First doll stories!

When I was a kid, I loved my Barbie, but was frustrated by her lack of posebility. Later on, in high school, I began Googling poseble dolls and stumbled across BJDs. They were cool, but the price scared me away. Then in college I began obsessing over them, and joined this forum for the sole purpose of learning a little more about them. Next thing I knew, I had two SD heads on order. And the rest is history.

 

I started with toys and models and such. These figures called Busou Shinki. I realized my favorite part of them was dressing them up and making dioramas for them and that sort of thing, so it was a pretty short leap to dolls, with a minor pit stop with Picco Neemo.

 

My friend bought a small, off-topic doll and started talking about BJDs. She showed me some of the sights online and I was absolutely floored...by how expensive they were!!!! I could NOT wrap my head around it, at all.
...
Until she invited me to join her at a doll meet up. It was so different to see them in person and all the work people had done and I was floored for an entirely different reason. After that, I started looking online more and fell in love with the Kid Delf Ani from Luts.

Didn't think I'd ever actually be able to buy one, though. So it was just... lots of shopping and planning, that's it.

Then my husband and I were getting married and his dad gifted us with a pretty decent amount of money. After we go home, my hubby looked at me and smiled and asked if I still wanted that doll I'd been looking at so much!

He came in the mail about a month later!! My first doll is almost 6 years old and pretty yellowed on his hands, but I just love him so much! And now I have.... 6 all together, plus a floating head.

 

I discovered Pullips and Taeyangs, and PullipStyle also sold Ringdolls which I happened across. They caught my eye as being interesting, but I thought the price was not something I could come to terms with. I kept coming back to look at them though, and then started looking up other BJDs, and discovered this whole world where I found other dolls and styles that made me realize that this might be something I want to jump into. I saved for a Dollshe and bought a Saint during their 1/2 off sale, but it took over a year for him to arrive so I ended up buying my grail, a Soom Amber, in the meantime and fell in love with them!

 

I was a non-doll person pretty much my entire life... then I saw these beautiful work-of-art dolls online, and I thought they were really beautiful as photo subjects, and that it was probably very fun to dress them, collect small props, find backdrops that felt in-scale, etc, but it was more just something to appreciate someone else's artistry with.

Then at an anime convention, my sister (a doll person from birth) saw some in person and fell head-over-heels in love with them. Got my first doll shortly after she got hers.

 

Growing up, I always owned a good variety of dolls, and there were always lots of female options but very few male. I got into OOAK male dolls on eBay, just looking for ANY adult male doll that wasn't Ken with yellow plastic hair, and accidentally stumbled across Volks one day. No possible way I could afford Volks at the time (though I loooooved F-16), so I started researching other BJD options and ended up with an AoD Chen as my first. My house became a revolving door but more than nine years later, Amir is still with me!

PS- seven years later, I finally got my F-16!

 

Love this idea for a thread!
My reason seems a little long, I first saw one when someone made one to look like a famous person, at first I thought it was pretty but I guessed it was probably just a one off, but then I was on instagram about a year or so later and another one popped up of a different doll and I thought of how great the doll looked so I explored the tags of it and came across the sales tag...
There I found my first one, I saw him and fell in love instantly. I thought he would be perfect to use for photography and it gave me an excuse to use my hobbies more (sewing & knitting)

 

I saw someone post about their DIM girl on a forum for a musician I liked waaaay back in middle school and while I didn't like the look of the DIM girls, I kept different companies (I love love love Souldoll's aesthetic for example) in the back of my mind for years. Come last christmas, when most family members gave me money, I realised I was only about $40 away from being able to purchase a doll--not one of the souldoll girls, mind, but I saw a review on YouTube for an MYOU doll AND the girl I liked best was both in stock and on sale...

Plus, I've collected dolls since I was about three, so. Matter of time really.