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

This just underscores how totally insulting that comment was. It essentially takes a huge swath of collectors -- both old and new -- and slaps them with a "careless" label because they didn't keep packaging. That definitely demonizes the older collectors more, though...and the ones with really big collections because like Brightfires said, where are you going to store fifty or more boxes, presuming they even had boxes in the first place? I know I certainly don't appreciate the label of "careless" being slapped on me, given that I treat my dolls exceptionally well, store them away from light and heat, and do everything in my power to make sure they stay pristine.

I give up. I just give up. It's a good thing I never intended to sell any of my dolls, because it's now very obvious to me that I won't be able to. So I just give up trying. I'm not going to cater to paranoiacs or conspiracy theorists, and apparently that means I wouldn't ever be able to sell some of my collection. I mean...not a single one of my dolls even CAME with a CoA, and a couple are hybrids that certainly didn't come in boxes. So if this is apparently a knock against their value (which I still think is ridiculous), then I just give up even trying.

This is all hugely alienating.

 

It terms of the premium price you can get for having all the original packing and documentation, the gap is slowly growing, and it's bigger on the more public markets like eBay, and for dolls that are already known to have been recast (especially those like Unoa). I think it's safest to assume that the recasting problem is only going to grow, since the very nature of how these dolls are made is not conducive to mass production, and already the manufacturers of the most popular dolls can't keep up with demand (as evidenced by lottery-based sales, sold-out web stores, long lead times, etc.) Supply and demand as it is means higher prices and lower availability of the real thing, and therefore more of a market opportunity for cheap knockoffs as the hobby grows faster than the doll companies can scale up production (economics 101).

Please, please, please stop responding to other peoples' re-interpretations of my original comment. The whole point of my last big post was to clear up the misunderstanding you've just reintroduced. I did not ever, at any point say that any collector who discards a doll box is careless. My original comment was suggesting a doll's box could have been LOST due to carelessness on the part of any of the doll's previous owners. And I was speaking specifically about this mattering for boxes that add value or likelihood of authenticity. It was said in the context of a discussion about dolls that come in fancy collectible boxes.

LOST is not in any way the same as deliberately discarded to save space. I made specific exception for the latter in a follow-up to my original post. If you deliberately discarded a fancy box, knowing that some value was lost, that is not carelessness, though I still think it unwise most of the time. If you discarded the plain brown box from your doll, this is not carelessness or lack of foresight. If you accidentally lost your doll's CoA or fancy box, this possibly is carelessness. If an owner before you lost the CoA or box, maybe they were careless. That's all I was saying.

It's a HUGE misrepresentation of what I actually said to twist my comment around to make it sound as if I'm saying that any collector who has ever discarded any packing materials is careless. I didn't "slap an insult" on anyone, I very matter-of-factly stated why I personally consider some boxes to have value, and how loss of these fancy boxes over time may be indicative of someone in the ownership chain having been careless. I was not trying to start an argument about this, I was just explaining why I value having original packing, in direct response to the original question that started the thread. There is no need for anyone to be butt hurt over how I personally value things, you're free to come up with your own rules for risk assessment in an open marketplace.

If your dolls never came with fancy boxes or CoA, than my original comment does not even apply to you. You took it completely out of context. Also, this whole paragraph feels like you're just trying to stir up drama (I mean saying you're going to give up 4 times?), and I don't think that's really going to help this thread any.

 

Boxes I don't really care about, as long as they're well packaged (A friend of mine had hers damaged when going through customs) but certificates are nice to have. Not necessary, but a bonus. In the case of limited editions, I would pretty much require it for authenticity's sake. I don't want to accidentally buy fakes or copies.

 

How is it out of context? A lot of people presume all dolls come with boxes and paperwork nowadays because of this paranoia, which clearly is not the case.

