated depths of ebay and everyone from the community looking at it thought it must be fake- but I'm nearly a Hobby "Old Fart" and I recognized the sculpting and jointing as being from before the time when "R-word" became so horribly common. She was from 2008 or 9, I bet on it. I bet her very low price on it!
When i got her, she was covered in penciled tattoos, marks of wear and love, and glitter nail polish. She was clearly someone's darling. After checking Stolen/Lost doll listings, I got to work scrubbing her clean and she has tidied up very nicely! She's an Asleep Eidolon Yara and she is indeed from around 2009. Not even too badly yellowed, either. Now her name is Rose of Venice.

 

Bought a granado body in tan for about 1/3 of it's original price. Nothing too amazing but when it arrived I discovered that all of his detachable "junks" are gone missing. Aside from that, everything else looks perfect and brand new. I just find it funny to think that all those dingdongs amounted to 2/3 of the original price lol

I also recently got a AS doll 74cm body that's supposedly in tan for less than 130usd. But when I got it, the color seems to be more pink/orange than it's supposed to be. The seller said it was a flawed doll from the factory. They probably mixed the wrong amount of pigments. I'm not expecting top grade for a discounted item anyway. It's just funny now I have a big salmon-colored boy in my crew. He is a fierce looking pink man lol . (I'll post his profile soon when he gets his proper clothes.)

 

Here’s mine… I adopted an older Luts Minifee Shiwoo a few years ago and I found out that he had had about maybe 7 other owners over the years he also came with the same clothes and kept the same name and character from his first owner all the way back in 2006

I have one about a new doll too… a few years ago I got a DikaDoll boy and when I opened the box he had a very bad “new resin” smell, I’ve never had such a smell on a new doll before but I ended up having to leave him in another room for a few days to air him off… every time I see him I am reminded of that

 

Just recently a lady contacted me. She found my profile by luck. She saw my doll wish list and happened to have the exact doll in the exact color I've been wanting. He didn't quite 'click' with her when he arrived so I was able to adopt him! So I now have my Doll Zone Rory which also happens to be my first boy. The whole interaction felt like such a coincidence and she said it must have been good karma for our paths to cross.

Just thought it was a neat experience all around and he feels even more special to me.

 

In 2018 my doll friends and I were talking about an Elfdoll Ruru for sale on eBay. The poor thing had no headcap, just a wad of packing tape in her head! One of the friends said she had an extra Ruru headcap, if any of us were interested in buying her; however we all declined. In 2020 the Ruru popped up again, on the DoA Marketplace, still with that wad of tape in her head

This time around, I realized that she'd work well as a character in my resin crew, and the price was reasonable, so I bought her, and the headcap from the friend. It was satisfying to make the doll "whole", and to get an older Elfdoll that I hadn't considered when she was new.

 

One of my dolls came with a lego figure! I casually mentioned it to the seller, and she said that her kid had been absolutely devasted after "losing" it. I sent it to them, and the little guy sent me a thank you note back!

 

I bought a Volks Cyndy with a lovely artist face-up from a local collector who was paring down her collection. I prefer the default Volks face-ups, so I had planned on wiping her and trying to recreate her original one. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I didn't want to wipe such a pretty face, so I offered her up for trade for any old Volks sculpts with original face-ups. I was thrilled when someone on Instagram had a Cyndy with the original face-up & wanted to trade for mine! We had a lot of giggles over our "Cyndy for Cyndy" trade and we both were so happy with how it all worked out!

 

all of my dolls except 2 are secondhand! there's no especially exciting stories behind them, mostly a lot of "I put in a lowball bid on this auction cause I was Sure I'd get outbid and then: no" and "I never thought I'd own this doll but a friend of a friend was selling one and they put us in contact."

I Have had multiple occurrences of seeing a doll and not even putting them on my mental wishlist because surely I'd never find one for sale...only for them to show up randomly a short time later. like my aimerai nick chopper who was listed on mandarake the day after my birthday...I bought him while hiding in the bathroom at work!

there's also my dollfie dream from 2004/2005, I suspect she'd never been out of her package before I found her...this doll is old enough to vote!

 

I love buying dolls on the secondary market. For some reason, it gives me more satisfaction than a shiny brand new one.

 

I got super lucky, and I have told this to literally any and everyone who will listen, I found a doll that the artist I'm pretty sure no longer makes for very little. The doll was damaged, and it did not have the original packaging and COA, but it is legit and I love her.

