your wishlist then vs. your collection now - how has it changed?

Oddly enough I still have most of the first dolls I bought eons ago & love them deeply. I wanted mature, somewhat realistic dolls which I fond in Souldoll, Luts & the slightly more stylized Customhouse. All my dolls were 1:3 size then while now I avoid the big dolls. My grails then were Narindoll Narin & Narae who I still have & Iplehouse Cocorri who I recently sold.

I no longer have a grail doll or even a wishlist. Beside the early 1:3 dolls I now have slim minis which still follow my basic aesthetic plus two Little Fees & a Peak's Wood tiny. I've been playing a lot with those these days as I can keep them out near my computer. Those tinies are a complete change of look for me & while I don't want any more, I'm certainly enjoying the ones I've got. My big dolls mainly rest in glass cabinets in a darkened room as do my slim minis.

 

I used to make these huge lists of dolls I wanted from specific companies. Some of those lists are lost, but I do have one I never came around to finish, along with pictures of each sculpt, have some 50 dolls that I at one point wanted to get home xD
Today I'm more moderate, sure, the list is still kind of long, but it's not over 50 different sculpts and only SDs. I have a healthy mix of Yos, MSDs and SDs I want to get home these days, from different companies than I did back then.
Tastes change (not overly so though), and artists grow with their craft and go in new directions with their work. Think I go more for semi-realism today, partly because it is so prevalent today than it was 10 years ago.
I still have a grail, one that I've had since joining the hobby, a DOD Elf Ducan. I know I've got the regular Ducan, but there's just something that makes me want this version so badly, but have yet to acquire it. I will have it some day, I can wait a little longer now that I have waited this long.

 

I still haven't been able to obtain a couple dolls I've wanted for years, but I have bought most of the dolls on my wishlist. My tastes have also not changed much. I started out disliking the aesthetic that is best displayed by Doll Chateau, and I have continued disliking those kinds of dolls throughout my time in the hobby. I have compromised a bit (bought Dollfie Dream Miku and Luka after previously saying I wouldn't buy Dollfie Dreams because I think their joints are ugly) but only a bit, for dolls that are made to be characters I really like (their joints might be ugly but it's Miku and Luka).

I think other peoples' tastes are changing away from mine though. The Super Gem and Little Gem threads used to be so active, and now no one posts in them...

 

It's... interesting. After taking a huge detour (of several years) I've returned to the sculpts I "originally" had in my wishlist. To name a few:

Unoa Lusis (the first BJD I ever saw back in 2004!),
Minifee Ante (was wishing for one before there even was one),
5th motif Venitu (wanted one when he first came out, didn't get one for... forever),
Volks yoSD Piccolo (the only yosd I've ever liked from back in 2011)
Doll Chateau Hugh (saw him when Doll Chateau was first created and desperately wanted him, owned one for many years but sold him, then bought another less than a year later :P)

That being said, as I matured, so did my taste in dolls... and if I had my way, I'd only buy the most realistic of dolls if I were to start from scratch nowadays, so dollfie dreams aside this is where my "future" wishlist is headed to now...

 

I gotten two of my minor grail dolls(Iples), they dethrone the major grail doll, it allows me to release a lot of "want" dolls. Their sculpts had the unexpected bonus for being versatile enough to resemble a host of characters that I'm fond of from various games, mangas and etc I also gotten my ideal sculpt to be the doll of my favourite character as well.

At current point I'm not actively looking for dolls even though one young chap is replaceable as he's not very attached to his sculpt.

If anything my wish list has become an outfit request list for the existing crew so that they can counter whoever it is who wants to go on the doll wish list

 

My wishlist then was consumed of pretty much only fairyland.
Now, it's mostly small artist dolls like Lillycat and Harucasting Maji. I've even got a few SD boys in there too, but Switch's Holy Soseo has always been a part of my wish list and since I've bought him (just waiting on him to be shipped to me ) I've been eye-ing some more SD boys.
It's pretty crazy how much has changed in the little span of time that I've been in this hobby!

