Unusual reasons for selling a doll

I haven't sold that many dolls, and am trying to thin down my collection now and a few of the reasons might sound a little odd.

Dollmore Banji line girl had a head that was too small in comparison to my other dolls, and I hated her wig. The dang thing wouldn't stay on her head, and she was so tiny I couldn't find a replacement.
Dollzone's Moon dragon from a number of years ago has an awesome aesthetic, but owning one didn't work for me. Due to her dragon body the closest thing to sitting she could caused her to fall on her face. I need more from a doll then them just standing looking cool.

 

I sold a doll becuase it looked too much like someone I know in real life. My sisters best firend. I don;t dislike her, exactly but it was weird to be reminded of her everytime I looked at him. I freely acknowledge it's a weird reason to sell a doll, which is why it probably fits here. Becuase really it shouldn't matter, but once you get a weird idea into your head it;s hard to let go.

 

I sold a pair of Volks MSDs (Schulze and Maria) because I realized they looked too much like child versions of my friend's Volks School A SD13 boy. He's a very interesting character, but not a nice one... It felt like having his love children in my house

 

I'd say that most of my reasons for selling are pretty "normal." Wanting the cash over the doll, not liking the posing, changing interests--that sort of thing.

I will admit that some of those reasons are justifications for things like "This doll has hands that are too big" (even though they are in scale... technically) or "I wish this doll was rooted" (not really a thing with BJDs ). I'd say that the weirdest reason I've used to justify a sale is "They remind me too much of an actual child I know." I guess it's not that strange, but it's weird when you have this doll on your shelf that gives you major "I know this person and don't want to own this person" vibes.

 

I'm not sure if my main reason for selling is super unusual, but I haven't heard people talk about it much so I'll share as well...

For me, I really have to *love* a doll to want to keep it. It's very difficult to explain or identify the factors that lead to that feeling.... But when I sell a doll and the recipient is overjoyed with a doll I didn't love 100%, I feel really really happy.

So I tend to lean toward this ideal state in which I feel like each doll I've touched has ended up in a home that truly loves them ... haha. Obviously I can't control how people feel down the line, but especially those cases where people jump right into styling a doll I sold them makes me feel very happy for the doll.

 

Too small (Tiny luts, 16cm is just too little for me)
Falling out of love with the doll.
Weirdest one is simply: Vacant face no matter what i do.... I cna't help it.. if they have a 1000 yard stare i just can't with them. And one of my current ones has that, im not a fan and she'll be fidning a new home XD

 

Have you seen this tutorial? https://denofangels.com/tutorials/eye-alignment-and-human-expressions.74/
It's also possible that the eyes you're using just don't work well with your doll. If you haven't tried different sizes/styles of eyes yet (assuming you have multiple pairs of eyes), I'd recommend doing that before selling your doll, just to be safe.

 

This was actually a vinyl doll! I've never heard of squishy resin but... I wonder if anyone has encountered it.

 

I'd be very concerned if someone had squishy resin because that usually implies it hasn't been mixed or cured properly and uncured resin is slightly toxic (varies by person, but can cause rashes)


Though there are a few resin types that have some slight squish to them to resist breakage, but I don't think those have hit the BJD market yet.

 

Most of the time when I end up rehoming bjds, it has something to do with a sculpt or body not working out as planned. On an occasion or two, it was my loss of interest in them that had me moving them on.

I have had a few rather...peculiar reasons why a few were rehomed:

• For the very first shell for Tahmos, I was irked by the distance (or lack thereof) between the tip of his chin and the beginning of the neck. I'm more focused on realism, so seeing him in profile with that first head was off-putting (I had a similar issue with another character, but I kept the previous head after he was reshelled to a new one).
• In another instance for Tahmos (the poor boy has been through quite a few iterations), the head was overly larger than I wanted—but that wasn't the odd reason. It involved his facial proportions. His nose was too long (from the eyebrow ridge to the tip, not outwardly), and it was disproportionate in features to the rest of my crew. Try though I might to adjust to it, it just didn't work out (the sculpt was lovely, but just not meant to be Tahmos, or any of my other OCs).
• I received a Classy Doll 66cm male body some years back. He looked perfect in photos in their promotional, but when he arrived...there was something about the shape of his torso area that wasn't working for me. A bit too—curvy? He was also shorter than I wanted, and had this forward slouch that wasn't going to work.
• Similar to the above: Akagi 66cm type 1 body. Beautiful aesthetically, awesome poser...but the arms were more stringy (as in thin, not muscular) than I liked. They looked odd compared to the rest of the body's proportions. The OC I had shelled with that body at the time also looked a bit bobbleheaded, and it was also a bit too short for him. If I'd had an OC it would've worked out for, I might've kept it. (Maybe? Can't know for certain)
• Catgirl got my tongue. Well, it was more so that I purchased an anthro cat girl after seeing one I loved at a local meet from the same company. I had hoped to recreate my own version with my own vision of her, but as time passed and I couldn't build up the nerve to do the dye work it would've required, I lost interest. So now she's in a better home where she's hopefully being loved.

The reasons could be considered unusual, or normal—it all depends. Everyone approaches the hobby differently, and one person's strange reason might be absolutely normal to another

 

Yeah, i know the idea behind that, but if i do that it looks like shes permanently looking up since her eyes are so biig! but if her iris gets any bigger she looks high.. it's really weird :/ She is an old sculpt so that might be it.

 

*snip*

That is kind of what happened to me. Back in the day, I wanted to get into this hobby, so I let a friend talk me into buying a tiny that I liked, but didn't really want. I loved him after a while, but he was simply too small for me, and for the character I had in mind for him, so he was rehomed to someone that loves tinies. He was the only doll that I've ever sold.