Was I supposed to have saved all the tiny plastic boxes from Volks that we used to buy arms and legs in, to prove a doll is authentic? We didn't think of such things years ago; the boxes didn't used to be considered a valuable collectible for a hobby based on customization. A lot of long-time collectors can't sell things because of this.

When did this become the NRFB fashion doll collecting hobby?

 

It's out of context because I made it clear in post #142 that my comments only pertained to dolls which came with CoA and/or collectable quality boxes, and that my interpretation of the OP's question was that it was about dolls that originally had these things.

So, when someone jumps in 100 posts later and says I've insulted them because their dolls don't even have CoA and nice boxes, well, they clearly didn't actually read my posts in the context of the discussion that was happening 5 pages back, otherwise it would have been obvious to them that my comments did not apply to them at all. And to make matters worse, they weren't even reacting to my own original comments as written, but rather to someone else's distorted retelling of my comments.

It's not so dire as that. No one expects dolls that never came with CoA or fancy collector type packaging to somehow magically gain them. BUT, if you happen to have a limited edition doll that did come with elaborate packaging and a CoA to verify it's authenticity, then doesn't it make sense to hold onto this to make sure your doll retains as much resale value as possible? Isn't this just common sense?! This hobby is currently a mix of collectible and customization. You now have dolls that are primarily customized, as well as limited edition dolls to which many of the collectible grading criteria are now being applied (just as with fashion dolls).

NRFB, MiB and MoC are different than just having all of the original packaging and proof of authenticity (or purchase history). We've reached a point in this hobby, where because of recasts, certificates of authenticity now have real value, not just at resell time, but as warranty cards. And to many people, collector boxes are also very nice to have, as they not only give you a safe way to put the doll into storage and ship it, they help to further show authenticity, since recasters don't go to the trouble of making exact replicas of all packaging and documentation (it would kill their profit if they did). This last bit is doubly true for dolls that don't have CoA, for which the detailed fancy packing is one of their better indicators of authenticity (along with cast quality).

 

Hmmm, I've definitely bought plenty of dolls without the original box before, they always cause a jackup in shipping price so unless not getting it isn't an option or the doll comes in a super cool box (like my pukipuki lol) I'd rather not pay the extra money to get the box.

If a doll came with a CoA I'd love to get it but I'm not going to skip out on a doll I really want if it doesn't have it. I really only think one of my second hand dolls came with one but a lot were ones that didn't have one to begin with I think.

 

I hate to burst your bubble, Adam... But some of them do. There have been a fair few "fell off of the back of the truck" Soom monthly dolls in particular that have come with everything the legitimate dolls did. Box, CoA, and the whole nine yards. If rumors are to be believed, other brands' paperwork and packaging have also been faked, though the Soom dolls seem to have been the most notorious. o_0

 

That's really unfortunate for the hobby, and it means we'll probably see an escalation in anti-forgery measures on the CoAs, like more holograms, watermarks, etc. In the short term, fake CoAs aren't a real threat because they won't have data on them that matches up with the issuing company's records (e.g. serial numbers and original owner names) or they will be duplicates that the community can sniff out (e.g. many dolls all with the same serial number or owner name). But thinking more long term, to when individual doll companies go out of business, the ability to verify the authenticity of their CoAs (as well as purchase receipts) will come to an end. Very long term, as with many other types of collectibles, it will probably be the quality of the products themselves that is the best indicator of authenticity. But right now, while the companies are still running, a genuine CoA can still mean the ability to get a repair or replacement part or not.

Case in point, the last Iplehouse doll I bought here on DoA arrived with an extra butt crack (a crack in the casting on the right hip/buttock). But because all 3 previous owners of this doll had the sense to hang on to the CoA, I am now getting this piece replaced by Iplehouse. That is real value for me, not hypothetical in any way. They would not sell me parts without the CoA, that is a policy they now say they will make no exceptions for, due to recasting.



Also, this thread really needed a close-up of a doll butt to set things right again.