 

I used to buy Minifee and Bunny head MSD dolls like Gokidolls Moonto. But now I've gotten a new Job and earn more and realized that it is so much more rewarding to get the dolls I actually want and have been admiring from a distance, like Harucasting dolls and Maskcat dolls. Also I have branched out into SD with Maskcat and I love it! Since I earn more I am able to afford more than second Hand minifee dolls :3 and buying 1-2 expensive dolls a year is more rewarding than buying a lot of cheaper ones just so I can save some Money.

 

I have switched completely. I was always super drawn to resin dolls and now my primary doll wants are Dollfie Dreams and other off-topic equivalents! I blame actually getting a Dollfie Dream (I mean, it's Miku!) and falling in love with the anime-styled face.

That being said, I am getting interested in resins again, but I seem to be wanting more of the MSD size so I can try making clothes from the old Victorian doll clothing patterns I have. I want a nice posing, lovely "dolly" doll. And I've always liked Volks and Delf sculpts the best because they look more like "dolly" dolls to me. That's how I landed right in the middle of seriously considering a mini in the Dear SD size. I'm not even sure what size that is considered because I've been out of the loop for so long. Chubby MSD? Big Baby? Chubby Baby?

 

I definitely collect different dolls then I started with. My wishlist used to be all ¼ and smaller. I still even have one final ¼ doll on that wishlist, but it's just sort of on hold indefinitely.

My wish list now consists of ⅓ and up dolls. I had never expected to be a collector of the bigger dolls when I first started out. Now here I am making my future wishlist with only the larger scale dolls on it.

 

My wish list then vs. now still hasn't changed - but it definitely increased! I still feel a bit sad that Dream of Doll is no longer in business, it will definitely be a challenge for me once I start looking for my OG wish list dolls.

 

i've been a bjd collector for 12 years now, and for the most part i have gotten exactly the dolls that were on my original wishlist. i haven't gotten rid of any dolls either, nor has my general taste in dolls and doll styling changed. the only change is maybe just that a few dolls have been added along the way that didn't exist yet when i first made my list/plans. overall tho, i have stuck to building pretty much the exact collection i planned out when i started with just a few stylistically consistent additions. i'm mostly done now; i kind of liked Iplehouse Bibiane when i started and never got one, and i don't have the purple Soom Migma i always wanted either, but Purple Migma is kind of a pipe dream and always was, and if i really really wanted to add Bibiane that bad she'd probably be here by now, so...

some of the first dolls i ever put on my wishlist were Elfdoll Rita, Angel of Dream Yuki, Bobobie Charisma, April Story Adrienne, Supia Muriel, Iplehouse Audrey...and i have all of them. i am honestly super happy with my bjd collection and feel super lucky that i got to fulfill my original wishlist/plans

 

My tastes stayed the same, though I've been in the hobby for just about a year and a half.
Dollstown, AiL, Maskcat, I like that somewhat "old world" semi-realistic aesthetic. Some things have changed and I'm not going to get everything, but I'm still picking dolls I liked way back when I started.

 

I don't remember what was on my old wishlists since I've been in the hobby since like 2010, but my wishlists have changed considerably in size. I used to make wishlists that included interesting-looking dolls that I might like to buy if I had the money, but after years of doing this I realized it was sort of moot point. Most of them I'd only remember when I looked at the list, and I wound up taking them off anyway.

Now I only put dolls on my lists if I have planned them down to the outfits they'll wear. These tend to be dolls I keep seeking out to look at over the course of months or even years, but not always. Pruning is still an important process for it.

 

I joined the hobby in the late 00s, then went on hiatus for about 10 years, and returned in 2022. So there's a clear divide between my collection then (newbie days) and now.
I haven't kept my wishlist from newbie days, but I recall it comprised "kinda interesting dolls that maybe one day I want to own if/when I have the money." And I recall that the dolls I actually bought were not from that list at all: they were dolls that caught my eye and fancy at that moment in time, so they bypassed the "kinda nice to have"s.

Then, when I came back from hiatus, I was still buying dolls that I fancied in the moment, without any regard to what was on the wishlist past or present. So I've done away with any wishlist of head sculpts: if I haven't bought that doll already, the time to own it has passed, there's no need for me to keep a record of "maybe I'll buy this someday" (I won't). (Though I still keep a list of doll bodies to hybrid to.) Likewise for the wishlist of my newbie days: I still like looking at those dolls, but I have no interest in owning them anymore, the time to do so has passed.