I have since gotten SD size and larger, and I recently, I've even bought a couple of tinies, but they were tinies that I wanted pretty badly, not that I was "talked into" buying.

Ryu

 

Probably happens most often when I don’t like how they look with the rest of my dolls. I can love them on their own, but if they don’t vibe with my current group, they won’t last long in my collection. I can’t always describe what’s setting them apart, either… sometimes it’s just a feeling and that’s it lol

 

@dxgirly I’m starting to be that way, too. I didn’t think I cared until I ended up with an SD crew that just clicked perfectly, which starkly contrasted with my disjointed MSD crew. Now I’m trying to tidy it up haha.

I’ve sold several this year for a few reasons
- 3 of them I HATED certain things about their bodies/posing, so they had to go because I dreaded interacting with them
- 2 reminded me too much of people I know IRL, which weirded me out. They didn’t literally look them, just enough features were similar to give the impression of people I know
- I apparently don’t like Fairyland’s white resin until it’s mellowed
- One just didn’t fit in

 

It's rare but have sold dolls due to emergencies or medical.

Other reasons... skin color was not like picture, face ups not being neat, some I could just not bond with, which is hard to explain.

 

I have very petty reasons for selling more often than not. Some of these may be for the same doll/body.

-A full doll: her resin was too red toned to look nice with the makeup I had made. Didn't want to try painting her again.
-Two heads: where humans normally have muscle showing in the eye inner corner, they just had holes in their eye inner corner so the eye inner corners showed the eyeballs through. Could have been modded with Milliput, but I felt lazy, so I let them go.
-A body: she didn't have "rotating" elbows (elbow joints that allow you to turn the arm 360 degrees from the elbow).
-Multiple heads from the same company: Their eye sockets were sculpted so that no matter what eyes you used and how you placed them, the eyes would always look "uncentered" and like the other one was looking too much to the left and the other one too much to the right. Could also probably have been modded, but again, laziness.
-A body: her torso shape reminded me of an eggplant from 3/4 angle, eventually so much that all I could in the end see in her was an eggplant.
-A body: she had unproportionally small feet for her size and the ankle joints looked ugly. It didn't show with shoes on, but I knew they were there and it bothered me.
-A body: too short torso compared to legs.
-The ID72 body: the knee joints had ugly insides when bent.
-A head: she looked too kind, so kind it made me feel bad.

 

@keiko-chan I had the same thing about the doll resembling someone IRL, usually whom I wasn't friends with (and far from that lol).

I have also sold dolls because they were double jointed and I prefer single joints... I know, it's usually the other way round xD

Sometimes I sold the dolls because their faceups were SO PERFECT and I knew that if I wiped i off, I'd not replicate it, ever and yet I had a different faceup in mind for this doll... and since I'm a stingy cheapbum, I chose to resell the dolls with those faceups rather than decrease the value and risk not bonding with the new, worse faceup anyway...

One time I decided to resell pretty much anything that wasn't an SD girl and I'm still getting back to this after a show while where I decided to come back to a different size... Now I'm waiting for a petite SD boy body to arrive, but I don't worry since the clothes won't be an issue. And frankly, that was the only reason why I sold the other dolls: since each size needs three boxes (wigs, clothes, shoes), I cannot keep multiple sizes under my roof... In sum: space issues

Oh, I I sold my boy dolls when I was dating that one guy and then another, because I was very open about my dolls and characters and the way I talked about my boy dolls with affection (like they were my sons) made my ex boyfriends uncomfortable. Yeah, they were toxic and no, I'd not let a random guy interfere with what I've been doing and loving (i.e. the doll hobby) for nearly a decade ever again

I also sold some dolls or doll heads that arrived and didn't match the body because of the resin match or the size. So then I was usually selling both parts anyway and resigning from the character altogether. I mean, unless the head was lighter and I could easily blush-match it to the darker body. I actually liked that and often ordered darker-skinned bodies on purpose

 

Here are some of the odd reasons I've sold dolls:

- I didn't like the shape of the lips on a doll. I thought about getting a new faceup, but I didn't see one that was done in a way that didn't bother me so I sold him. Funny thing is I didn't care for his lips in the promo pictures, not sure why I went through with ordering him
- I had a doll that had subtractive modifications. I loved the original shape of the sculpt, and ended up preferring the unmodified shape over the modded one I had so I sold him. It was really hard to part with him. If he had the same faceup and was otherwise unmodified, I would still have him today.
- I purchased two of the same doll because I liked his sculpt and had him in two colors. I realized later that the nose was just too large for my taste, and the eye wells were just too deep in my opinion. I sold them both.
- I had a doll that arrived in a badly damaged box. One of his ears was broken and it felt like a fight to get an undamaged faceplate from the company. It was the first and only time I had a doll arrive damaged, and it tainted the experience and my memories around the doll, and I did end up selling him eventually even though he was lovely.
- I've also sold off all of my floating heads that I hadn't done anything with. I figured if I kept putting off finishing them, they weren't that important to me.

 

I have sold many dolls over the years and I am still trying to analyze why I can't bring myself to keep the ones I like. I have sold dolls I like just because of mental blocks I have or boredom.
There were two dolls I had that I really thought were gorgeous but they seemed too fancy for me. I like my dolls to be casual for the most part and these dolls could not pull off casual no matter how hard I tried.
There have also been dolls that had facial expressions that I absolutely loved in every photo I saw of them but they didn't translate the same to me in person.
I have bought dolls to wear a specific pair of shoes or outfit I had that none of my other dolls fit in, but although they fit the items it just didn't look right. I need to stop doing that!