Buying secondhand: Boxes and certificates...are they must haves for you?

I would say they're definitely preferred and I would pay a premium if they were included but it's not a deal breaker. It would ultimately depend on the doll and how badly I wanted him or her.

 

If the doll originally came with a certificate, I better be getting that certificate. No certificate = no sale, unless I somehow trust the seller completely.

The box isn't as important... but I do like the boxes (:

 

I mostly buy dolls from doll companies or local marketplace(very safe and reliable) , sometimes yahooauctions because unoas are less pricy than my local marketplace .... and i havent thought about certificates very much ><;

 

I prefer their original boxes when I buy secondhand~ I've only had one doll so far that doesn't have her own box.

 

I've bought dolls without certificate because I did not ask for them. I view it more as the sellers job to ship it with the head (or body/parts).

I have all my certificates and when I sell the head I send everything that as to do with it. It's a change in ownership, I do not need to keep the certificate.
I also do not sell it as you never know when something might happen and you need it~

It's pretty much like anything I own. If there is a certificate of any kind I keep it.

I have a birth certificate and my cats have/should have some too. They are not useful in your daily life but still important to have when you have to prove you exist~ ;3

For the box, they are only boxes. I like to have them but would not care if it was original or not.

 

For me, being so new to the hobby and worried about recasts, I'm not sure if I'd purchase a doll that didn't come with a COA. Original box is slightly less important, but it would be nice, since I don't have a storage system for dolls yet. COA is critical, though, because I'm new enough that I could get taken advantage of. (I've spent a lot of time reading bad transaction threads to be prepared, and box-opening threads so I know what COAs look like for a lot of the major companies.)

 

It does seem like a must have, but not really for me. My papers for my doll stay in the box and I don't really plan to do anything with them and the same would happen if I got a secondhand doll. If you include it thats great, its not very important to me.

 

Hmmm.... I don't care too much. It'd really be something for me to keep track of its location rather than just enjoy the doll... and I'm not really a fan of extra clutter. It's good to know it's legitimate, but I don't feel it's too important for me to not get a doll if someone trusted is selling.

 

I am changing my answer because I didn't want it to be seen as something it's not. I think companies that recast are awful and promote art theft. Furthermore they have scary practices such as buying an authentic doll secondhand recasting it without permission and then selling it and using authentic materials (authentic company box's and certificates or booklets) to pass it off as an authentic doll.

To answer the question at hand I only purchase or trade dolls within DOAs marketplace or from the company themselves. Most of my dolls now have their certificates but I have always trusted the marketplace and the members here, it never occurred tome that someone might want to pass off a recast doll as authentic and so I've never required certificates. Now that I have looked further into the topic and have seen the practices I now am thinking perhaps I should request COAs.

 

I think if it was LE I would definitely want a certificate especially if you're being expected to pay the LE price. Boxes don't bother me I have no room to store them, but if they came with a doll carrier like the Resin Souls do or those cushions Sooms come with they're a lot more valuable to me.

I do have a problem where most of my dolls being 2nd hand came with no certs not even in the correct company box in some cases. It's not something that ever bothered me as I always saw it as just piece of paper a nice little extra. I've always just checked feedback and trusted people on here and people on the UK doll forum some of whom I know personally.

My question would be if people demand certs is what should be done in a split. From the certs I do have they refer to the face sculpt and I would think to send them off with a head. So how would I then prove the body with no cert was real?

 

Hmm -- I really wouldn't go that far.

I started collecting in 2005, when there was ONE company (ForeverDoll) doing recasting, and their copies were obvious and shoddy. I normally kept my dolls' boxes stored (although my dolls only got packed away when I moved), and I certainly didn't keep any CoAs unless they happened to be in the box with the pillows. I almost never sold dolls, and when I did, I might or might not have had easy access to the original box due to the arrangement of my limited storage space -- and I also bought a lot of my dolls on the secondary market, particularly my Volks dolls.

I'd like to think that I have an impeccable reputation as a buyer and seller in the community, but I do worry that recasting has made it harder to sell limited dolls that previously held their value very well and often actually appreciated in value over time.