And my collection now doesn't resemble my newbie collection, partly because I'm more settled in my doll tastes now than I was as a newbie, and partly because the BJD aesthetic has shifted in a direction that I like more than the 00s aesthetic. Of the 8 dolls I bought as a newbie I only kept two.

 

No, still the same. I haven't been able to get them due to financial constraints. Hopefully I can this year or at least next year.

 

I first bought a BJD in the mid/late 2000s but was never active in the hobby until 2 years ago when I got her out of her box, thinking to sell her, but instead she acquired lots of friends. Oops...

Even in the 2 years I've been more intensely in the hobby, my wishlist has changed now that I know what I like in terms of heads and body engineering.

My taste in heads leans more old school (I have a lot of Volks dolls), and I learned the hard way that 1/3 doll heads in 7-8 wig size aren't going to fit in with the others, no matter how much I like the sculpt.
I can see a more realistic proportioned doll that looks beautiful, like Ringdoll's Baldwin IV, but I have to say no and admire it from a distance. At least the trend for realism is saving my wallet...

I also like stability in my bodies – they have to be able to stand unassisted and be posed that way quickly with minimal fussing. I've sold a body because it wouldn't stand unassisted no matter what I did, and it was so frustrating I had to handle another doll every time after dealing with that body to remind myself this wasn't the norm!

I've also learned I really prefer a hip joint on my dolls instead of just an underbust joint. Dolls with a hip joint tend to sit more naturally for me and don't rock the way dolls without one do, plus I feel the bend in the body looks more natural at the hip than halfway along the ribs.
I have a floating head I'm trying to find a body for with a slightly difficult resin colour, and finding a body that meets the standards I have for engineering while also being close in colour is not proving to be easy...

On reflection, it's interesting to me that my wishlist has changed mostly from a practical perspective than a change in aesthetic tastes.

 

I've been aware of and actively planning to join the hobby since 2009 and purchased my first doll in 2013. I have had many, many years in the hobby to pine, wishlist, desire, and plan, just to scrap it all and start over again. I think daydreaming about all the "what ifs" involved in choosing a doll is half the fun! The possibilities are endless!

Back in the early days, my wishlist was a lot more varied in terms of style, sizing, and aesthetics, as I had no money and no frame of reference for what I liked/wanted in my collection. It's very easy to go "OMG I want ALL the dolls" when you don't have money to slap down on any of it. Once I got into the hobby proper and had several years to try things out and mess around, my tastes and preferences became more refined, which narrowed my scope and wishlist. I still like a lot of the dolls that got progressively cut from my wishlist, but I know they wouldn't work out for one reason or another.

My current collection does consist primarily of dolls I wanted back when I was first really getting into the hobby, though! I think those early years were highly influential for developing my taste, and I still find myself heavily drawn to the late 00s-mid 2010s era aesthetics.

 

Man, my collection now is DEFINITELY very different from my old wishlist-- I have broad tastes in what I like, but I do prefer more mature sculpts in 1/4 or smaller scale when I can find them. I do love the young and/or more cutesy-stylized dolls I do have, and I like having an eclectic collection that they can fit into, but I definitely used to look at a lot more 'anime' looking dolls that I can't actually see myself adding to my current collection.

I do still find myself attracted to the occasional doll that falls well outside the mature/realistic mold, ESPECIALLY if it's an anthro-- I can't resist a cute little critter or catgirl/boy, so my collection is going to remain very eclectic, I'm open to my tastes continuing to be very broad. But it's definitely shifted over time, especially as in the time I've been involved in the hobby, there have been SO many more doll artists putting out those more mature minis and tinies in all kinds of aesthetics.

 

I first found out about bjds around 2007-8 or so, looking at all the beautiful photos on deviant art. I had 0 money for them even if I did try to save up but I remember having a long wishlist that unfortunately died with my old computer. I don't remember them all but there was a Minifee Shushu and a DoC Petsha there and I'm pretty sure some other then-very-popular sculpts that you can't easily find these days.

