What was the biggest mistake you ever made in the hobby?

Probably trusting company measurements haha! Always measure yourself just to make sure it doesnt take that long but will save you lots of effort in the long run

 

Choosing the wrong resin colour.

 

Thinking I was an expert and buying lots of unnecessary, expensive things from a company which isn't known for low prices...

 

impulse buy and regretting it after i do the payment and of course it can't be cancelled and it didn't happened only once*facepalm*

 

Maybe - not buying a more expensive doll (or doll head) that I really wanted and instead, going for several lower-priced dolls that I didn't want quite as much but got because they were cheaper. In the end, I spent much more money than I would have if I had got the more expensive item right away, so I'm not doing that again.

 

I guess...buying and adopting female BJD. I adopted one (DollnDoll Chloe) from second hand market with cheap price and another, was ordered directly from company (JID Asa)...They are cute but I'm not good at making female outfit nor styling them. I felt a bit regret and should really own only male dolls.

 

A huge mistake I made was getting the "Christsmas bag" from Dollmore for $50. I thought I was going to get cool stuff because the sale said that the "$50 bag" was worth $100 etc. So I jumped in but I received only crap None of the stuff I got was good quality: eyes were acrylic, shirts with ugly patterns, even a pair of trouser that I already had and had gotten them in 2005! (I hate them btw), instead of sending new stuff I think they were getting rid of the old ones *sighs* that money went to the garbage because even if I try to sell those items no one would buy them so I will have to give them out for very cheap. Overall, the bag was worth like $20 of garbage.

No more surprise bags from anywhere!

 

Gah, that sucks D: Thanks for sharing though! I'm glad I read it... Won't be buying any surprise bags now, especially not from DollMore ^^"

 

It's not so much a mistake as a slight regret, but my first BJD (an SD guy) needed a companion so I bought the cheapest girl I could find, a Mirodoll Wind. She's pretty, and I'm sure I'll love her to bits when I'm finished with her mods, but the headache of all her mods was probably not worth the cheaper price tag.

Unless I give up first and just buy her a body from some other company. >.>

 

Biggest regrets so far: Selling my first doll out of frustration instead of just selling her body and finding a new one for her. Second regret was buying a ''rebound'' doll, thinking that what I would have preferred was a tiny(but not the case so much). Live and learn...

 

Buying expensive outfits for dolls that I don't own and realizing I probably never will.

Not using a stand when taking photographs outside. The guy fell on his face and his nose was broken. That has put me off taking dolls outside.

 

Oh! I have made several mistakes over my five years on the hobby. As a former student with a limited budget , I would only buy clothes that were cheap, hoping that the quality will be good enough. However, I was always disappointed and regretted buying them. Now, I prefer to buy clothes that have better quality, even when the price is higher because I know that they are better made and I would not regret buying them. My other mistake was to buy only MSD size dolls because I was scared of the SD size - a 60cm doll was too big for me. I prefer mature looking dolls, so it was a pain to find MSDs in that style. I perception changed after I bought my first SD doll in a convention. He is what I was looking for in MSDs, but never found. Sometimes I feel like selling all my MSD dolls to change them for SDs, but I am too attach to them to do it.

 

Not paying closer attention to the range of sizes with SD-sized dolls. When I first had my K-Doll Kian head I put him on a 55 cm Obitsu body with a male chest plate but I wanted resin body for him. Eventually I saved up for a Domuya Flexi body, which was very expensive at the time, and it turned out to make him a 67 cm doll! Too large to fit well with the rest of the family, too leggy for the character (Luke Skywalker) but too precious (and too expensive) to sell. Now almost a decade later I'm putting a shorter Mirroworld body on my wishlist and finally thinking about getting this fixed. Luke will be back to 55 cm.

 

Thinking that any inexpensive body would be good enough for a modding project I had in mind. The body I got, while reasonably engineered, didn't suit the character in build or height, and even with the mods planned, because of the scope of modding it would take to get the entire body looking the way I wanted it to look, I never actually did anything with it. (The body is long since sold off.)

That body ended up turning me off from the project for a while; it ended up being several years before I returned to it, because I went on a hobby hiatus after that happened. When coming back, I spent a lot more time researching the look of different bodies, not just the price, and ended up with one of the most expensive options I could have gotten; but that doll is now a cherished part of my collection, instead of a frustrating floating head and ill-fitting body. Honestly, though, I think I had to make that mistake to understand what I really needed to do with that doll, and decide internally how much I really wanted to shell him.

And on the upside, it's got me much more interested in body types for my dolls, instead of just facial sculpts, and my collection's gotten a lot more interesting as a result!

 

Not researching a doll before purchasing it. Then, when he arrived I was absolutely in love with him, but realized I could not afford to clothe him. I have been heart broken for years and he has been half-naked.

 

Not thinking about heads needing to fit on necks when buying with the intent to make a hybrid.

 

Having 2 layaways going on at the same time and clearly I haven't learnt my lesson 'cause I DID IT AGAIN!!

 

Buying a new doll when you already have one on layaway...yeah it's not a good idea. Haven't done it often, but enough to know that I really shouldn't. My problem is when a doll that I really want comes up on the secondhand market for a good price, I'm just a sucker for a good deal.

 

Buying a $500 doll. Period.
This hobby is like crack; you just get addicted to the dolls and you suddenly have to have all the beautiful resin babies! That and leaving my Aya in just about full sun exposure for the first almost month of owning her. She actually didn't yellow (as far as I can tell) but I feel like I was such a noob and reflect on it painfully every now and then.

 

A few impulsive doll purchases earlier on before I joined DoA and knew nothing much about bjds. I have sold those earlier purchases once I found the aesthetics I like and decided to shell both my OCs and favorite character dolls.