How are people finding out how many of a sculpt exist?

Yes, I have to agree that if a sculpt is limited; it typically states it on the doll's page that there will only be "x-amount" released.

Also though, sometimes people assume that there may only be so many dolls out there based on what they've seen or how long a company lasted. There have been companies that have only created a handful of dolls and then suddenly went under just as quickly as they came about. So some people will guess that if they have one of their dolls, and they've seen two other posted on DOA or another site, then *maybe* a total of 3-5 were released before that company went under.

If I'm not mistaken, I would guess that companies typically make dolls upon order. So if you have a company who is releasing 20 dolls and the slots for 20 dolls is not filled for whatever reason, they will only make as many as were sold. That would keep them from having extra product that would sit in a warehouse and become unsellable. This is just based off of my speculation though.

 

To further on this idea, if I'm not mistaken, most small artists who go to private casters do preorders in small batches -- the largest I've seen being 20 buyer slots in one preorder, but I'm sure it varies from artist to artist. With that being said, some doll artists may be more candid than others about how many of their dolls are out there in the world than others.

 

Rare usually means that there were not many available and usually a limited number is released. That number is usually included in the sale information or could even be on the coa.

 

Sometimes it's not so much the mold is number limited as a face up/outfit or even resin color is. Case of this is one of my first male dolls was limited 50, but later the company made a basic version that was unlimited. I own one of the limit 50 full sets and two of his basic version, one basic with company face up. The only difference between the limited one, the basic ones is the outfit and default face ups, the limited has blondish eyebrows, and the basic basic brown eyebrows. I have no clue how many basic Elf Doll Rainy Kids Aden dolls are out there other then my two, but I do know that there were 50 made of the Elf Doll Rainy "Special" Aden, and I have one of them.

A guess for the cases other then where the numbers are up front like limited number runs, or artist casts. It seems to me its a guess for some rare dolls based on how many are seen in the "wilds" so to speak. Though some companies might say "Oh well we only ended up making X of that one." My two cents. /shrug

 

I have mentioned before that one of my grails had only 2-3 in existence. I found this out because they were by an individual artist and it was the first of her sculpts released and hand cast before she stopped selling the sculpt, modified it, then re-released it under a different name along with three other new sculpts. So the original was sort of a "prototype" that she had sold a couple. She told me all of this when I had found out about the sculpt existing (even finding any evidence it ever existed was pretty difficult) and had asked her if there was any way to get one. She told me she didn't even have a copy anymore!

 

Adding to the rare dolls category, some companies, like Volks, also do special one-off dolls where the sculpt may not really be limited but the entire doll set is, as in it has a special faceup, outfit, eyes, wig, etc.

Edit: And in the vinyl side of the hobby, there are many one-off versions of common dolls' heads that have been modified and customised by popular and highly sought-after faceup artists.

 

The sculpt I mentioned on that thread was listed as an LE20 when I bought him, so there were only ever going to be 20 produced.

 

Sadly, and especially with the older dolls, the original number produced may even have been reduced by misfortunate accidents that we can never know of, making the survivors even more rare.

 

Some of my dolls that are limited in number have that number on their CoA (say... 4 of 10 for example). But some had it stated on the company website what the number of available dolls would be and it's not stated on their CoA where they fall within that limited number. Like my Impl Miguel the Demon Hunter is LE100 but I don't know what his actual production number is. I do wonder a little about my AoD/LE Doll Collaboration Adonis LE38. I think I've only ever seen owner pictures by one other person so how many of him are actually out in the wild?

 

For sculpts that I don't know the true amount of (artist hasn't told and it hasn't been a number limited release), I have sometimes estimated the amount by using Google, Instagram, Facebook, reverse image searches and DoA searches and seeing how many owners I can dig up. I've also been translating keywords and searching foreign forums. Occasionally I contacted previous owners and asked around about what they might know. I have done all this, and still I own two head sculpts where I only know of one owner for each in addition to myself. I would dare say that at this point the only way there could be owners I don't know of is they never mentioned or posted or sold their doll anywhere on the internet. There are such owners, plenty of, but that's why I usually phrase it as "there's only 1 other owner I know of".

This is one sculpt where I only know of one other that exists, Fantasia Doll 2017 version of Canary. All the results that come up on Google are my Canary with her two previous two owners. I only know there exists a second one because a friend used to own it at one point. I don't know who owns the other one at the moment as that person has never posted it on the Internet, so technically I think this is the only Canary the internet has seen, lol. Gets lonely sometimes.

 

I tend to estimate, based on how many I have ever seen in pictures over the last decade from around the world.

I can assume certain dolls were probably in a run of possibly less than 100, if even when they were still available to purchase there were nearly none ever shown. Even internationally the BJD hobby isn't a big place. And image searches used to be quite thorough and not as profit based- you got what you looked for, not what someone wanted you to buy.

I've got quite a few dolls that probably just weren't bought in large quantities. Take my icon- Soom Lupin. I've only ever seen two others in photos from anywhere. There's probably less than 50 ever sold, just because the doll wasn't popular enough for a big run of casting in my estimation.

 

The short nswer is; I usually don't.
With that said, I have a couple of dolls that I very rarely see out in the wild and they are long discontinued. They were never super popular to begin with. I suspect that there are only a handfull ever made. Either that, or they are simply hiding away in a part of the hobby comunity that I don't have access to. Other dolls I've seen around a lot and they were in production for a very long time, even if now discontinued, so I assume that there are a lot of them out there. I don't have any numbers, though, just a feeling.

Historically, some of the rarest dolls are ones that were well made and unique, but not super popular at the time, very few was made and/or sold and in some cases overstock was even destroyed, meaning that only the very few that did sell survives to this day. I suspect that a similar thing may happen with some BJD over time. Being mostly made to order, the popularity of a doll directly influences the numbers made. So unpopular sculpts from popular companies may be the rare and expensive of tomorrow. Dolls Like Iplehouse Ringo and Notdoll Toadstool comes to mind.