Frustrations with provenance

Most of my ready-made stuff has come to me second hand + unlabeled so it's impossible to track some things down. Sometimes I've been able to guess where it's from when stumbling upon a store listing that is similar, recently I got help with a wig in photo reference, but otherwise... I wish doll artisans were more generous with using tags With some things I really wish I knew so I could find a similar thing in a different colour.

 

I have a favourite pair of jeans, unusual style, really well made, part synthetic leather (~12 years old, no disintegrating in sight!). Would love to know who made them so could track down more, but no idea who made them.

And also have a few (expensive in the day) eyes which I would love to know which make they are too. Have some boxes and don't know which go in which now

 

Yeah, I have no clue where so much of my stuff is from. I always save the tags and business cards, but.... since I never organized them in any way or created useable records, it's not that helpful to have them. That is definitely something I wanted to keep on top of moving forward, so thanks for the reminder.
The best I have is receipts when I bought items new, and those are great, but many of my favorite items were purchased at convention swaps, so I doubt if I'll ever track their makers down.

 

Not me. I'm not bothered by provonance at all - I'm lucky if I can rememebr the company and sculpt name of my dolls, let alone where the clothing and shoes etc came from.

Teddy

 

I don't think it's particularly important to know the full details of every doll accessory you own unless you are looking to buy another or more. I will say I was very sad to find the receipt for my casual boy shoes and see they cost nearly nothing from MoC and I can't buy any more from them! I wish I had stocked up

 

Even if through the years I have tried to keep a list or at least screenshots of the order pages when I have bought items, I also have things that I don't know where they came from, specially the ones I bought in lots in the second hand-market, so I get the frustration. It must be a daunting task, so I just can wish you luck.

 

I’m in complete agreement with this! I currently have 56 dolls in my collection, and while I can remember the pertinent sculpt details and characters of all of them, I just don’t consider where they or their things specifically came from as being important to me after 17 years of collecting. If I did, my head would probably explode. Every one of my darlings is absolutely legit, and that’s all that matters to me. Beyond that, I don’t worry about it since I’m not planning to sell any of them or their things…like ever!

 

Most of my doll clothes are either second hand, or hand made by someone who really isn’t even into the hobby, they just took a sewing commission from me lol.

I can tell you which wigs and clothes I bought and which ones I traded for, but that’s the extent of my knowledge of where it’s from. I have a few wigs that are still in box just because I don’t ever use them so they’re the only ones I know the brand.

 

This is precisely why I'm sad I didn't keep records, because I would love to get more of my loved items in every color!
Like with wigs for example, you can't always ID a wig by the style alone since popular ones will get copied. But you will know it when you get a wig of the same style in your hands if it's made by a different maker, it just doesn't lay right or the fibers feel weird... that's when it really hurts, knowing you could have taken a minute to catalog it after it arrived and saved yourself all the trouble

 

I have a very good memory for my dolls themselves, and tend to keep up with the details... But their wigs, eyes and such? Nah. I've never bothered to keep extensive records of any of that. The more elaborate or custom-made outfits I could also provide details on, but more general bits of the wardrobe no so much. It's never seemed all that important to me to know exactly where each and every pair of jeans or set of bloomers came from, or who made which set of eyes and what they called the color.

 

I've tried to get into the habit of photographing all the wigs I get and write a review on it. It's a little time consuming, but maybe it'll help me or someone else who is currently looking to purchase them. It was also funny to see how good my Miho looks in all of them! All of my wigs from the past are long discontinued though so it wouldn't have helped me to write down the item code back then. I bought a few wigs in the past that I hated and sold and I wish I wrote those brands down so I knew never to order from them again.

That's really thoughtful of you! I'm sure if you didn't want to accidentally embarrass someone, it would also be okay to ask over PM. I personally would always be okay answering those questions if I can! Some people really have so much that there's no way they could possibly remember everything, so I get that.