In love with a discontinued sculpt

I was at the point of purchasing Bermann in i think 2008 (?). I kept looking at them in the marketplace but could not justify their costs to myself. and now amazingly he is being rereleased. Still dont believe im getting him.

 

I actually like the slow process of collecting older discontinued dolls. I have a few in my doll family. Some of them were ones I'd never heard of before but I fell in love with when I saw them, others were ones I was searching for already. It can take a few years to find those dolls second hand, and depending on the sculpt you may have to accept that you may not ever find it (or be able to afford it).
I don't mind loving some dolls and not being able to have them. It can be fun to appreciate from a distance. If you are able to find the long discontinued ones you have your heart set on though it's a really wondrous thing!

My advice if you are in love with discontinued dolls is to accept that the situation is not completely under your control. If you are able to find one on your wishlist then cherish the feeling, if you aren't able to try not to feel heartbroken. There are so many more dolls out there.

 

I've never found a limited doll I was in love with enough to worry about it... There are some I love to dream about having, but I guess I'm not too in love with them, because I don't go out of my way to find them secondhand. If I happened to have the money and came across one in the DOA marketplace... I would likely buy them and I would be very happy! However I'm ok with not having them if that doesn't happen.

I guess there are too many basic dolls that I love just as much... so I always end up just shrugging and getting a different doll instead! xD

 

Oh I really understand what you feel. My dream doll is LatiDoll Censya, a limited edition that was released nearly 10 years ago, and I used to look at her pictures while she was in stock. But I was just a little girl at the time, so there wasn't any chance of getting her. And by now I've seen very few posting pictures of Censya dolls, and obviously no one selling them

Good luck on your search!

 

I feel this soo much!! not really discontinued but more of a limited doll? Every doll I first fell in love with were mostly limited.

I coped with it by thinking positive that maybe I'll see them one day on secondhand market, or by looking at other sculpts. Better move on than get hung up thinking about it :")

 

I know how you feel, @Sonik ! The top discontinued doll on my list is DollnDoll Loren. I suppose I would call her my grail doll right now. I'm keeping my eyes positively peeled for a secondhand one. I think I'm most anxious to get her because her partner is already on his way to me, and he's going to be miserable without her I sent a message to DollnDoll a little while ago asking if the queen version was still available (thinking, 'well, if enough people ask, maybe they'll bring her back!'), but they told me she is discontinued. . . so my quest continues.
There are others on my list (Soom and Iplehouse, I'm looking at you!), but I'm not super-attached to them. I'll jump on the opportunity if I find one for sale, but I can deal with admiring them from afar for now.

It kinda bugs me that, if a doll is sold out forever, why keep it up on the website?? I'm being taunted

 

It has. I fell in love with Soom Ender when he was released but couldn't come up with the money in time to get him, then spent the next two years searching for one. I did finally get the head and OMG it was so so pretty...but after a few more years, I ended up selling him off because none of the hybrids I planned for him worked.

Another one I really fell for is Volks School A, which is a slightly different situation since I'm pretty sure he's not actually discontinued, just impossible for me to buy new. The School heads were never available in the stores, only in person at a faceup workshop in Japan, so.....being in the US, I had no chance of buying one new. However, I was able to find one on the MP, and he just arrived to me about 30 minutes ago! He's so pretty....

 

My experience regarding that is to wait, to save, to lurk, to stalk and to SNATCH the doll i want the moment it shows up on the mp or otherwise for an ok price.

With the ones mentioned I wouldnt worry too much.

A Zhuqing was on the MP just a while ago (might still be), Withdolls keep popping up and the company itself does rereleases on special occassions, as for Junia... Again the MP is your friend.

If not for dolls up for grasp, you can always put up a wtb. I got two (?) doll heads I wanted that way.

Just be sure to keep a set amount of money on the side for the case of the case and be ready

 

Falling for discontinued/limited sculpts is a way of life in the BJD hobby. You kind of get used to it over time. Me, my problem is that all the dolls on my wishlist for a long time were discontinued/limited. Thing is, though, that's what the secondhand market is for. With enough time, patience, and potential willingness to pay more than the doll cost originally, there's very little you can't get your hands on.

The last two dolls I've acquired fell into this category. Dollshe Afghan was discontinued long before I decided I wanted one, and she wasn't terribly popular to start with so finding them secondhand is a nightmare. I made an offhanded comment here, though, and out of nowhere a friend of mine PM'd me asking if I wanted to buy hers. (I did. :3) The other one -- my longtime Holy Grail, a Volks SD13 Shirou Tachibana -- was released before I got into the hobby. I've wanted him for ten years, but I was waiting for the stars of availability of doll, availability of money, and price I was willing to pay to come into alignment. Happily enough, they finally did, and he's on his way home to me right now.