 

Before my first adopted BJD (DoD DoC Petsha) became the ghostly Eremiel, she was once a cute, spunky girl by the name of Doux Trinette. Me and my once sole dorrie (Luts KDF Hodoo) met her the first time circa 2009 on a Valentines Doll Meet and during the photoshoots with both of them together, her aesthetics complement my doll so well that they look like (and teased as) a couple.

Fast forward to 2010, I was gutted when her owner decided at that time to quit the BJD hobby and put both her DoC dolls for sale, including DoC Petsha. I do not have plans to adopt her Petsha at first but after finding out that she accepts installment payments, that was it. She came home with me that same year and, with a new name and face-up change, became my second BJD.

My second adopted BJD came from the DoA Marketplace last 2011 when I made up my mind to purchase my dream BJD, the classic Luts Delf El, either brand new or 2nd hand. The stars aligned that very year when 1) I chanced upon a 2nd hand Delf El head in DoA marketplace (which I bought *very* quickly for a fair price XD) and 2) got a Dreaming El head from the Luts website before they stopped carrying CP sculpts. As an extra, the year after, CP Fairyland held their anniversary promo wherein their Feeple60 bodies can be purchased separately.

2011 (and a bit of 2012) was indeed the "Year of El" for me.

 

Second hand BJD stories are the best, it's amazing how sometimes the perfect doll for you will find it's way home.

As is pretty obvious from a look at my doll profiles, I love VOLKS F-01 (especially Megu) so when they finally released a SwD one I knew I wanted her but missed out on the original release. I was a bit upset about it but just figured I'd be able to get one some other time. A while after I'd stopped actively trying to hunt her down as her fullset prices were crazy but a friend of mine happened to come across a SwD Megu head being sold only with the eyes, snagged it and sent it to me as a surprise gift. Once she came in I realized I didn't want her on the DearSD body and head swapping her onto my DearSD Megu body confirmed it. Fast forward nearly a year to the day that her head arrived someone on DoA messaged me about splitting an SDGr Yu Morisawa (she wanted to put the head on a DearSD body and thus had no need for the SDGr one). I jumped at the chance and I absolutely love this girl on that body. The story continues with her as I was having trouble finding the perfect red wig when (another year later) another DoA member jumped to the rescue and this girl is absolutely perfect now. Slowly but surely she came together thanks to the awesome people in this community

Now for Ian.
A friend of mine was browsing Y!A when she saw a crazy, low-priced auction for a VOLKS Ian fullset with only 2 days left and no bids. I had never really paid too much attention to Ian as she's so rare and hardly ever comes up on the market but something about this one spoke to me and I bid on her. Due to work issues I missed the end of the auction and thus was outbid at the last minute for a mere 2000円...and after that the hunt for Ian was on!
She came home just this month thanks to a lovely DoA member who not only reached out to my original WTB but reached out to me again nearly a year later (after things settled down for me).
I'm a least the third owner of this Ian (would love to know more about her travels) and am so glad that out of the only 300 of her ever made that one found her forever home with me.

 

That's such perfect timing, I love hearing about these kinds of stories!

 

My Notdoll Lucy ! I bought her from a lady on a forum in 2012, and since we were going to the same doll salon, I got her directly in person and was able to chat with her, she was lovely !
She had included extra wigs and eyes, and has knitted very cute clothes for her, I was overjoyed
Besides, that doll was my first tiny and I fell in love with that smol bean

 

I am at least the 4th owner of my Volks Shinshiya, same head sculpt as Misia and F-12. I know that she is a Shinshiya though because, despite how many hands she’s passed through, she still had her default eyes, her fairy ears, and her original wig when I got her. This combination of eyes and wigs only came from the fully strung doll version of Shinshiya. I also know that she did not come from a kit because she had her eyes hot glued in and her default face-up. There were so many potential variants of her that it’s cool to me to be able to find out exactly which one she was!

There’s another doll I’m receiving later today, and I love her background. The seller seems to have only ever had two dolls and sold both of them this year. I was very much drawn towards her Soulkid Crispin in part because I love the sculpt, but also how she had been styled — her outfit, wig, etc was all included. I am definitely not the sort who tends to be drawn towards full sets so it’s unusual for me to feel this way about a doll. I told the seller about how much I loved the way she had been styled and how I intended to keep her style like this, and it turns out she always felt she had gotten this doll perfect as she’d been customizing her. It feels really special to be keeping her this way. Most of my second hand dolls deviate away from their prior histories quite a lot, but this one is an exception

 

Most of my dolls have been second hand, but some definitely have had more of a "story" than the others!