 

We're already seeing a little of that "CoA can't be verified"-problem... again, with Soom. The CoA numbers that came with dolls made prior to their... 2010? I think?... site redesign can't be verified using the tool on their front page. A newer doll's serial number can be entered and a record of the original sale will come up that includes the purchase date and the buyer's account name, which is great. An older one, however, will always come up "number not found".

I ran into that when I went to double-check which CoA belonged to my Bygg and which to my Glatti. Neither came up, and I *know* those two are "real". I'm their first and only owner. I bought them directly from Soom. 'No way to prove that based on the serial number look-up tool, though. That kind of thing is just going to get worse as time goes on...

 

Boxes are not necessary. In fact, I'd prefer not to have them. I don't ever use the boxes that I do have, and it would be just one more thing to clutter my house. I'm pretty sure my first doll's box was destroyed and I'm just feeling kind of "whatever" about that. I use a doll carrier and the padding that my dolls came with for storage when I [rarely] have the desire to put them away and stop displaying them. However, if I got any more dolls, I might change my mind, because I've reached the maximum amount of dolls that I can fit in one carrier!

Papers though? Hmm. I don't have the papers for any of my three secondhand dolls, and I'm not very bothered by it. I already had my first and maybe second when I learned that they were supposed to have papers. I'm not too pressed about those either. I tend to buy dolls that are in the lower range for pricing, so I'm not worried about them being recasts, which is mainly why I'd want their papers. I am also too attached to my dolls to ever consider selling them, and selling them would be a lot of effort for me to bother with, even if I left the hobby (which, after almost three years in this hobby, I'm doubtful would happen. I've never loved anything like I love this hobby. And, I used to be into other types of dolls, so this is not something new).

 

Adam, I'm sorry that you feel like I misstated your words -- I was trying to say "It sounds like you mean this, as a logical conclusion drawn from the words that you used." I did include the direct quote from you, so that anyone who read my post could make their own decision about whether I was correctly interpreting your statement.

Again -- this attitude that all dolls provenance needs to be "verified" is not a bad idea for NEW DOLLS (which are more likely to be copied), but it is very difficult to come up with after-the-fact provenance for OLDER dolls, who may not have been released with similar certificates/security measures, and who may have been bought secondhand and may not have come with their original boxes.

Given that this was originally a hobby centered around customization, the idea of keeping dolls "fullset" or "MIB" really didn't take off until companies started releasing more elaborate fullsets . . . and, even then, when SOOM started releasing monthly dolls, there was the equivalent of a huge online swap meet, with people trading fantasy and human parts and heads -- for example, I have a set of Breccia paws sitting around, waiting for a body, which I bought from a split at the time that Breccia was released.

I have FCS dolls and hybrid dolls and floating heads and heavily-customized dolls, because customization and creating individual characters is important to me, and "dollyhacking" to create the perfect doll *for me* is one of the pleasures of the hobby.

I despise recasters, I despise their thievery and the lack of trust it has created in the community, and I am *furious* that it's having such a negative effect on the resale value of older dolls, in particular. Mostly, however, I'm angry on behalf of the doll artists whose work is being stolen, and whose companies are suffering business losses because of these thieves and the unscrupulous people who patronize them.

However, making sweeping statements about longterm collectors having "lack of foresight" is, to me, more than a bit offensive -- I didn't buy to resell, I bought because I love these dolls and I love creating art with them.

(And if anyone has "foresight" about their child winding up with serious and life-threatening cardiac issues, I want to hire them to go talk to my past self and get Kira into the cardiologist sooner, because the problem was misdiagnosed for years. I'm selling dolls because I've been *desperate*, not because I didn't think ahead -- nobody PLANS for their child to become critically ill. I'm doing what I need to do, as her mother, to take care of her. If people won't buy the dolls I'm selling because some of them don't have their paperwork -- although I can absolutely prove their legitimacy, if asked -- then the attitude being fostered here, of a doll without an original box and CoA being *worth less*, is directly affecting me and my ability to care for my child.)

