Passing on Beautiful New Dolls

i'm exactly the same way. i've limited myself to 1/3 and nothing above 70cm either esp since I've made a 1/3 apartment studio diorama for the dolls. and I don't feel like having 7ft 4in giant lol.
but i do wish for a FL centaur. just can't bring myself to get one until there's a 1/3 one which may never happen.
and then DV has some very interesting sculpts but they're mostly 1/4 as well.

 

The worst is when you have to pass on a beautiful new doll because she's just not in the budget! (me, right now. Ugh, I hate having to be a responsible adult! lol).

 

I definitely have issues with this, too. For me it’s more that I feel really overwhelmed by the number of dolls I own, but I really enjoy the shopping aspect of the hobby when I can afford it, so I get a bit stuck. I tend to try to frame it as “okay, receiving this doll would be super fun and exciting, but what would it feel like to actually have them in your collection once that excitement wears off?” Usually the answer to that is that it would be stressful & overwhelming.

 

Well it's hard in the beginning but after time you're getting used to it , also with patience as you will have built your collection and have already a number of dolls that will be enough for you your mind will react differently because no matter how beautiful they are you will know they might get you overwhelmed if they are too many. And don't forget you can always save the pictures on pc and look at them that's the wonderful thing in a doll community you don't have to have every doll to see it for every doll there will always be someone to share pretty photos to admire

 

I 100% have this issue Because of space constraints and my preference for mature sculpts, I have to pass up on many, many... many dolls. I began my collection with my first doll being a fashion BJD. And since I'd like all the future dolls in my collection to 'match', I only intend to collect 1/4 scale and under fashion/art dolls, which effectively limits my options I always found that all the super amazing looking mature sculpts I like are at least 1/3 scale in the 70cm+ range. Thankfully, I'm beginning to see many more mature minis and tinies. I'm actually at a point now where I've found many potential shells for future characters and I've had to stop myself from thinking "oh, this sculpt would be perfect for this character" or finding characters to fit the sculpts I like so I would have an excuse to get that doll. The reality is I don't have the space or income for that many dolls right now.

 

All of my dolls have to shell a character in my roleplay. So....if the doll doesn't fit a character, 99% of the time, I don't buy it. On the off chance I do, I have to create a character for it....and most of the time, that fails since I just stare at the doll asking "Who are you??" So I see all these pretty dolls, but have to stop and ask myself if I *really* have a place for them...or I'll just enjoy them for a month until they feel like clutter. Limited space and money help curb that impulse too!

 

It is hard but like others have said, I save pictures. I can admire a lot of dolls but something about them will just not sit right with me so I don't buy them. That being said, I do own a lot of dolls...and I need to find a cut off point.

 

Yes, it is hard to pass up on all the new amazing beauties!!!
I think there was a recent thread about Fomo that might be of interest to you if you want to see how others handle it https://denofangels.com/threads/dealing-with-fomo.874856/

In any case I've found that I'm passing on a lot of gorgeous dolls, because they have wings I have no display space to accommodate wings, and while sometimes the wings are optional, it seems a shame not to get the wings or to leave them in the box, because they're a beautiful part of the doll's image. It's really hard to make the cut on them for this reason because it's not as if I dislike the wings.... I just can't cram them anywhere!

Even when I try to be really super picky with my wishlist, it does continue to grow with dolls who check all my boxes It's wonderful that we have so many options to choose from these days though. If I wasn't trying to have some discipline, I could easily accumulate an army because there's just so many cuties.

Sometimes you can enjoy the dolls through owners pictures instead of bring them home. But those aren't always so easy to find And, sometimes the owner pics just make you wish you had gotten them even more, lol Then I have to try super hard to pretend that they don't exist

 

It really, really gets easier the longer you've been in the hobby. I have been in the hobby long enough that I've gotten to know myself and how I shell characters better, as well as my tastes and what I don't like once the dolls get here.

My biggest deterrent to buying dolls is that I can't just buy one doll for a story. It always needs a friend, eventually, and if it has a friend, that friend needs to be the same size/scale/style. It's a pain finding a friend, especially one that will look right, and oftentimes the dolls are unique enough that finding another in the same scale/style will be annoying, so I decide to forgo the doll in the first place. Sometimes our pickiness is a lot of help in that regard!

I've still bought pretty dolls impulsively when they come out, especially since I recently started branching out into anime sculpts and haven't figured out the deal-breakers yet, but it happens less because I can make a more informed decision about what's going to work out long term.

 

I am easily deterred by waiting - if it's a new doll with no owner pics yet and the production times are usually long for the company, I'm going to pass it up. If it's available in stock, I run some calculations on what the actual cost would be with customs and shipping and see it it's still worth it at a remarkably higher price. If it's still a yes, ponder over how it fits in the crew (height, proportions, can it share stuff etc). And then there's the issue of space... Although I get very excited about many dolls, most of them won't make it past the "checklist of practical reasons", I'd know I'd only feel guilty about them when stepping over my own abilities.

Now, second hand is a lot more difficult because there are owner pics and the wait is short and the customs and shipping might be a non-issue locally in which case I just go handle my own beautiful dolls and see if I can forget what I just saw a listing for.

 

I made a no mature MSD rule a long time ago. There have been some very tempting ones, but I have stuck with it. Though now immature MSD are getting pretty hard to find. So many companies are making their kid dolls so slim that the look more like mature dolls next to my thicker ones.

 

Ahhhh…the age-old gorgeous doll conundrum. Yes, it is real…very real. It’s something we all struggle with from time to time. I really had to fight with myself this year to pass on some particularly gorgeous SD boys and a rereleased SD girl I’d always loved, but I did so by constantly reminding myself that there was no more room to be allocated to that particular size. Another thing that has helped is that all my dolls are decidedly character driven…so no character, no doll purchase, no matter what. And the 3rd limiting factor is numbers. I’ve been collecting since 2006, and over time I’ve amassed a good sized collection. I’m really out of room for anything larger than teeny tinies now. But regardless of all this, the struggle is real…still…after all these years.

 

I deal with it by doubling down on the crew I have - play with them, craft/sew for them, spoil them... If I'm staring at my pretty dolls at home, I'm not staring at the pretty dolls out there that I don't own. And most of the time I end up forgetting about the ones out there.

I wrote more of this in the dealing with FOMO thread... I try to make peace with the fact that I can't own every beautiful doll out there (and honestly I don't think I want to). But I already have dolls at home and I can go enjoy them now. They're the ones who give me the most joy and pleasure anyway.

 

I go look at the dolls that I do have. They too, are beautiful. I don't need any more and I can't do better than what I've got. That's what I tell myself anyway. It's hard to resist the excitement of a new doll! My other way to deal is just look forward to pictures posted by other members here.