Who inspired you to collect?

I have know dolls since I was in grade 2, but at that time I wasn't able to have it cause I was so young. Just in recent years, one of my friends brought this topic up again and I started to collect and customize dolls like crazy. I love them very much!

 

The entire Monster High/MLP customization community on youtube! I don't know if I ever would have seriously considered dolls as art projects until I started watching their videos.

Also (to a lesser extent) my little sister. She got a Volks doll back in like 2008 and I didn't appreciate it then, but now I realize she was way ahead of her time!

 

I wasn’t inspired to start collecting by an individual.
When my daughter was little I used to make her rag dolls because I couldn’t find any that reflected her dual heritage. I lived in London at the time and used to take her to Hamleys, the big toy store. They had a whole floor of dolls, children’s and collectibles ( but no bjd around then). They had dolls of all nationalities, styles, ages ( from babies to adults) and sizes. I obviously I must have been going more for me as she doesn’t have any interest in dolls now (although she is very good at photographing them!)

 

Mine was not a who actually, its Rozen Maiden! I was watching this anime and i fell in love with the dolls! But i only started collecting many years later due to many reasons! Those days bjd are at least $800 and i wasnt ready to spent so much on them yet!

 

I was already a doll collector when I discovered ball-jointed dolls, but I probably wouldn't have discovered them at all had it not been for a Super Dollfie ad that ran in an issue of Barbie Bazaar. This was a magazine that focused on Barbie but also ran ads and snippets of news on other dolls. I fell in love with Megu, felt my heart break when I discovered she was out of my price range, and stuck the term "ball-jointed doll" in the back of my head for safekeeping. So I guess one could say the editors of Barbie Bazaar are responsible for inspiring me to enter the hobby. I've long since forgotten the names of those two ladies, but if you're out there...thanks. This is a fun hobby.

 

When I first saw pictures of BJDs, I thought they were creepy & ugly; all that anime style definitely wasn't for me. But I had been a doll collector for about 20 years & was collecting Tonner fashion dolls & Madame Alexander Cissys when I saw my first BJD in real life, She was a Luts Lishe which my friend Janine brought to our fashion doll club.I was fascinated with her as she was so different from the other BJDs I'd seen & moved so wonderfully. Janine was kind enough to let me play with her dolls & the more I did, the more a desire for one of my own grew. One night I finally took the plunge, called Dolls & Friends & ordered an Elfdoll Lydia. I was on the phone with them for nearly 2 hours while they patiently answered all my newbie questions that I hadn't already asked Janine.

So I blame both dear Janine & the staff of Dolls & Friends for tipping me over onto that slippery slope that's known as collecting BJDs. Thank goodness they did!

 

well... no one. i have always loved drawing & manga/anime. & bjd was like the next step in this hobby. i am the only one in my family who is into 'strange' hobbies, so i can safely say that i got into it all on my own.

 

Volks-Williams in 2010, and I finally got him last year.

 

One of my good friends. Before I collected those limited edition Disney dolls but after I saw her ball jointed dolls I fell in love; initially I had seen BJDs floating around on the internet and it didn't seem like a big deal to me at the time. I also did not have a job and 400+ dollars on a doll was ridiculous to me. Now though... heh heh. It was different from the other dolls I collected because I kept the Disney dolls in their boxes (to keep their brand new value if I wanted to sell them). With BJD's I could customize a doll to whatever I wanted, and because she was unboxed the doll would not lose its value. Plus I love that I can change the hair very easily!

 

A friend of mine. She showed me her box opening photos and I started looking into BJD a bit more seriously.

 

I think it helped to have friends that already begun collecting Ball-Jointed dolls. LinneaHime got to talking to me around May of this year. I like hearing about the hobbies of others, and it is only around now that I actually have a plan to start my collection.

 

my best friend at the time got me into them! this was years ago, maybe in middle school? but she had dived headfirst into the hobby (and could afford to buy some) and, as the person who spent the most time with her, i was pulled along for the ride. at first i thought they were dumb (and Boys Dont Like Dolls Anyway, So), buuuuut it didn't take long for me to see some i liked and decide i wanted one for myself ^^)'

i haven't spoken with her in forever, but i do wonder if she's still into dolls, since she had a lot of hobbies she'd move in and out of. now that i'm on my own and actually have money, i'm slooowly coming to terms with the fact that hey, maybe its okay to buy things for fun that you dont need to survive lol... and with that comes my interest for dolls i've been pushing down. if i ever meet with her again i'll have to show her my updated collection!

 

Nicolle's Dreams! My mother never approved of dolls so when I got older, I bought my own dolls (monster high, barbie). I loved to sew clothes for them and youtube introduced me to Nicolel's Dreams and her monster high repaints. Then I saw her BJD videos... the rest is history!

 

I have no idea how I managed to find BJDs. I have to assume I found them while googling something anime or manga related because those were my two major interests around the time I found BJDs. But I think I’d have to credit DDE for keeping me interested. Before I realized DoA existed or how many companies were out there I relied on their site to browse and research. I even have some of the pictures I saved from their galleries on my old devices haha

I bought my first doll through them! And my second... and my third... I owe them a lot in a sense! Happy to repay them in business.

Also huge shout out to my friend sandpipers who reminded me of my passion for BJDs recently and let’s me send him all the pictures of dolls I want (at least two or three a day lol)

 

My brother got his, and I slowly warmed up to them! Now I own more than he does...

My collection itself has a lot of inspiration, but lately I've been inspired in content by anime like Donten ni Warau and Touken Ranbu Hanamaru, as well as bands like WagakkiBand and, uh, Turisas, in addition to history. When I'm stuck for ideas, these are the places I go.... Or I'm innocently enjoying them and then all of a sudden go, "That's a great idea for a doll!"

 

My mom had found a Volks Kun on Y!Japan auctions back in '04 -- '05 and I thought it was the most beautiful doll I had ever seen. It took me months trying to find more information on them, when I came across DreamofDoll and got my first doll. So I guess it would be that my mom inspired me! haha.

Other than that, I've always collected dolls since I can remember. Barbie, etc.

 

Collections in general: my mother. She never cared for dolls or traditional "collectables", but she was intensely involved with the antiques business when I was growing up, and she maintains a growing dish collection. Through those connections, I inevitably started working at little antique and gift shops, reading collector magazines while working, and eventually, discovered that there was a world of dolls that went beyond Barbie and my mangled childhood ragdolls.

BJDs in particular: Organic exposure, plus an irl collector friend. I vaguely remember coming across ball jointed dolls in collector magazines in the early-mid 1990s. I never really looked into them further, because I was quite young, and it was hard to appreciate what all of the fuss was about from advertisements. About a decade later, a friend forwarded me to an article about a Russian dollmaker who created gorgeous custom-cast porcelain bjds. After trying (and failing) to obtain one, I started looking into the world of bjds more without any real focus. Nearly a decade after THAT, a dear friend started her own bjd journey, and I finally took the plunge.

 

I discovered BJDs through a Swedish tv show. It made the collector out to be weird, but I found it really cool and ended up getting my first doll. However, Denali Wind on YouTube is the one who has motivated me to keep collecting and developing my dolls' characters these past few years.

 

@RagingMoon1987 same! I am pretty confident I would have eventually found out about BJDs eventually, but that little snippet definitely clued me in years earlier than it probably would've taken otherwise.

Man, I miss that magazine.

 

Oh jeez, me too!