When I started collecting for real a couple of years ago, I thought I wanted to focus on mature minis, so that's what I did for a bit, and that's what my wishlist consisted of. However, after finding a couple of old sculpts second hand, I ended up moving in a more nostalgic direction because it was fun to visit the past like that - none of the old dolls I own now were what I wanted as a teenager (I had no interest in DZ or Volks then, as far as I remember), yet the couple of times I've had a chance to snag an old Minifee sculpt or a DOD doll, I've ended up not getting them. I guess my tastes have changed while the interest in a certain era remains, and my collection would still be different had I had a chance to buy bjds in early 2000s. It's even different down to the little things like having used to prefer Unoa Lusis and now only having eyes for Sist

In any case, I hope the little me is happy I got to collect dolls after all, and is not too sad that I don't have a Petsha or a Shushu.

 

my wishlist when i first stated was 99% vinyl dolls (dollfie dream anthy, rei, len, etc) & a male ringdoll, now ive moved towards soft looking resin dolls (super dollfies and koeren bjds) but i do still dream if a ringdoll someday & i have stayed true to 1/3 through my whole doll journey

 

I actually did get a hold of a doll I desperately wanted - she was perfect.
Too perfect. She was already painted beautifully, and I had bought her a custom made dress.
She looked like she came strait out of someone's gorgeous photographs. She was everything I thought I wanted...
but I did not feel I could customize her, so I ended up selling her almost right away.

Up until that point all dolls I had bought were damaged, second hand, from unpopular companies or frankensteined out of unusual parts. So having a perfect doll was just weird to me.

One doll has been on my wishlist from the start and it is still there. It is just a rare quirky sculpt that I never see around anymore. I still want it more than anything.

But more and more I am finding that i want to shell characters rather than just buy rescue/repair projects.
That certainly changes how I look at things.

 

The first year I was in this hobby was when my wishlist had gone through its biggest changes. I’d love to know what had all been on there as most were removed as I got a better understanding of what I did or didn’t prefer in a doll. Unfortunately I really don’t remember most of these dolls.

Once I figured it out though, it’s been mostly unchanged. The only significant change is that I no longer have any Volks boys on my list at all. There used to be a bunch but after getting one, I found that I really just don’t feel inspired by them (or younger male sculpts in general really).

At some point, in 2015 I had come on here and gutted my wishlist of any dolls where the sculpts had been discontinued or the companies had closed. It’s been pretty easy for me to recreate this list though. Sometimes I will remember a sculpt but not a name and it just takes a little digging to find it again.

 

I've been looking for a place to store my old wishlist!

iplehouse barron or ryushin, or dollmore adam dry, or elfdoll k

I know I was choosing based on appearance + price. I still have fond memories of really, really wanting Barron. As time went on and I didn't find myself in a position to order for many years, I kind of forgot about th rest of them. Barron is now retired. While I still think the adult-looking sculpts are beautiful, I am no longer sure I want such a large doll, and I have another problem. I love all of them. Almost every single company I look at their 70+ cm sculpts, there's at least one favorite in there. And that is the problem. I don't like any individual doll long enough to be willing to purchase it, or even remember the sculpt name. Maybe one day I'll find one I can actually remember specifically and not generally, but for right now, I don't have the space so it's really not a priority.

Instead, I have found that a lot more animal dolls and anthromorphic dolls (more than just animal ears slapped on) exist nowadays. I find that certain anthromorphic and animal dolls speak to me while others are silent. So I ended up with just one, the gem of doll fox Orion, and I think he's awesome. I have also acquired several Dream valley dragons, Bora, Umi, Rubin, and Bor, which I intend to paint myself (Bora is already done) as personal art projects.

 

Oh my...I still have some old Grail dolls on my wishlist, partially for nostalgia's sake (anything non-Volks) but there are still a handful of regrets that I wished I had just gone for and not let slip by. Back when I first joined DoA (2007), I was so newb and couldn't afford much back then. I wanted so many dolls from so many different companies as I was still new and wanted to get a chance to see what was out there as I was limited to what was available to me (the original physical Volks USA store in Torrance) and what was available online. Now, my current collection is more align with my top rated Grail wishlist items but not so much my lower end wishlist items.

