What is holding you back from having your dream collection?

Mostly space for me. Right now a big portion of my bjds are in the boxes cause i just dont have the room to display them as id like.

 

My dream collection would involve a Volks doll and a few CP Delfs, so for me it's very much availability and funds. But there's also space. I don't have a lot of space for dolls and thus have to hold back and be smart with where I spend my money and wait between purchases to see where I'm at.

Also my dream collection would involve some OCs being shelled, which require some accessories that simply do not exist or require more money to commission, such as a specific style and color of wig and a pair of small SD girl cowboy boots.

 

I am also in the "it just doesn't exist" boat While it got better over the years with the available options, we are still a far cry from actually having diverse options. And I don't want anything crazy. I mostly want heads that are 40+ in age and bodies that are not ripped for men, and more ripped/taller for women. Once I can have some lanky older dude and ripped 70cm women I'd be happy.

 

Mostly, not knowing what a dream collection would look like to me xD
I have 6 dolls right now and one of them will probably go soon if I don't find something else to do with it besides it being cute because that doesn't work for me. And I have always wanted to have a dark-tan-skinned doll, but never found the one for me due to being impossible to find one in MSD size with the correct features.

 

Money. I'm generally an anxious person about spending large sums of money on things which I've only seen photos of, especially if they're not going to be with me for months and there's the potential for extra costs with import duties. If my bank account were large enough that doll purchases were a significantly smaller percentage of my savings then I'd be less anxious, potentially be able to not only buy more dolls but take a chance on not loving them as well. It would also help with reason number 2.

Dolls I want not existing. Part of why I got into BJD's was to shell some of the characters living in my head. Some of them have very specific height and posability requirements which are really hard to find bodies for, especially in 1/4 scale. So if I had the money I would be able to pay people to either just make me the dolls I want or customise existing dolls in a way that I don't have the energy, tools, knowledge or space to do safely.

 

I have my dream collection now, but it took me a long time to get here.

What held me back before was not knowing what I wanted, which is pretty normal for a newbie anyway, and my own insecurities - being too perfectionistic, impatient with everything including myself and my own skills, falling into the comparison trap, being envious of other people's dolls instead of enjoying my own, giving up and playing the victim when things "got too hard" or felt impossible to do or get. Honestly, my insecurities (which, at the end of the day, have quite little to do with dolls) were the hardest things to overcome and took the longest time -- including a 10-year hiatus away from the BJD hobby to just grow up a bit, get some life experience, and gain some wisdom.

So it wasn't really external things that held me back in the hobby, but myself. Things are a lot better for me now, so the hobby has become a lot more enjoyable and fulfilling too. I feel a lot more sure of what I want out of my dolls and the hobby at large, and contented with the dolls I have and my skill level (though of course I want to keep improving!). So I'm currently assembling the doll collection that I'd always dreamed of.

 

For me it is money and space. A lot of my dolls are in their boxes as I don’t have space to display most of them.

 

Current life circumstances and work/life balance.
Last year was horrific for my family, short version being both my parents, who live far from me, suffered from unforeseen health complications, and dealing with those took up most of my time and energy.
I'm also going to move house in a few months, so I have no idea what my doll storage arrangements are going to be like. I would love to make a little (bold word for owning 1/3s) display or diorama, but don't know how it would possibly fit in whatever new space I end up with.
My work also leaves me quite tired, because I don't finish until past 10pm, so I don't feel up to much when I get home. I do often have one of my dolls sitting beside me when I watch tv or whatever to wind down, but I don't have the energy to do more than change a wig or an outfit.
To get my dolls to where I want them, I need to do a lot more sewing and faceups, both of which I'm still learning, so it's sort of a slow march to where I'd like my collection to be.

 

No one is making the MSD she-werewolf of my dreams. That's the last BJD I really, actively want for my collection. Otherwise, once my DV dragon arrives, it's going to be pretty near complete.

 

Finding what I want. My dolls are mostly modern humans and it is unbelievably difficult to find the styles I want for them. I need things like 80s glam guys, punk (not punk-pop, not emo, not Hot Topic style...), band t-shirts...even wigs are hard because I need realistic styles, like one of my boys needs spiky hair that doesn't look like fur or ridiculously thick. Another needs naturally loosely curled hair but everything seems to being way too thick, ringlets or giant curls. Finding wigs in colors between blond and reddish brown is hard, like why is ash brown or dark blond so hard to find? So I guess for my human crew, my main issue isn't the dolls themselves, but finding the right things to finish them.