My first "fixer upper" project was a DZ Shoyo. I saw a badly stained and awkwardly posed naked doll on my local second hand sales portal for €50, immediately remembered the once-popular sculpt from when I had been longing for BJDs as a teen and typed the fastest message I've ever typed to the seller. A few days later a parcel filled with crumpled plastic and fabric bags (and the doll of course) came to my house! Everything smelled like mildew and I still to this day have no idea what kind of paint her head is covered with, and where the bright pink stain came from, but after a lot of cleaning and painting, she turned out so cute! She's now hybrided on a different, also uhhhh interestingly made... body? and certainly one of the favourites of my gang. You can see some of her previous state here.

Michi's current body is also an interesting specimen! It came as a full doll, with Dollmore Judith Tara head, and it had weird feet. They HAD been the heeled feet the Judith bodies come from but were... sanded smaller? I still don't understand why or what happened to them, I just ordered some new parts from Dollmore (and found out their new NS is ham pink... Not a match for sure) and decided that so be it. The legs were also swapped when strung together with the thinnest elastic I have seen, I think I only bought it because I was so puzzled by the state of it to be honest. A year or so later, I saw another Judith body pop up second hand, with the same weird foot mod, with the same underwear and body blushing mine came with??? but I didn't dare to ask the questions I had about it so it is all still a mystery

Midoriko, my Volks SDC Kaede also had a more elaborate arrival. I first saw it on a second hand listing locally (Kleinanzeigen for the ones who know) but wasn't really into Volks at that point so I never gave it a second look. Some time later I stumbled upon SDCs and fell in love and really wanted to find a Kaede but the listing was, of course, no longer online. I found the same doll for sale on the MP here but it had been up for forever without any action, and I got no reply from the seller. After a while I gave up waiting and found a very stained SDC Arashi head on Y!J that I thought could sub in for a Kaede, and having a doll is better than no doll (right? ). Months pass, and half a year or so later the original seller messages me that the Kaede is still there! Of course she came home to me! I'm so lucky to have her! I've sold the Arashi recently but I wouldn't have had Acorn nor Nonoo (I bought them together) if I hadn't had to wait for Midoriko - maybe also a nice way for things to roll out!

 

This boy has to be my most interesting secondhand find: this was his Y!J sale image, crammed in a Volks SD10/13 box (for a 57cm doll when he's about 70cm) I bid on the poor thing and got him for ¥10100.

When I got him home, kind forum members helped me identify him as an RS Doll New Evan, specifically a Dolk collab New Evan Girl Version. He nearly has his entire fullset, except for the tights!

 

One of my secondhand heads, a Doll in Mind Galahad, was purchased from a user on tumblr (this was a while ago lol, when the platform was still relatively active for BJDs). He came with eyes and a wig. Well, much later when looking for company pics, I stumbled across pics of a doll with a familiar wig and pair of eyes. I had found the page about the character this doll used to be. It was funny to see how he used to be styled, and how his character used to be basically the complete opposite of the one I'd given him. Was also a little weird to see that someone had clearly cared about him previously, but for whatever reason, had chosen to let him go. Makes me wonder if people who've bought my dolls have found the posts I've made about them.

My two grail dolls also have fun stories, but not the same kind. More like serendipitous events. I've told this first one on the forum before somewhere. Back in 2011, I was about to buy my first doll. It wasn't the doll I'd wanted to be my first, but the company I'd wanted to buy from (Angel Region) had gone out of business years ago, and the doll I'd wanted (Ren) was no longer sold. So I "settled" for Doll Zone Raphael. But on a whim, just before I made my order, I checked ebay for Angel Region Ren. Not only was there one for auction, but he wasn't very expensive yet. I had never used ebay before, and I had little hope that he'd stay within my price range, but I bid anyway. About a day later, I won. He wasn't in the best of shape, but I had (and have) no regrets. (DZ Raphael ended up being my second doll.)

My other grail was Sweet Gale Cyril, a rare sculpt (this was before the human version was released) from an artist that was highly sought after at the time. When I posted mine, there were like, two or three other active WTB threads for him. Again, I didn't have high hopes. But for whatever reason, someone selling theirs clicked on my thread and offered him to me, and within a couple days of me posting. I took it as fate, and now I have both the dolls I was pining after.