When I bought the majority of my dolls, I didn't anticipate my circumstances changing -- I went many years without selling any dolls, other than one or two that went right back out the door again when brand-new, if I didn't care for them as much in person as I had online.

HOWEVER -- circumstances change. I became disabled and had to quit my job. My daughter and I have had enough serious medical issues (we share the same genetic disorder) that my savings were completely wiped out. I've had to sell dolls that I *never* intended on parting with. And, had my circumstances (which also included 2 moves in two years) *not* changed, those dolls would not have been sold.

I didn't buy them with the intention of reselling, so the idea of keeping pristine packaging and paperwork wasn't a high priority for me. I held on to the boxes in case I needed to ship a doll off for a face-up or blushing, or to make the occasional very rare sale, but it was a matter of whether or not I had space for them all, and if the boxes got damaged somehow and wouldn't maintain their shipping integrity, I threw them out.

Now, my dolls are in perfect *condition*, they've been kept out of the sun, they're clean, they're not scratched or sanded or cracked or abused. As collector's items, they're pristine (other than some dolls' resin having mellowed somewhat over the years, as is understandable with older resin dolls, even if they've been kept in a darkened room.)

But you're saying that not still having every box for every doll I own (those that came with boxes, and those that came with CoAs, which used to be MUCH rarer) demonstrates carelessness and a lack of foresight -- and I think that it would be much more fair to state that no one can predict the future, and that while some people have the space and level of organization to keep a meticulously-organized closet full of boxes, it's no shame on the condition of the *doll* to potentially come without its original box/fullset/paperwork.

I understand that the intent is to prevent fraud, but the end result is to punish honest collectors who never *dreamed* of near-replica-quality pro-recasting outfits like the ones that exist today, where there is a serious danger of a legitimate doll being substituted for a copy.

In that case, I think that the seller's reputation and any information they can come up with about the original transaction should be your guide -- it doesn't lessen the doll's value if it comes without a box, if you're a non-MIB collector. Most of my dolls are customized, and they were all purchased for play and display, so I'm an example of a longterm serious (and non-careless) collector who has never cared whether or not any dolls I buy come with an original box or paperwork, as long as the seller has a good reputation and I have no reason to believe that the transaction is not fully legitimate.

I'm definitely keeping the boxes and papers of the newer dolls that have come into my household (even though I'm hurting for space), now that I have been aware of the recasting/secondary-market issues for a while . . . but I can't go back in time eight years and tell myself to hold onto whatever box my secondhand Lishe came in, you know?

-- A

 

I understand that the certificates can go missing but I'd at least want some record of sale even if it was just some emails recording the sales and piece of notebook paper with a bunch of signatures of the previous owners on it.

 

I WANT boxes when I buy secondhand. I don't know why -- they're part of the doll set for me, and I have to have them. If I buy a doll sans her box, I expect her to be discounted for that reason. A college roommate once broke down one of my doll boxes and discarded the doll papers inside and I was livid. The box was ruined and I couldn't reassemble it, and I'm still angry about it!
When I first got into the hobby, COAs weren't a thing, so in some cases I am fine with not receiving one with the doll. But most of the time, I expect to receive the doll's certification if they were shipped with it. Again, I like buying the doll with everything that came with it -- and when I sell secondhand, I intend to sell everything that came with it, too. For example, I won't ship a doll without her box. It's all or nothing!

That isn't to say I won't buy a doll, especially a limited, without his or her box. Some dolls just don't have boxes or certificates. As a secondhand buyer, people have the right to choose what they want to buy and what they want to spend. As a secondhand seller, people have the right to include what they want in the sale and to price it what they want. That's what it boils down to.

If I can at least have the history of the doll, where she came from and who owned her before me, then I'm OK. But when given the chance, I prefer having everything the doll came with, because I'm just that kind of collector.

 

That assumes people hang onto receipts for 10 years, doesn't it? Some of us have been around for a long time. And we have to keep a paper trail back to original owners?

I'm finally giving up and letting my last "parts" Volks SD go due to thoughts like this. Not all dolls ever had a box or paperwork, and if someone is honestly going to expect me to still have a receipt 10 years later, I might as well let the doll go now before this attitude gets worse.

