Discrepancy between prices for females and males?

I think it might be that most female dolls are shorter than males and thus theoratically need less resin in making. Allso, some of these companies have less female dolls, which leads to think that maybe they are not as popular and that's why they're cheaper. I might be completely wrong tought. Those are atm only reasons I can think of.

 

the using less resin argument actually seems wrong to me, once you factor in the extra curves that the ladies have. I would even venture to wager that most of the buxom and voluptuous ladies out there take more resin than the men.

 

There is a similar thread here about resale value of male versus female dolls and why that might be.

There are lots of different reasons for these things between companies and sizes. I make an example of that about Volks dolls with different sizes, genders and headmolds in the above listed thread. I think the second-hand prices on dolls better pinpoints the issue of popularity than company prices do, since some companies will keep the prices even regardless of one gender being more popular than the others.

But in the case of Luts, I think it's really more because people prefer the male Luts body to the female one. A perfect example of that is this girl I used to be friends with about two years ago in the doll hobby. She used to get Volks heads and put the males on Luts male bodies because she preferred the muscle tone on them versus the male Volks body which is kind of blander muscle-wise since Volks intends for their SDs to be 10-year-olds, meanwhile her girls kept the female Volks bodies because she liked their less curvy-ness (horray for making up words! ) and more petite appearance. I can imagine this could be the case for many people.

 

This is nothing but speculation, mind you, but . . . I've always suspected that the companies use their girl dolls as a kind of "loss leader." Trying to think about this from Volks's point of view at the beginning of their resin-doll experiment: a slightly lower price on the girls might attract collectors of antique dolls (or, in Japan, the high-end artist dolls), which lean heavily toward girls. That would bring more people into the hobby. Also, aren't the girls more popular in Japan, anyway? Slightly lower price + higher sales volume = higher total revenue.

Also--again just a speculation!--but people who want boy dolls REALLY want boy dolls, and are often willing to pay a premium for them because they tend to be scarcer. The evolution of the BJD hobby has been interesting because the boys have been so popular, especially with the international market, and because boy dolls have been released in such large numbers. I think, historically speaking, this might be the first doll-collecting hobby where that's been true.

 

I'm feeling a bit lazy now so I only compared dolls from Iplehouse, which gives weights for the EID and SID lines. In both cases the male dolls weighed more (sometimes to the tune of an entire kilogram or more) than the female dolls. I'm assuming they don't stick weights in the guys to make them heavier, so that supports the "more material used for men than women" theory...for Iplehouse at least. In reality I would guess that the prices are influenced by a variety of factors, like size, weight, and even popularity of males vs. females.

 

Well, i know that usually, Iplehouse's EID boys are a bit more than their girls. And when i held a my Ashanti, and Joby together i now know why. Joby (EID Kamau) is about two TIMES as heavy as Shandel (EID Ashanti) is. His resin is thicker, and heavier. I gather this is why he's a bit more expensive.

 

The Iplehouse size/weight differences immediately came to mind for me also.

It seems like the male dolls are more likely to get an additional torso joint than females from some companies also -- more parts = more molds = more labor = more cost.

 

I think the amount of resin is definitely a factor. My SD13 girl is noticeably lighter than my SD13 boy, and she may be even lighter than my SD10 boy -- or is at least similar in weight. YoSDs don't get different pricing by gender, possibly because their bodies are so nearly identical.

While this is less a factor with Volks, many companies put more complex jointing and muscular detail on their male bodies, too.

While I can't say for certain, from what I saw in Japan girl dolls are extremely popular there. I don't know what the breakdown would be, but with the male doll collectors added in I'd say the ratio was closer between the two doll genders than in the international market. And to be honest it feels like I'm seeing more collectors of girls on DoA lately, too. So I don't know that any price markdowns due to lack of popularity are really what's up.