I don't support recasters in any way, shape, or form, and every doll in my collection is legitimate. But I genuinely am concerned for the future of this hobby, if the trust between buyer and seller on the secondary market is not only damaged by the actions of recasters, but is also damaged by the belief that dolls in non-original *boxes* are somehow worth less money and are in any way dubious.

When I bought my dolls, I was buying the *doll*, not the packaging material. And while, as noted, I do my best to keep all of my boxes, I *do* have about 70 dolls, and my entire garage is literally LINED with doll boxes -- I don't have room to store too many more. And not every doll arrived in its original box, especially my older Volks dolls.

So -- please don't think I'm picking a fight with you, because I'm not. I'm saying that I find this attitude to be misinformed and actually dangerous to longterm collectors, who weren't anticipating that criminals would take an interest in producing pro-quality recasts, given that BJDs were a niche hobby at the time.

In the end, most of us collect *dolls*, not their accouterments. While there are collectors among us who want all the original packaging, paperwork, company face-up, and fullset outfit, there are many of us whose enjoyment of this hobby involves customizing their dolls (which was the origin of the hobby in the first place -- Volks outright stated that their dolls were intended for customization, and BJDs are an outgrowth of the garage-kit industry.) And they're not somehow lesser collectors because of this -- many of the doll artists and collectors who I most admire are the ones who have made their dolls distinctly their own, through face-ups and customization and parts-swapping and hybridization, and I don't think that fullset collectors are somehow superior (or inferior) to people whose passion is based on buying a beautiful sculpt and going in an entirely original direction with the finished doll.

Since we're sharing photos (glad you're able to get your dollybum replaced -- I've never had to get replacement parts from a doll company before, since I am extraordinarily careful with my dolls, but it's both understandable and a damn shame that people who do need replacements may have difficulty obtaining them), here are my Four Graces -- four legitimate Volks FCS dolls (all oldskin F-08), all purchased on the secondary market, several assembled from parts, not a one of them register-able with Volks.

Thankfully, I have my Volks card due to having purchased a couple of dolls direct from them (including my daughter's FCS boy), but it actually took a bit of doing to get it, since most of my Volks dolls were bought from the Marketplace.



To me, their value lies in their sculpts, their face-ups, their intrinsic beauty. While they may not be factory-pristine, I prefer them this way -- they're *classic*, vintage Volks at its finest. And that's the attitude that I prefer to see collectors displaying -- it's all about the dolls, not the packaging. While I completely understand and support the goal of quashing recasts being resold as legitimate, I believe that there are other ways of discouraging that practice without alienating the collectors who were among the first to participate in this hobby in the English-speaking world, because a LOT of us have been here for 8+ years, and in the early days of the hobby, when Volks sold parts to build your own doll out of bins in their Sumikas, the type of provenance that you're talking about simply doesn't exist.

(IIRC, somewhere, there's a database of all the variations on the older Volks sculpts -- they were constantly tinkering with and improving their jointing system, so FCS and scratch-built dolls had a number of different wrist and ankle-ball and knee variants, some of which are very different from the standard designs of today. I remember discussing it with Cynthia in Flint Hills, when she acquired a very old Volks doll from Y!J who had a completely unfamiliar stringing system, no S-hooks, and some very unusual joints -- but her doll was still legitimate, it was merely a variant from the days when Volks was still working on optimizing posing and joint mechanisms.)

In the end, I think that all of us can agree that we need, as buyers and sellers, to do our best to make sure that no recasts wind up in our collections. I just think that saying that lack of an original box reduces a doll's "value" is wrongheaded, since the value lies in the *doll* for most of us, not the packaging, and I don't want to lose sight of that when people are legitimately worried about inadvertently being scammed by a recast seller, and therefore may be asking for forms of proof that either don't exist or are no longer in the hands of the owner, despite the doll being perfectly legally-produced and obtained.