 

I own a Volk's Maiden's Promise Emma fullset that I got extremely cheaply off Mandarake. like I cant remember the exact price anymore but it was somewhere in the ball park of 100 bucks with shipping.

The reason that She was so cheap is because she was so cigarette/smoke stained that This is what her WHITE OUTFIT looked like


Once I got her home I went on the immediate offensive and oxycleaned the shit out of both her and her clothing. I took a couple dunks but eventually she was clean and odor free again

 

I bought this pair of Dollfie Dream Choice MDD customs from a FB Group, but not at the same time and not from the same seller.

If they look similar it's because they have the same head sculpt. I decided they're long lost sisters, separated at birth and now reunited.

I'm lucky to have both, because there was insane interest in them (the sellers posted beautiful photos). Ironically both were on offer from sellers in my own country. That helped me secure them and I also didn't need a layaway.

Both were in pretty good condition. Hana (purple hair) still smells of her old home. I find that kind of interesting.

 

I have two!

Celandine was a very, very lucky situation- I'd wanted a DES since I was about 14 and finally decided to look for one in November of 2023. I expected the wait to take years, potentially...and ten days after I started searching, she popped up on Instagram for sale! Apparently there had been a buyer, but they backed out, so her listing went back up. I couldn't believe my luck.

Lily was a sculpt I first admired in early 2021, but I was in a bad place mentally with the pandemic and wanted to avoid another new doll purchase, since I'd compulsively bought several during 2020 just to feel excited about something (and sold them on not long after). So I waited, and the doll stopped being made, and that was seemingly that. Until one came up secondhand earlier this year, only about an hour's drive away from me! I was able to meet up with the seller in person, get my doll, and make a new friend. And I should add that Mystic Dolls, being a solo artist who isn't terribly well-known, doesn't have things come up secondhand very often at all. Let alone exactly the sculpt I wanted, in my immediate area.

(Something similar happened around the same time with a doll from an even less popular BJD artist whose work shows up once in a blue moon secondhand, but she's OT for having painted eyes. Same scenario but with a doll that was even less likely to be in my part of the world.)

 

Follow up to my story a couple of posts above.

I took 2nd hand Hana to Dolly Day in Barcelona. She met her makers (i.e. Volks). They took this photo for their socials. They absolutely loved her, and we got some paperwork autographed.

It's funny that she still smells of her old home, but now she has some incredible stories to tell the other dolls.

 

I have a secondhand doll story from a seller's perspective.

I almost never sells dolls. I'm more of a wall than a revolving door collector. However, my first two dolls had been in storage for years. I hadn't played with them in so long, I wanted to send them to a home where they'd get the attention they deserved. As characters, the two dolls are very close sisters, so I didn't want to separate them if possible.

As this is very much a buyer's market, I checked the WTB posts in the Marketplace to see if anyone would be interested. I eventualy found a buyer who was interested in taking both of the AND keeping them as sisters! during the buying/selling/shipping process she'd message me often, sharing her customizing and characterization ideas, and overall showing great enthusiasm for the girls. I'm glad they're in good hands.

 

I think my favorite thing about the 2nd hand market is just how generous people in this hobby can be. Every time I've put up a WTB thread for even my most tentative of pipe dream dolls or doll parts, inevitably someone has reached out with exactly what I was looking for in a condition I found acceptable and a price I could afford. I am so very fortunate to own every last one of my grail dolls, plus several other "absolutely never going to happen" dolls, because of the wonderful people in this community.

 

I only have two secondhand dolls, but here goes!

My Latidoll Yellow was from a local seller who no longer vibed with her tinies. I paid cash for her, then when I got home, I opened her box.

She had no wig (which I knew ahead of time and was OK with), and her clothes were Barbie clothes that had been altered to fit. So I made her a blue lolita dress (I used DGRequiem's pattern, because I knew it would look cute) and bought her a cotton-candy pink wig. Her name is now Candy and she makes me smile.

The other doll is a bit of an odd hybrid. At a local doll meetup, I was looking through things a friend had to sell, and saw the 2017 Luts Summer Event head just sitting there, and I fell in love. I then went on the BJD Discord asking around for 1/3 bodies, and one person said, "I don't remember the manufacturer, but I have an old body that size. If you want, I can send it disassembled to save on shipping charges." And I said yes, both to the doll and to having it arrive unstrung.

