Tell me your cool 2nd-hand bjd stories!

Once got a tan pukifee body at a good discount cuz their dog chewed the head I boiled it and a lot of the dents flattened out except some really bad gouches. Not a fun story lol

My best buy is definity my realpuki obi. The seller bought the cutest little crocheted hat for him as well as a vest & shorts. He's been my little travel buddy ever since. I even took him to Hawaii!

 

It was my most positive memory I think. When my doll Sven, arrived from a seller on eBay (he's Doll in life Rydel), I opened him up and was filled with this overwhleming warm feeling and a powerful odor of Nag Champa. Sven basically remains my favorite to this day. It's a good thing I like Nag Champa myself and it brings so many happy memories or I think the box opening might have been more unpleasant. The odor was so strong!
He was also strung I think with bungee cord, that striped stuff. So he was a funny little fellow.

 

I recently got an adorable Volks school A boy. Somehow further up the line he’d been dyed BLUE! The previous owner managed to remove the bulk of the blue color but there were still blotches of blue all over him. When I got him I went through a whole cleaning and stain lifting process. He’s a beautiful doll now, though I always give him blue eyeshadow for his faceup as a bit of a nod to his past lol.

 

My two favorite secondhand gets are a Resinsoul Mei, and a Gray Plumage Gumu.
Both I got super cheap like half or less of their retail price. Yes even for being cheap sculpts. Though were they anything fancier I'm sure someone would have gotten to them before me.
The Gumu works great for a character, though I've been stuck in finding a body. The RS Mei also got my best faceup for the longest time. Now it's chipped though, and I need to redo it.

And since we're talking about smell, the Mei had a strong, strong whiff of hand sanitizers etc. Of all smells, at least it signaled that the seller cared to keep her clean in peak world-pandemic.

 

I can't say it's a cool memory, but one of my boys came with a treasure trail (and more). I knew he was blushed but not that blushed

It didn't stick around long and the only blushing remains on the feet of that body.

 

@pondkoi honestly a lot of people would have been averse to it or worse The whole box was pungent but just proof it was meant to be. Yes I'm very lucky not to have been allergic! I am however very easily upset by odors so it was lucky it was that particular fragrance

 

I once saw a doll someone else found in the knock-off-saturated depths of ebay and everyone from the community looking at it thought it must be fake- but I'm nearly a Hobby "Old Fart" and I recognized the sculpting and jointing as being from before the time when "R-word" became so horribly common. She was from 2008 or 9, I bet on it. I bet her very low price on it!
When i got her, she was covered in penciled tattoos, marks of wear and love, and glitter nail polish. She was clearly someone's darling. After checking Stolen/Lost doll listings, I got to work scrubbing her clean and she has tidied up very nicely! She's an Asleep Eidolon Yara and she is indeed from around 2009. Not even too badly yellowed, either. Now her name is Rose of Venice.

 

Bought a granado body in tan for about 1/3 of it's original price. Nothing too amazing but when it arrived I discovered that all of his detachable "junks" are gone missing. Aside from that, everything else looks perfect and brand new. I just find it funny to think that all those dingdongs amounted to 2/3 of the original price lol

I also recently got a AS doll 74cm body that's supposedly in tan for less than 130usd. But when I got it, the color seems to be more pink/orange than it's supposed to be. The seller said it was a flawed doll from the factory. They probably mixed the wrong amount of pigments. I'm not expecting top grade for a discounted item anyway. It's just funny now I have a big salmon-colored boy in my crew. He is a fierce looking pink man lol . (I'll post his profile soon when he gets his proper clothes.)