For my tiny crew....I need more bugs. It's pretty hard to find tinies that are insects, not $300+ and still available.

 

I don't know if I have something like a dream collection but I know what I miss from utilise what I have as I want too , a really good camera and some plexiglass closed doors shelving. I know that the more I utilise my collection for decoration and pics the more I make it more mine customise and minimise where is needed otherwise I get lost in the randomness of pretty sculpts

 

I have a dream collection right now...

...but only when I'm asleep

 

Honestly.....myself. To be more specific, figuring out what my dream collection would even look like and boiling it down to something more refined. So far I've really just been following my whims in terms of what dolls to add to my collection, but I often end up without a plan or (a few times) getting dolls secondhand because restoring them looks like a fun project more than because I'm in love with their sculpt. I've been feeling lately like my collection is a bit disorganized and even if I keep every single doll I have right now I'd really like to figure out more of a concrete plan for them and put more focus into refining their aesthetics as opposed to just getting more dolls because that seems most exciting (thanks, ADHD).

 

Money

 

Space, money and slow second hand market

 

For me it's mostly space.

I recently bought a house, so I have more space than I did before in my tiny apartment, but my room in the house is still quite small. Although my room in the house is smaller than my room in the apartment, I'm able to use it solely for dolls and my art, which helps (no bed, dresser, vanity, etc taking up the space; that stuff wouldn't even all fit in my new room lol). Not to mention, my fiance isn't a fan of how much I spend on dolls/how many I own. When he complains, though, I rebut it with how much money and space he has been spent on his Amiibo and rare CD collections, haha

 

Money and indecisiveness and also energy/ time and perfectionism on customizing things. Some of that, I'm learning is likely due to the adhd i didn't know i had until a few months ago, and a lot of the rest of it is living under capitalism. The indecisiveness is mostly that I generally have a hard time visualizing characters to be able to find the "right" sculpt for them. But mostly it's money.

 

Dollzone rereleasing Sawarieda so I can buy one blank and not feel bad about looking for one on the marketplace because that would involve having someone else's beloved custom body blushing removed to add my own dream body blushing for a Sawarieda. Also being able to get fantasy parts for my Soom Ignim, and being able to get my hands on a few Soom dolls that weren't popular at the time because the old new Soom girl body sucked, so Soom isn't rereleasing them.

I am mostly happy with my collection. Just need one or two really old sculpts to finish it.

 

WELL, money is definitely one.
I'm not in a BAD financial situation or anything, but I'm definitely not wealthy either. The city I live in is expensive af, and I'm always trying to budget and save money and blah blah blah adult things that I hate I'm able to set a chunk of fun money aside every month, though!

Really, though . . . for now I actually HAVE all of the dolls I wanted most! (One still needs a proper body, but he can deal with the badly-proportioned placeholder for now lmfao).

So at this point, it's my indecisiveness about how I wanna style them that's holding me back more so than finances. Most are still sorta 'telling me' who they are as characters (my dolls always manifest as new OCs in my weird lil brain). So I've still not entirely settled on the looks I wanna go with for each of them. I'm starting to figure it out, but still toying around with it.
And then there are a couple I'll be sending off for faceup commissions as well. But of course before I do THAT, I need to decide exactly how I want their faceups to look. Because I don't want them to just be completely generic . . I like my characters to have unique little distinguishing marks. Usually just something like a little scar or freckle or whatever—nothing major, but something uniquely 'them.'

So YEAH. I'd say it's, like, 95% procrastination and indecisiveness keeping me from perfecting my current collection
We'll get there! . . . . . . . . . . And then I'll inevitably discover yet another discontinued never-on-the-secondhand-market sculpt that I MUST have and the hunt will begin all over again, pfff.

 

I have had a lot of dolls come through my hands for various reasons. I know that even if I could acquire all the dolls I miss (alas my Narae and MNF Shiwoo vampire....) there were good reasons I stopped collecting MSD size (didn't want to maintain many different sized clothing/wig selections and my collection was trending towards SD).

And then other dolls I loved that left were due to not fitting into the vision of my collection as a whole with the huge eyes and large heads, or because they needed a body too large for me to maneuver.

My "dream collection" would require me to be able to get past extreme aesthetic differences when taken as a whole (real vs stylistic, sizing not matching well with one another or with my physical ability), and to conquer my deep aversion to having more than about 10 bjd at once (a number I know as I approach I start to get anxious).

So..... me. I am what is holding me back.