I didn't have a proper restringing tool.

It took me 2 whole hours to restring that boy (a Spiritdoll Proud body, as it turns out) but I'm quite happy with him. The neck looks a wee bit long with the Super Delf head on it, but I think it looks all right with clothes on, and the colors are a near match.

 

Oh boy, I have one.
My Nebo was actually the second I’d ever seen for sale, the first fell through and I was CRUSHED. Then, suddenly, I found one for sale on facebook. He arrived on my sweet 16th birthday.
However this is where it gets weird.
I recently saw the same person who owned the nebo who fell through the first time selling a Cuartosdolls hecate! I contacted them, but AGAIN, I was too late. Fortunately hecate isn’t a grail of mine, but I was still sad. Then, less than a week later, another Cuartosdolls nebo comes up for sale! And I got her! Now I’m finally getting the “fancy color” resin nebo I’ve always still chased after.
The doll community is small enough and nebos are rare enough that I like to look around to see if I can find them and their previous life some. Shock of all shockers, the nebo I’m getting was previously “friends” with another white and blue nebo, the same colors as my current one!

It’s a small world out there, full of funny coincidences. Maybe this person who constantly keeps slipping under my radar is my little luck charm.

 

Actually, I forgot. There is a third secondhand BJD. I was at a local meetup in March and a friend was selling a Tiny20 Delf Gelda. She looked so precious I didn't even care about the difficulty of making clothes for her; I just bought her right then and there.

 

I have two nice ones.

1. The doll that got me into the hobby was Lati Shaina. This was way, way back, when few companies offered international shipping, payment methods where often risky and inconvenient and even when the options were there, people just wasn't used to order things from across the world online. So it was kind of a big deal.
I knew I wanted her from the moment I saw her and I had to save up for a long time to be able to get her. In that time I stalked the Lati home page and there were several other dolls I really liked, from the same sculptor. Especially the Cara sculpt, by the same sculptor.
Things were delayed and complicated further because lati did't offer all their doll lines all the time, so I had to wait until the next time orders for the Blue line opened.
When the time to order finally came I had a moment of second guessing if I should go with Shaina or Cara, as I had grown to like both of them a lot in the years it took to get to this point. In the end I went with Shaina, since she was the first one that I fell in love with. (It was the right choice, she is my favorite to this day).

Fast forward another year or so. By that time the Swedish BJD community had grown quite a bit. There was a nice forum and a good second hand market. One day a Cara head popped up at a very reasonable price, I immediately contacted the seller the moment I saw it. The sale went through and it turned out that the seller lived in the very same town that I did, so we met up and I got my head in person. No shipping cost and no wait time!
So in the end I got them both, they are now cousins in my doll world and they hang out a lot.

2. The second is similar and much more recent. The local forum is long dead, but quite a few swedish collectors hang out on here now.
I was browsing the marketplace and saw a Withdoll Emma listed, again at a very reasonable price. This is a doll that has been on my "I'll get that some day-list" for years. Then I realized I recognized the user name and it turned out to be a seller that lived not at all far from me. The transaction went through lightning fast and I had the doll in my hands just a few days after deciding to get her. I couldn't be happier!

While none of these dolls were rare (well, the Lati Cara is now, but she was still being made back then) experiences like these are a good reminder that no doll is truly out of reach. It may take some patience and a bit of luck, but we can have nice things!

 

Have you ever sold a doll and then deeply regretted it? I did this once (for a Luts Kid Delf Summer event head from 2010.) I loved the sculpt, found one for sale in the second-hand market, and did what I felt was a very nice faceup on it…but then I couldn’t come up with a character for her. So I put her up for sale, faceup and all, and she pretty much sold within hours (this was back in the day when that sort of thing still happened.) Of course I then came up with a new character she would have been perfect for…hindsight being 20/20. I could have kicked myself because no other doll seemed to fit that character as well, and her face constantly haunted my thoughts.

Then suddenly, a couple of months later, she appeared again in the marketplace! According to the seller she had purchased the head to repaint for her own purposes, but felt the current faceup was too lovely to change and couldn’t bring herself to wipe it. So I was able to get my doll back with her faceup still perfectly intact, turn her into that character…and I still absolutely adore her to this day.

 

I have an interesting story, and it involves a secondhand doll that crossed a language barrier, from the Chinese BJD community to me.