 

I just recently heard about recasting and now I feel I need at least the box.As far as COA not all dolls come with them so that's not as important. I have all the boxes and even receipts for the dolls I have bought new and boxes of dolls I have bought secondhand. I do understand some people don't have room to keep boxes but IMO it's really important to keep them even if you have to use them to store other stuff in.

 

Doesn't bother me. It'd be nice to have those things, but it's not necessary. Certificates are nice so you know when your doll was made, but as far as I'm concerned, when I bought my Hound (secondhand), that's when he was "born" to me. So I didn't mind that he had no certificate.

 

Understanding that circumstances can change is exactly the foresight I was referring to. I have many collectibles right now that I love and hope never to have to part with, but I also understand that if something financially unfavorable happens to me (house floods, car dies, medical bills, employer goes out of business, etc.), I may have no choice but to sell one or all of them. And, if I do find myself in a position desperate enough that selling collectibles is required to stay solvent, getting top dollar is almost certainly going to make a difference. Passions change too; I've sold things that I thought I'd never, ever part with simply because over time I lost interest in them, or my tastes changed. The point I was trying to express is that I have more confidence in buying from other people who get this, because it shows they have a fundamental understanding of how to preserve the value of collectibles, which I respect.

That said, I have bought from people who haven't kept all their boxes and paperwork, and I understand that not everyone has the raw storage space required to hoard large empty doll boxes. It's not like I think box discarders are bad people. But I also paid less for the loose dolls than for ones that had all their kit, and would have preferentially bought complete boxed ones if I'd had the choice.

 

Word.

I have to admit that Adam's post made me o_0 a bit, too... These aren't special edition Barbies or collectible action figures where "MIB" is king.

In my case, I'm a neat-freak who has a (very) large collection and a relatively small townhouse. Though I do tend to hang on to any paperwork my crew came with (Many didn't, being older standard releases-), I simply don't have the space to hold on to everything. I refuse to surrender my closets and attic to over a hundred mostly SD-scale doll boxes. It's just not going to happen, recast paranoia or not.

Even so, I DARE anyone to look at my crew and call me a careless owner. Seriously. I double dog dare you. I'm as picky as all hell about the state of my collection, and anyone who's bought a doll from me over the years or seen the guys in person can tell you how well taken-care-of they are. My lack of storage space for boxes has jack all to do with my abilities or inclinations are a caretaker, and I'm in no way unique in that respect.

 

This thread is starting to exaggerate and misrepresent what I originally said, so I feel like I need to set it straight or this is going to become a game of telephone where, by the end, I'm going to be quoted as having said anyone who throws away a doll box is satan's spawn. Just to be clear, I said this:

Ashbet paraphrased it like this:

Notice three things changed in the re-representation of what I said:

1. The often got lost in the quoting, and became implicitly absolute, so that now it sounds like I'm saying that anyone without a box was careless, rather than my original statement that was meant to say that--in my experience--missing box was often but not necessarily co-morbid with other problems. This distinction is important.

2. The or became and. Big difference there! Now I'm attributed as saying you're definitely careless AND have a lack of foresight, rather than maybe one or the other.

3. Previous owners became current owner ("I own"). I was suggesting that boxes could have been lost by any one of a doll's previous owners, but the wording got changed to suggest that I'd be critical of someone for even owning a doll without a box, even if a previous owner discarded it. This is not true. I might still be wary of purchasing the doll, but that would in no way reflect on the current owner if the box was discarded by a previous owner.

Yes, but... like any collectible that has limited production, the dolls with all their original kit will hold their value better than loose dolls or dolls with no proof of authenticity. Recasting is becoming increasingly more prevalent, and being able to prove authenticity is becoming more and more important. A few manufacturers now require CoA to get any repair or spare parts from them. No CoA could mean no service for you or any future owner, no matter how wonderfully your dolls are cared for. I think it's completely legitimate to consider the box and CoA as having real monetary value, and factoring this into your decision to buy or not, or what to pay.

 

In the "post-recast" market where paranoia is fact of life, you're probably right... but prior to the current market conditions, that simply hasn't been the case.