Over time, especially after having a steady income for a while and having my boyfriend-now-husband be into the same hobby has definitely helped me build my collection but I ended up being a one company collector due to health reasons and accessibility. My husband and I, back then, had promised ourselves to only buy enough dolls to fit onto a 3 doll sized dolly couch. Bwahahahaha. Like...uh...we need to redo a room in our house to accommodate what we have now. And with our finances not as stable as before because I'm no longer working and technically disabled, it's hard to want harder to find Grail dolls on that wishlist compared to newbie me that didn't have any dolls before or employed me that could afford to.

A part of me still kind of longs for certain dolls (the Iplehouse LE ones, the discontinued Luts Baby Delf ones, some Bambicrony ones), but other ones I know that they are so old that they wouldn't fit my current aesthetic anymore and that the older BJD tech for them wouldn't have aged as well as current dollies on the market. But at this point, rounding out my Volks Grail wishlist would be an investment in itself. Hahaha.

 

I was very lucky over the years, because I could always buy my holy grail dolls over the years. Not all the same time tho
Like starting with my favorite artist, Lillycat. I get Amy from her as my first doll... on layaway. Then she finished another doll, that was totally a dream. I have had no funds to own both of them, so I sold my first doll and bought this new doll...
Over the years, I could always afford the dolls I wanted this way and the help of layaway options. Of course, this is not for everyone, because I couldn't own more than 2 dolls yet at the same time, but once you have a doll, it is easier to add an extra €100 and buy a bit more expensive one....
but I never have more than 1-2 dolls on my wishlist, so I gues I'm lucky this way)

 

My original wishlist consisted of several dolls of different brands, various sizes, and multiple genders. After being in the hobby for a while I realize I really just want 4 total dolls with several interchangeable heads and extensive wardrobes. And I like for them to be from the same brand and same size so that they can share clothing and photograph similarly. I want them to be so similar that I actually want variations of the same mold, the four sisters by Volks! As of now I technically own all four dolls (one is still en route from FCS) and my wishlist is completed besides a total of four extra heads for different looks!

A bonus! For fun I think it'd be cute for each of my dolls to have their own doll in the form of a Four Sister YOSD as a prop. It's only an idea and nothing I'm actively working towards but consider that the "Pipedream Wishlist", lol!

 

My tastes have very much changed since I first got into the hobby about ten years ago! When I was new to the hobby, I had a huge PowerPoint presentation with all of the dolls I liked, character ideas, and links to where I could buy them. I then took a big break from the hobby, and finally started collecting BJDs five years ago (before that I only had Azone dolls).

My original wishlist had a wide variety of dolls (over 200 dolls!), from realistic looking sculpts to anthropomorphic dolls! I also had a lot of tiny dolls on my wishlist, whereas most of my dolls are 1/4 or 1/3 nowadays. I had a lot of dolls from Dearmine, Fairyland (mostly Pukipukis), and Neo Angel Region. I believe the dolls I wanted the most back then were a Minifee Celine, Volks SD Coco, Volks SD Lieselotte, Dikadoll Ann, Angell Studio Cinderella (the pink dress version), and a Soom Idealian Hornblend (human ver.).

The companies on my wishlist back in the day, that I also own from now, are Fairyland, Aimerai, DIM, Chicabi, Luts, Peak's Woods, Ringdoll, and Myou. The only doll on my wishlist that I own now is my Zuzu Delf Fenny, who I just ordered from Luts in their discontinuation sale. If I could, I would still buy a Dikadoll Ann and a Soom Hornblend!