Don't ever let 'discontinued' or 'limited' discourage you from getting the doll you want. They're out there somewhere, and if you want it bad enough it will come to you eventually.

 

What Tez said... It seems to happen to almost all of us sooner or later.

For me, the "one that got away" was SoulDoll's Celestyn. They were never a popular sculpt to begin with... being, I think, a little too much before their time style-wise... so there were very few of them sold. Finding one after they were discontinued? 'Darn near impossible. I've seen *ONE* come up for sale in the last decade, and wasn't fast enough to get him.

I'm at peace with the idea that I'll probably never have one. I accept it as a distinct possibility. But I still want one, anyway.

 

Sometimes you can find an alternative, if you're lucky.

I'd love to have a Volks SD17 Genji. But he was very expensive, even when he was new, and his secondary market prices tend to be astronomical. I didn't realize it when I bought him, but my DIM Minimee Squall Leonhart looks a lot like Genji! And he was so much less expensive.



Left, my Bevan (Squall Leonhart) and right, Volks Genji.

I didn't even realize how much the sculpts looked alike until the custom faceup was finished and Bevan was complete! The resemblance is noticeable, even though the wigs, eyes and faceups are so different. So I "found" my Genji, even though I wasn't consciously searching for him!

Linda S.
galatia9

 

I fell in love with Oasisdoll Natalie (the doll in my avatar) just before she was discontinued. I didn't have the money at the time, and I always kicked myself for not going for it. A few years later, I saw someone selling her head on the marketplace, and I knew I couldn't pass her up again since she's pretty rare. Luckily it was almost my birthday so I had some extra funds.

 

Oh heck yeah. I knew back when DC released Xaveira I wanted her body... I wantd it soooo bad but couldn't justify the price. I still can't really. But now i've seen owner pics, the want is more. And it huuuuurts.
I'm kinda hoping they either rerelease that body, maybe with a different head, or someone decides to split one and sells the body because arghhh. i need that teeny spider body in my life.
I like Elisabeth but Xaveira's proportions are to my eye more pleasing (she has a longer abdomen) and the 8 legs yessss. also 1/6 is probably easier to display here.

 

All dolls I own, except the tinies, are discontinued and sometimes very rare sculpts. What I do is make sure that I have the money to buy one of them and then stalk the marketplace until I find them (for a good deal). It took me about seven years to find a Williams for a price that I was willing to pay. I consider myself incredibly lucky to be the owner of a Gomidoll Iru-HS, a Dive Seimei and an MS Laurie, all three very rare sculpts. Still haven't found my Kanon Louis, though, and it's been 11 years and counting. But this sculpt is notoriously rare (to the point where even fans are no longer sure if he even exists, or has been mistaken for a similar looking sculpt) and he sold out in 2005.

It helps to see it as a long-term project. You're not likely going to find one the moment you open up a browser, so you'd better enjoy the process. For me, hunting down the sculpt is almost as rewarding as owning it. And that moment where you finally get to open up the box? Priceless!

 

I have some dolls that I fell in love with when I first saw them but, unfortunately, at the time, there was no way I could've afforded them. One was limited (Impldoll Miguel the Demon Hunter) and the other had the company close (Unidoll Ark). I also really, really wanted the Lumedoll Zero tiny but again, cash was not available when he was.

I have seen Miguel pop up now and again in the MP but there was always something not quite right (wrong colour, parts missing, etc) and for a while there were Ark's that made their way into the MP with a fair bit of frequency but as the years have passed, he's become a rarer and rarer creature to find. The Lumedoll Zero... *sigh*. He's off-topic here so I can't find him through the MP here.

But, I have bought all kinds of limited dolls 2nd hand and I even found a Unidoll (although not Ark) here in the MP. It takes dedication and a truckload of patience but eventually you can probably find what your heart desires.

 

I have a love of Soom fantasy parts, so I've had to scour the MP for Vesuvia's scorpion body (in bronze) and for Cass' mermaid body in NS.. neither was super hard, though Cass took me around six months of searching...

 

I thought that I would never get hold of my limited grail doll, because he never showed up on the MP and the ones that were listed on eBay wore a $4.5 - $6.5K pricetag. In the end, a very nice seller on Tumblr allowed me to purchase hers for a much more reasonable price, and now he's in my home and I love him dearly. I would say the best thing you can do is explore every avenue on a regular basis...including daily forays on the MP, FB, Flickr and Tumblr. You can also try YHJ, where good stuff often turns up (and of course there's Mandarake, but I've been warned that BJD purchases there can be pretty hit or miss as to the condition of the doll).

 

I fell in love with DollZone's little flower event doll Lulu and eventually found her after about 2 and a half years of searching I finally got her (not that she ended up staying though). And I'm still in love with most of Marchen Waltz's sculpts and since the company is gone and they weren't too popular that's gonna make a fun search for when I have spare money and time, but the search is half the fun in this hobby