I have working fluency in writing/reading Chinese, and over time had become familiar with the Chinese BJD community, though it's through just reading social media and buying BJD stuff from Taobao and Xianyu; I hadn't made any personal connections. Xianyu is China's secondhand market, where secondhand BJDs are frequently sold, but it can be quite daunting to buy from there because Chinese sales etiquette is quite different from Western etiquette.

I was looking for an AnotherSecret ANS69 male body for a hybrid, and after doing a ton of research, settled on one secondhand listing. I'd been buying BJD accessories and clothes from Xianyu for a while already and knew the proper sales etiquette, but this was my first time buying a BJD, which carries more risk. Long story short, I had to communicate extensively with the seller (I'll call her "Guo") to ship my doll safely, and we developed a bit of a rapport.

I eventually received ANS69 (I shared the box opening on DoA), but it got damaged in transit. AnotherSecret can make after-service replacement parts, but they needed proof of purchase to prove that I had a legitimate doll from them. So I contacted Guo again to ask her for screenshots of the original order. It turned out that she wasn't the first owner of ANS69 either, but she agreed to help out. Several days passed with no news. Eventually, Guo sent me the screenshots. I sent them to AnotherSecret, who verified that I had a legitimate doll - they're currently casting the replacement part for me.

Then... Guo sent me a video that was shared on Rednote (aka: Little Red Book, Xiaohongshu - China's photo-based socmed network). It was made by the person who sold her ANS69, and it described the whole process of tracking down the order proof for this doll. It turned out that I was the sixth owner of this doll, and 6 people were involved in tracing back to the buyer who'd bought the doll from AnotherSecret, and then passing the screenshot proof all the way back up the chain to me.

The story was both hilarious and touching! The pro-artist BJD owners in China all understand how important authentication is, but this still took a lot of effort and personal connections, for someone (me) who's essentially a stranger and foreigner. I am incredibly grateful to Guo and the Chinese BJD community's generosity and effort to help me with my doll!

In the course of all this, Guo and I have been DMing (in Chinese) about our dolls and doll photos... so I may have made a BJD friend in China now...

 

Thanks! Well, this is what I know...
This ANS69 body was from a 2022 release that was shipped to buyers in 2023. He was bought as a full doll from ANS, and at some point (before Guo) the head was split from the body, and the body sold on by itself. Also at some point, he had wiring and sueding done on him -- a good job, but not to my liking, so I've overhauled it with my own maintenance. But 5 prior owners in 4 years is a fast turnover pace... I wonder why they didn't want to keep him... I'm quite happy with my hybrid boy, so I hope to give him a home for a much longer time. ^^

I've chatted a bit with Guo, yeah it's been fascinating to hear tidbits from how she enjoys the hobby and her dolls, and put it together with what I see and read on Chinese soc med. I think the Chinese BJD community is like an order of magnitude more intense than what I experience in the English-facing BJD community. The number of BJD enthusiasts, the creativity, innovation, calibre and supply of BJD goods... the demand for BJD goods, the competition, exacting standards, drama, criticism. It's been really fascinating for me to watch.

 

I once owned a Dollfie Dream Mikuru who I bought secondhand and loved, however I sold her head way back when (probably to fund another doll purchase). I missed having her and my friend sold me his Mikuru head which was so nice! We are friends both in and out of dolls so it’s like Mikuru has stayed in the group which is really nice

Also, this is more of a sad story, but I bought my Volks Mimi secondhand (not via estate sale) and her box had an estate auction sticker on it which made me wonder what had happened to her previous owner. I was able to find the original auction lot and saw that there were other Volks dolls in it. I tried to look for previous DoA profiles with those specific dolls and couldn’t find it. Regardless, Mimi is well taken care of by me now

 

Not the most interesting doll story, but one I like.

I was part of a BJD group when I lived in Maryland, and we would meet up and occasionally, some of us would buy/sell accessories. One woman was selling lots of eyes and wigs and...some tiny dolls? I fell in love with one and bought her, no questions asked.

She was a Tiny20 Delf--a size that was only made for a year or two, a decade before I made the purchase. So she's special!

 

You turned that doll into a jewel. I love Michi so much, she is absolutely precious.

 

I saw someone selling Realfee Ena and Rian on a BJD sales group on Facebook. I got to talking with that person and mentioned I would love a feeple60 Sionna. She happened to have it and wanted to sell. Was an amazing coincidence.