The BJD Crash

I didn't fall for BJD's monetary value, it was their aesthetic value that I fell for, lol! I don't think I would want to buy some as investment and plan to resell for higher value. On the contrary I totally wish BJD could have a crash right now so I can afford them!!!

 

I think if the BJD hobby crashes my feelings for them might change depending on the circumstances. For example, if cheap dolls that are extremely beautiful, customizable, and easy to produce started a new craze in Asia, and all the BJD people jumped ship for these new cheap dolls, all the companies might follow suite and the current BJD market (as we know it) would crash. It would wind up being difficult to continue finding BJDs (sort of like cassette audio tapes vs. CDs) and communities such as DoA might change to adapt to the new thing. If that happened I imagine the loss in value would allow many people to simply hold on to their "obsolete" BJDs simply because they wouldn't even be worth selling at that point. Maybe in a hundred years they would be valuable as an antique (if the resin holds out that long.)

No matter what sort of circumstances bring on the crash, if the dolls are no longer profitable to produce then artists will stop making them, and we wouldn't really have a choice to continue getting them or not. Say what you want about artists making art not to make money and blah blah blah, but you have to pay the bills and the materials and process for BJDs aren't cheap. If it still costs an artist to make a BJD a few thousand dollars and they could only sell it for $20 then then it wouldn't be fiscally possible to continue.

Needless to say, I'm looking forward to a long and happy life for the BJD market, which seems to be ever expanding

 

Nicely said!

***
It's an interesting thing to think about too. If there was an across-the-board bjd crash, like a "Black Tuesday" in doll values: at first I'd be vexed for the sake of my existing doll family. Then I'd go on a buying rampage. Except I doubt there would be many happy sellers, and hard competition between buyers, so the values would probably recover in time.

If the market changed somehow so that new dolls still cost the same, but didn't hold their value? (ie cost a lot less secondhand.) I still would have bought my first 2 dolls, but I probably wouldn't be able to justify spending any more money. Maybe I would have prowled the secondhand market...but there would probably be hard competition between buyers, and doll artists would probably disappear as their businesses dried up...

If the market changed to cheap products, squeezing out the artistry end of the business...I'd probably buy bjd still, but as toys and not "collectibles", and I'd let the kids play with them.

 

if BJD's went down to very low prices, people would go nuts and buy dozens a piece, thus putting the prices back up, due to supply and demand

 

I don't buy dolls as investments -- I buy them because I enjoy them. Collectibles in general have a tendency to go up and down in value depending on things like the economy (not as many people have extra cash to spend right now, for instance), or because different items go in and out of popularity. That's why banking on being able to resell a doll later at a profit isn't a good reason to buy a doll.

 

Early last year unbeknown to most people in the hobby the costs of resin (on a commercial scale) sky-rocketed at one point due to the GFC (Global Financial Crisis) and then as backlash from the Earthquake in China - a great number of the chemicals required for resins are manufactured in China or by companies with Chinese investors - they became difficult to obtain and a number of manufacturers stood on the precipice of folding due to lack of investor capital and a hugely decreased consumer market. There was a point where those few who were are aware of the rising costs of resins were concerned that our hobby may have become "null and void" as the costs of producing them became too great... Fortunately the prices levelled out rather quickly and within 6 months they were close to being on-par with their original pricing... So from another perspective a "crash" in terms of the production materials would in effect drive the prices of our dolls upward due to their rarity and inability to be effectively produced at affordable prices....

*puts brain back in lunch-box*

 

These are, IMHO, the most important points to consider here. The 'tulip craze' dealt with a bubble of artificial value/inflated price bursting.

From all the 'how to price your artwork' seminars I've gone to, and the books on arts business I've read, the usual formula is roughly like this: cost * 2 = wholesale price; wholesale price * 2 = retail price. That's at the most basic. It does not appear to apply to this hobby, even though it easily could, and some may argue that it should. It is easy to see a high price tag and assume it is artificially inflated and padded heavily, but this is not always the case.