-- A

 

I think I'm just one those people who like to have the original boxes just... because? I tend to find good uses for the boxes now since I have very little storage so I can use them to put other doll items in. As for CoA, this is another thing I just like to have in the same way I collect business cards, if that makes sense. I agree that in terms of authenticity, a box and a piece of paper may not necessarily prove anything as they can be faked. However, for buying secondhand, I wouldn't say it was a MUST for me to have. Like, recently I bought a Migidoll head and a Popodoll body, both second/third hand, neither in their original packaging, and I was still perfectly happy with that.

 

Apology accepted, no hard feelings. I'm not the kind of person to get butt-hurt over stuff on forums, or take anything personally; when I keep rebutting people, it's only out of the frustration of being misread or misunderstood. Over the last 5 pages of this thread, a lot of negativity was inferred from my comments that I didn't actually intend. I was really only trying to say that if someone lost valuable parts of their doll, like the CoA or fancy box, that I would be more hesitant to buy from them than from someone who kept everything together in a very obvious and organized way. The latter shows that the seller has the presence of mind to understand that everything that came with the doll may have some value to the next owner, even if it doesn't matter to them.

Yes, I see now the cause of the confusion. Foresight has two definitions. I didn't mean the literal precognition of specific possible future events, I meant general awareness that one's current situation is fluid. I wasn't thinking about predicting future dire medical or financial straits, I was thinking more of the simple and common case of understanding that the doll(s) you're excited about right now, may be of no interest to you in a few years time--forgotten, or replaced. By "lack of foresight", what I really meant is "lack of any consideration that one might not own a doll forever, and that its fancy box and certificates may be of some value to the next owner."

When I wrote this, I was thinking of the really nice foam sarcophagus type boxes that the Iplehouse Dolls come it. The boxes are great for safe storage and shipping, and shipping the dolls in their original box is no more expensive than repacking, since box and foam hardly weigh anything and the Post Office Priority Mail rates go by weight, not volume. A few people have mentioned that shipping between some different countries there is savings in discarding boxes, but what is saved in shipping rates is lost in total value if the box was of collectible quality, so it's likely a wash (esp when you consider that new packing materials have to be bought when the doll is next sold).

Boxes like the Iplehouse ones are indeed so desirable to me that I would prefer not to buy the dolls without them. This is not really because of recasts, since I trust people selling here on DoA, it has more to do with the fact that I simply value the nice boxes and the CoAs (for their warranty purposes, as mentioned in my previous post).

 

Size is also a consideration when it comes to shipping costs (That's why you'll see postal clerks measuring larger boxes before they give you a shipping quote-) and doll boxes are pretty darn big.

What a lot of people are talking about when they say it's cheaper to ship a doll without its box is shipping it unstrung. Dolls take up a lot less space that way, so you can send them out in a much smaller box. That matters a lot when you're shipping internationally.

As an example, I recently sent out two different Soom SuperGem guys to new owners in Russia... They were about the same weight and were going about the same distance, but one went in his big Soom shipper and the other went unstrung. The one in the large box cost over $170 to ship Global Express. The smaller one was $79.

No cardboard box is going to be worth a hundred dollars difference in the price of a doll.

 

When buying a doll second hand I would take a long and active DoA membership with a flawless marketplace feedback, basically someone with a great reputation in place of a CoA/box. I do prefer to buy my dolls directly from the company though.

 

Boxes would be nice but the main thing really is the certificate. However, I have a thing against second hand dolls so it's not a problem for me right now.

 

I'm a sucker for all the packaging stuff...boxes, little booklets etc.; I collected figures before and I never unboxed them.
If something has a fancy box (like my Star Wars headphones) I will keep that too, even though I will never re-sell it...I have a reaaaaally hard time to get rid of that kind of things and it's usually my girlfriend who goes "Oh come on, yes, it's nice looking, but do you reaaaaally need to keep it?".
I only have that with pretty and official boxes, mostly because it feels more complete for me to keep it, if I throw it away it feels like throwing away a part of the thing I just bought.
I have still all the clear plastic boxes from extra DD parts I bought from Volks, or the clear boxes I got some heads in (Migidoll, or Granado); same with boxes I got outfits in (Dollheart, Rocking Horse).
Keeping the boxes is just a personal pet peeve of mine.