 

Here’s mine… I adopted an older Luts Minifee Shiwoo a few years ago and I found out that he had had about maybe 7 other owners over the years he also came with the same clothes and kept the same name and character from his first owner all the way back in 2006

I have one about a new doll too… a few years ago I got a DikaDoll boy and when I opened the box he had a very bad “new resin” smell, I’ve never had such a smell on a new doll before but I ended up having to leave him in another room for a few days to air him off… every time I see him I am reminded of that

 

Just recently a lady contacted me. She found my profile by luck. She saw my doll wish list and happened to have the exact doll in the exact color I've been wanting. He didn't quite 'click' with her when he arrived so I was able to adopt him! So I now have my Doll Zone Rory which also happens to be my first boy. The whole interaction felt like such a coincidence and she said it must have been good karma for our paths to cross.

Just thought it was a neat experience all around and he feels even more special to me.

 

In 2018 my doll friends and I were talking about an Elfdoll Ruru for sale on eBay. The poor thing had no headcap, just a wad of packing tape in her head! One of the friends said she had an extra Ruru headcap, if any of us were interested in buying her; however we all declined. In 2020 the Ruru popped up again, on the DoA Marketplace, still with that wad of tape in her head

This time around, I realized that she'd work well as a character in my resin crew, and the price was reasonable, so I bought her, and the headcap from the friend. It was satisfying to make the doll "whole", and to get an older Elfdoll that I hadn't considered when she was new.

 

One of my dolls came with a lego figure! I casually mentioned it to the seller, and she said that her kid had been absolutely devasted after "losing" it. I sent it to them, and the little guy sent me a thank you note back!

 

I bought a Volks Cyndy with a lovely artist face-up from a local collector who was paring down her collection. I prefer the default Volks face-ups, so I had planned on wiping her and trying to recreate her original one. The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that I didn't want to wipe such a pretty face, so I offered her up for trade for any old Volks sculpts with original face-ups. I was thrilled when someone on Instagram had a Cyndy with the original face-up & wanted to trade for mine! We had a lot of giggles over our "Cyndy for Cyndy" trade and we both were so happy with how it all worked out!

 

all of my dolls except 2 are secondhand! there's no especially exciting stories behind them, mostly a lot of "I put in a lowball bid on this auction cause I was Sure I'd get outbid and then: no" and "I never thought I'd own this doll but a friend of a friend was selling one and they put us in contact."

I Have had multiple occurrences of seeing a doll and not even putting them on my mental wishlist because surely I'd never find one for sale...only for them to show up randomly a short time later. like my aimerai nick chopper who was listed on mandarake the day after my birthday...I bought him while hiding in the bathroom at work!

there's also my dollfie dream from 2004/2005, I suspect she'd never been out of her package before I found her...this doll is old enough to vote!

 

I love buying dolls on the secondary market. For some reason, it gives me more satisfaction than a shiny brand new one.

 

I got super lucky, and I have told this to literally any and everyone who will listen, I found a doll that the artist I'm pretty sure no longer makes for very little. The doll was damaged, and it did not have the original packaging and COA, but it is legit and I love her.

 

Before my first adopted BJD (DoD DoC Petsha) became the ghostly Eremiel, she was once a cute, spunky girl by the name of Doux Trinette. Me and my once sole dorrie (Luts KDF Hodoo) met her the first time circa 2009 on a Valentines Doll Meet and during the photoshoots with both of them together, her aesthetics complement my doll so well that they look like (and teased as) a couple.

Fast forward to 2010, I was gutted when her owner decided at that time to quit the BJD hobby and put both her DoC dolls for sale, including DoC Petsha. I do not have plans to adopt her Petsha at first but after finding out that she accepts installment payments, that was it. She came home with me that same year and, with a new name and face-up change, became my second BJD.

My second adopted BJD came from the DoA Marketplace last 2011 when I made up my mind to purchase my dream BJD, the classic Luts Delf El, either brand new or 2nd hand. The stars aligned that very year when 1) I chanced upon a 2nd hand Delf El head in DoA marketplace (which I bought *very* quickly for a fair price XD) and 2) got a Dreaming El head from the Luts website before they stopped carrying CP sculpts. As an extra, the year after, CP Fairyland held their anniversary promo wherein their Feeple60 bodies can be purchased separately.

2011 (and a bit of 2012) was indeed the "Year of El" for me.