Having seen mentions that retailers generally make about $100 profit on dolls that they had to buy into the shop for over $500 and the retail price point is in the $600-$700 region, that's obviously not following the 'standard' formula. The profit margins are much lower from wholesale to retail there, so the artificial inflation necessary to create the 'tulip craze' phenomena is not present there.

I don't know what the dolls cost to manufacture, but I am guessing that even if they are going with the cost*2 formula to reach that $500-ish price point, that's still pretty baseline. I won't pretend to know how much resin is used in the creation of a doll -- including all those waste parts that are pure loss -- but it isn't an inexpensive material to work in. www.sculpt.com shows some pricing on the undyed kinds, and then the dyes and colors are extra, as are the mold-making materials (which are also not cheap), and so on. I'd be willing to bet it isn't cost*2 unless they aren't charging for labor, so the artificial inflation isn't there, either. It could be present in the materials themselves somewhere, since as whitewings' post demonstrates, their prices are a flux to consider as well, but that would be beyond the doll companies' control, and also beyond the retailers' control.

 

of course i would still love them!!!
and i would buy a bunch while they are worth nothing xD

 

I would still collect/start collecting and heck, get the ones I love because if they are cheaper I can just snatch them right up!

 

Well, financial crashes tend to heal after a time. Plus, my parents wouldn't go absolutely bonkers about the price of one doll. Heck, I'd buy 5 if the prices were extremely cheap!

 

It wouldn't bother me that much if the value of dolls crashed in regards to my own dolls. There'd be a fleeting moment of guilt that I spent so much on something that lost so much value, but I'd get over it and then start trawling the MP for really good deals :P

As for doll companies, it would probably be a disaster. Some companies are having trouble enough staying afloat - eg Felixdoll and speculatively CH - so I think a few of them would go under. It would be terribly sad.

 

In all honesty, I don't expect the value of these dolls to stay constant forever, but I also don't think there will be anything so dramatic as a crash. I think that what will likely happen is that gradually people lose interest in the hobby, and it will eventually fizzle or or shrink down to a much smaller hobby with fewer people who are as fanatically into BJDs and fewer companies bothering to make them. Retail prices for BJDs will probably stay somewhat constant, but there will be little demand for thesecondary market, so prices of older limited dolls will drop and many will sell for less than the original retail price.

The hobby isn't really so huge that it's booming and you pretty much need an unreasonable boom for there to be a dramatic bust. But I do think the popularity will fade and the smaller number of collectors won't be enough to keep resale prices afloat. I don't think this will be happening in the next couple of years, but maybe 5 to 10 years down the line. At that point I probably will have had my doll interest wane to the point that I'm not leaping at great bargains on limiteds, though I doubt the decrease in value will affect me as I probably won't sell the dolls I have now.

I have seen similar things happen to other hobbies and collectables, it can be hard to guess which ones will maintain value and which will fizzle, and it can happen to both popular and unpopular items. For every Beanie Baby or Cabbage Patch Kid craze there are also many smaller hobbies which get left in the dust as the collectors/hobbyists lose interest and new audiences don't appear in the same numbers.

 

I would be absolutely ecstatic if bjds suddenly dropped in price! My doll family would increse exponentially should such an event take place, lol.

 

Yes, because I am not investing in dolls for profit! (Unlike the tulip market!)

I think that if doll prices suddenly plummeted (and those of use who have been around for a while know that they ALREADY HAVE!) then it wouldn't matter to anyone unless they 1) hoped to flip their doll and sell it for profit, OR 2) wanted to recoup their money on a doll they found they didn't like as much as they hoped.

It used to be a more sure bet that one could sell a doll you didn't bond with and maybe make a bit of money or at least make your money back... Now, it's not at all a sure bet. Yet people still buy dolls and sell them for less. And BJDs seem to still be an expanding market, even in a bad economy. If BJDs haven't really "crashed" by now, I doubt anything drastic will happen. The market will always fluctuate... dolls will be produced maybe more, maybe less.. maybe they will someday stop altogether... but probably not a big crash/change anytime soon. And to most all doll owners, it shouldn't make any difference, since very few are in it to make money by buying dolls in the hopes of selling them for more later!