 

I guess I can't give the best answer because I don't have any kind of old written wishlist I can reflect on now, however I think my taste (by now) is pretty similar to what it was in the beginning. I started in 2010 and and was interested in some variety of things, mostly boys, sweet/pretty old-style faces (think volks, dream of doll, crobidoll, Aria Doll, doll in mind), curious about anime dolls, interested in "mature" (you know, like late 20's ) characters in 70cm scale, big big fan of 60cm size, interested in a mix of realism/fashion and style in places you could find it like Iplehouse and fairyland chicline, angelsdoll's girls, impldoll.
One thing I can think of that I definitely learned I don't like as much but thought I did is leaner pointy-chin faces. The old Immortality of Soul faces: Chaos, jaguar and shadow are a great example. I eventually got two of them, and they were big big grails! But it's a type of mature face that just doesn't suit me as much, so my collection has very little of that face shape (even though I think these last 5+ years it's probably dominated the hobby).
I've been lucky to have many dolls and enjoy most of them, explore the variety I was interested in at least to a degree. I would have liked to have more colorful resin remaining in my collection now (shades of browns and fantasy shades too) but I never bought it as much as I wanted it because it was pricier/and it sold off again better in times of need, not to mention I was basically a second hand scavenger all these years. I scavenged most of my wishlist I think, or at least, touched on every niche at one point or another.
Most of the dolls who remain in my collection now are dolls I have had since a few years into the hobby, so they are the relics of the early wishlist: Aria Doll Narvy, Elfdoll Lydia, and Loongsoul ChenXing are all sitting around my house right now and were some of the ones I remember spending many many nights gazing at wistfully in the computer.
The way my collection differs most from my early wishlist might be that I came to love a certain handful of dolls in my collection so much that I built a world around them and didn't need or want to collect everything I had been interested in. I don't really have any realistic dolls right now, and I avoid dolls who are even as big as the old 70cm size because they are just too heavy for my lifestyle. There are still dolls from the old wishlist I would want to add in theory but luckily they are mostly too impossible to find and I don't have the resources for that anyway.

 

Though I still don't have anything in my physical collection for the time-being, I used to bookmark tabs upon tabs of different online sites and of different sculpts/dolls that I'd be thinking I'd 100% want down the line once I'd saved up for it! Some of those links were completely dead when going back, I had to figure out what some of the sculpts even were with some basic detective work.

Many of the sculpts that I had favourited at the time didn't really stand out to me at all anymore and had me wondering what I might have seen in them back then. Perhaps it was aesthetic differences, as my tastes at the time leaned heavily into different styles. Many dolls I liked had quite feminine and softer facial features with very few being advertised as boy dolls at all, but I seem to lean heavier into androgynous sculpts now. I used to really enjoy dolls with irregular bodies like DC's collections but that interest has unfortunately waned. Maybe I've just matured a bit and considered the impracticality. Though mostly I think that now I can look at dolls less at their face value, as just purely their promo pictures, and instead, I can consider the various changes or customisations I can do myself. Perhaps another reason was whatever was fuelling my search at the time has disappeared. I wish I could ask my past self!

A few dolls that stuck around on my wishlist are Maskcat's Yael, Xaga Doll's Elsiee Island Doll's Sparkle. I'd absolutely love to have a Maskcat, it's very high up on my wishlist! And Soul Doll's Zenith F sculpts in general, I couldn't pick and still can't. It feels like the sculpts that stuck around are all the ones with an air of melancholy to them. Given how new to the hobby I am, most of my dolls aren't limited or hard to find in any way so I wonder how much my wishlist might shift within the next couple years as I familiarise myself better with the many ones out there.

 

I usually wait a long time before making big purchases, so my wishlist has remained roughly the same for a while. I really want one of the larger T&D boys, and I have for several years. My current one and only doll who's a DF-H was a gift, and I love them so dearly! But A T&D boy is my dream. It used to be Jiuze but I think my taste has actually shifted more towards Shen Yanzhi, which makes sense I'd fall in love with a more recent doll. I actually completed almost all of my new years resolutions this year, which I decided I'd reward myself with a new doll finally. So hopefully my one wishlist doll will become a reality in the near future.

 

It’s so cool to read everyone’s stories and see how peoples taste have evolved!! Personally I feel like my taste are still within the same ballpark, but there have definitely been some changes that I wouldn’t have expected! My older taste were for cute girl dolls like luts kid delf Darae or Pudding. I still think these are gorgeous dolls but nowadays the dolls I tend to gravitate towards tend to be more male dolls, admittedly rather androgynous looking male dolls but still haha, like kid delf Pepper!