Index:
Bild-Lilli, Barbie's predecessor
Barbie's Manufacturers Markings
Barbie's friends and relatives
Barbie through the ages, 1959 - 2009
Barbie luxury doll to massproduction
The five different collector types
management noticed that vintage dolls were subject to collecting and traded
with often high prices. Following that time special Barbie dolls were produced
for adult collectors besides the standard play doll range. These collector dolls
series are limited productions. Some of the collectible Barbies wear fashions
that have been developed by famous designers, While others are dressed to
represent characters from the movies or television; often with special head
molds to resemble their originals. The "Dolls of the World"- series shows
Barbie with costumes of various countries and dresses of a selected ethnic
population. Starting 1994 replica Barbies appeared with the original head molds
of the first Barbie, these also wear replicas of the original vintage dresses that
were worn in the fifties. From1986 Barbie dolls became available made from
Bisquit - Porcelain. Like many others of the collector dolls these are not suitable
for children, because they do not comply with the toy-safety rules requested by
law. Rare Barbie Dolls may fetch prices of up to a couple of thousand dollars
and therefore they may be considered an investment value.
Although most
of the Barbie dolls consist of plastic and are therefore show
evidence of ageing.
Older or vintage dollsmay have problems, because the
synthetic material
bleaches or becomes yellowish in ver bright daylight, it may
also leak oil,
rub off colors or create oxydation with other materials, (eg.metal
earrings or some
fabrics. Just like all in other collector spheres there are specific
rare or hard
to find models, special editions and „misprints“. The latter were
mostly due to
Mattels policy of producing cost-efficient. If for some reason any
materials like
doll hair or fabrics could not delivered in time, the employees were
requested to
use up the remaining stock of earlier production lines. That resulted
in some cases
that dolls or fashions came into the shops which were different
from the basic
model line. So it is possible also for Barbie’s world to have some
kind of a „blue
Mauritius“. In the late sixties the catalogues announced a new
friend: "Becky,
but she never made it into the shelves." But despite cancellations
some of the prototypes
found their way into collections over the decades. Such
and similar cases
happen once in a while up to today; and Barbie collectors
comment this
with the quotation: „this is from Becky-country“.
Mattel estimates
the number of devoted Barbie collectors to over 100,000, of
which about ninety
percent are middle aged women, they purchase an average
of over twenty
Barbie-dolls per Year. Forty five percent of this group spend up
to one thousand
dollars and more.
“Oldtimers”, or
the appropriately called: Vintage Barbie dolls from the initial
production Years
are among the most valuable dolls at auctions, while the
original Number
1 Barbie had a price tag of 3 US$ in 1959, a mint Barbie of 1959
in an original
box sold for 3552.50 US$ at an eBay auction in October 2004.