 

Oh hellz yeah I would still love my dollies! I think it would make them more endearing in a way because they represent how hard it was back in the day to get BJDs stateside and would make a good conversation piece. That, and if more people could get into the hobby because of the cheaper prices, it would make BJD events over here happen more often as opposed to those coveted yearly events.

I would also probably feel less guilty about purchasing more of them to continue my exploration into the hobby as sometimes I look at them and think, "Omigawd...could have bought my engagement ring instead of buying Marie...could have paid for wedding stuff instead of buying Naomi...would have paid off this month's bills instead of buying Kunkun..." It would be less of a luxury item really and more along the lines of contemporary hobbyist.

Anyways, would still love the current dolls the same way now and be still interested in collecting them.

 

This. lol.

I collect BJDs mainly coz I love them and not for their resell value, though I might be vexed if I ever come to the point that I have to sell them (but I guess that's rather unlikely). So to answer your questions, I would still love my dolls the same way I do now and I would still be interested in collecting them. Like someone else pointed out, it's a pretty good excuse to get more of those pretty dolls if prices fall. XD

 

There are a couple of things at work here. First, the tulip market, like the market for tech stocks in the early 2000's, was driven to artificial heights by people who thought they could sell the tulips (or stocks) for a higher price than they paid. It is blindingly obvious that a tulip bulb is not worth the price of a house on the canal, no matter what your currency valuation at the time may be. But! If you think you can sell that tulip bulb to some poor chump for an even higher price, you might buy it. The boom comes from speculators purchasing things not for their intrinsic values so much as their perceived resale value. The crash comes when everybody realizes the intrinsic value is the right one.

So! Is there a comparable boom in the BJD market? Resin is not cheap, and (as surreality and others have nicely illustrated) the production costs remain pretty high in relation to the retail price of the dolls at most companies. In fact, as the hobby grows in popularity and more manufacturers enter the industry, there has been downward price pressure in the industry, lowering margins. This is a natural life cycle of any growing industry. So, it seems that the market is pricing things pretty fairly right now. Prices may continue to drop slightly, but there is so much demand even at these prices that I don't see it happening for a little while. Besides, Korean sculptors gotta make a living, too.

Speculation is what breaks the market with price inflation, and crashes are a fix to that particular breakage. Is there speculation in the BJD market? There's some, to be sure, but I'm amazed at how little there is. Soom monthly limited dolls (the early ones, especially) are probably the worst offenders for speculation that I can think of offhand. Beryls, for instance, were priced very high on the secondhand market, because (1) there were relatively few of them, and (2) they were unique, so lots of people wanted them. Low demand, plus high supply, raised the price of these dolls. What has happened since? Soom has rereleased Beryl, increasing the supply for people who liked the facial sculpt. Also, the market has been absolutely flooded with hooved dolls of all stripes, meeting the demand for people wanting a hooved doll. Thus, the price for a Beryl has crashed, after a fashion, in that it has declined back to a value closer to the cost of production.

 

I don't buy things with the mindset of "I'm going to sell this someday", and BJDs are no exception. My boys are very special to me for many different reasons, and even if I seriously NEEDED the money, I wouldn't sell them. It just...doesn't feel right, personally. So no, a 'crash' wouldn't exactly affect me, or affect the way I feel about them.

 

The only financial change that would put me off collecting would be a massive price rise.
It would haft to go up alot to put me off competly, talking the kind of situation like if the 'less expensive (thinking bobobie/dollzone)' 60cms were nearly 4 figures for a basic.

I didn't get my dolls as any sort on investment and don't really care about their resale value,
if the market did crash I would still stay, probably feeling less guilty about getting them at the time.

One thing I always remeber from economics lessons that applys to dolls: you can't fight the supply and demand curves,
Prices will always end up altering up and down, and what goes down will come up again.