I also have all the boxes for my dolls, be it for complete ones or only their bodies/heads, the only box I don't have is the one of my Afi.
I got his head and body seperately; the head has still the default FU and the body has the certificate, booklet and even the extra S-Hooks.
The latter I got from someone who just got the body in a split but decided against having two Afis (remember, back then you often got two heads without having the option to get a second body), but she wanted to keep the box and pillow.
I have everything to proof that he's legit but knowing that I'll never have this simple white/golden Soom box makes me kinda mad, even though it's silly.
I just like everything to be complete.
Oh, and I have a pair of Chalco hooves and Chrom hands I got in splits with friends, and while I know they are legit I don't have any actual proof of it. Nowadays I would demand a copy of the certificate from the split leader, but back then nobody cared about this.

Back then I also used the few boxes I had to store the dolls' clothes inside, nowadays I have too many boxes to have them in our apartment and way too many clothes anyway.
More and more companies now use the Iplehouse or Fairyland kind of box, with the foam cut out, so you can't really store anything inside anymore too.
Since I live together with another collector, and we both have a fair amount of dolls, we started to pack up the boxes and store them in our dry attic.
Every box is tightly wrapped with one of these very thick blue garbage bags, closed with a generous amount of ducttape and I added little sticky notes to every package so I know what's inside, usually saying "Name of my doll, doll's mold, company".
I regulary check if everything is fine with the boxes but there isn't much up there that could happen to them anyway.

With the current recast problem it's pretty important for me to have the box and the CoA, but it was already important for me before.
However, back then it was a preference, nowadays it's a must to keep yourself safe, and it's not a very effective one most of the times.
Recasters fake so many things nowadays, from boxes to certificates to the plates inside/outside of the heads, some dolls don't even come with papers.
Not to mention that someone could easily own a legit doll, buy a recast of the same doll and sell said recast as legit with all the papers/box and still keep the legit to themselves.
In some cases it's so risky to buy a doll that only a full-set can be truly safe...as long as recasters don't start to copy face-ups too.

I know many people, especially collectors who started years ago, who threw away their boxes, especially when their collection got bigger and bigger and they lacked space to put them away properly.
Having a box when re-selling was mostly for people like me who like their stuff to be complete, or for VERY fancy dolls.
It wasn't a must back then and nobody thought it was suspicious.
However, nowadays in some cases I might raise an eyebrow when I see how someone tries to sell a blank Volks without papers, headplate and box, especially when it's a really hard to get and limited sought after doll.
I wouldn't downright accuse such a person as recast seller, but I also wouldn't feel really well to buy from them either.
It's sad how much the hobby has changed and how we can less and less afford to trust each other.

 

I don't really need all those certificates unless it's some precious rare LE, like sooms etc. "Cause there are so many ways in which bootlegs are very recognisable. I believe people will distinguish them from one another, so everyone will know that this obnoxious theft took place. But it's drastically important though whether the doll is original or not. But i also believe that bootlegs are rare nowadays.

 

Yes. Having the certificate and box shows they are legit. I like having them.

 

Original boxes and COAs are nice, but I think seller reputation is more important. I'm only about a year into BJDs and own 4 dolls, only two of which came with COAs. So far I haven't bought second hand, as most of the dolls I like are not limited. I currently only collect tinies (non YOSD scale) which seems to have a narrow enough following to hardly need COAs. My first doll is a Soom Mini Gem, who I got as an X-mas kit. She came without a COA or a fancy box, due to being a seasonal assemble yourself markdown.