Will you sell your doll to me?

Reading through this thread has made me want to go make a shirt/hoodie that says "Ask me about my BJD... (and no, not for sale)" for whenever I take my girls out. ><

 

Iono if this counts or a I think she mixed up the idea of my dolls and baby doll up. Ok I have 7 BJD dolls and two old babydolls from when I was little that I got they were my mother and grand mother before me so they have been well played with. The 2 baby dolls get to enjoy retirement by sitting in cute clothing with my other BJD and looking pretty. My mother been mentoring this little 7 year old girl. The little girl is pretty nice and does not touch my dolls and all. So I had to call my mom to remind her to pick up somthing at the store and sure enought she had gone to get the little girl. THey were at walmart and the 7 year old is whinning she wants a baby doll and mom must buy her one and blah blah blah. She ask me on the phone "can she have one of your dolls?" I am like NO they are mine" Mom: But you have so many can't she just have one of the big baby dolls?" ME: NO she can not my dolls are not up for just giving away thank you" Mom " well that is just silly you have so many and she does not have one you should be ashamed" ME: tell her to wait for christmas or her birthday but I am not giving her a doll. Mom : Fine ok then:

After that she dropped it. I never thought my mom who I though was starting to like my dolls a little would ask me somthing like that. She as well as the rest of my family and friends knows I am very very very protective of any of my toys. My old baby doll are retired from play and my BJD are certainly not up for giving to a kid who keeps whinning about one.

 

I've only ever been asked once if I would sell a doll.
Someone PM'ed me here about my Tan Lishe and said if I wanted to sell her they would buy her. I was really shocked, I had no intention of selling her or even would. She was my first doll! I could probably get a good price if I sold her as she out of production now but I felt slightly annoyed at the time.
I didn't wanna write back and tell them to go screw but I didn't really feel the need to write back and say no thank you. I just didn't reply.

 

I had someone pm me about buying one of my dolls that wasn't for sale. I hadn't considered it at all but if I were to sell it then it was a good opportunity so I named a price if they were serious. That resulted in a bizarre excuse that I'm still shaking my head at. If you're on DoA you should have an idea of the cost of a doll, especially before asking someone if you can buy theirs.

 

My guess is that plenty of people like to imagine that someone WANTS something that they have. So we all might try to just enjoy that some stranger loves something that we worked so hard to make beautiful instead of getting upset. For most doll folks one polite "no" will do so if an offer upsets you terribly well...I feel sorry for you. Unless the person was offensive and stalking you on ur internetz I doubt it's worth getting your panties in a bunch. Anyway, it's against DOA rules so I doubt it's happening all the time.

I also find the desperate doll clutching in public to be a tad silly. Non collectors say uninformed things because this is a niche hobby and they don't know anything about it. They aren't dangerous and they aren't rude for not understanding the cost of something they most likely view as a toy! Think about it, if you didn't know about BJDs would you ever imagine that people stroll around with 500+ dollar dolls exposed in the park/supermarket/mall/dinner? Of coarse they look at us like we are smoking crack when we tell them the price!

 

This makes me very intrigued as to what the excuse was.

 

Someone tried to buy my OT doll for $20. The doll is only ("only") worth $140 for the wig/eye-chips/original doll/body I frankendolled her onto, but I firmly refused, since she's the doll that got me into BJDs

 

I kinda wish they would, because I'm a distributor and I'd just give them my card and say "you can't have this one, but I have lots of others you can buy" XD

 

I go out with my boy a lot and I have a lot of curious glances and stuff, I've actually had mothers usher away their children giving me the "you're the kind that corrupts the children" look, one woman was almost at the cusp of asking if she could buy mine off me before I told her what they generally ranged from, needless to say she left soon after. =w=

 

I had a scary experience a few days ago.. a homeless man came running at me and yelled at me to "GIVE ME THAT BABY!! GIVE ME YOUR BABY!!"

I put my doll in my pocket and zipped her up (she's Yo-SD and I had oversized pockets.) and I yelled at him!! I told him that he should behave, and why would you scream at someone and run at them from behind the corner for them to give you their baby?? Would you do that with a real baby??

I wouldn't let a REAL child near you, I'd call the cops. Be civil and learn some manners.

He was actually talked to by a few strangers, too; they told him he was a very bizarre man for wanting a random person's toy. He was very embarrassed. A mother asked him if he would want her 4 year old daughter's teddy bear?? Was that any different??

He felt very humbled and left. He seemed pretty distraught.

 

I have a few people that ask if to buy my angel boy. He's so heavily modded that they don't realise that he is the same as the others. I just say thank you, but I put in a lot of time and he's not for sale. If they keep pushing (only once) then I demand to ask why they are trying to take my toys away

 

One day I brought Dorian to school, to let people see him in person and whatnot. A friend was a friend was thrilled to hold him, and she looks up at me with these big eyes and says "Ill buy him for 600$! Then you can buy lots of dolls!" Immediately I started laughing. It wasn't mocking, I just found it funny! My boy was only 400$ and that with the full set, him alone is more like 280$ (hes an MSD) I said "Yeah, I can get like, one SD with that, not alot of dolls." I got my Dorian back, It doesn't matter how much people offer for him, hes mine But I found it nice and cute, and surprised how close the price was since she wasn't a doll person. It was a good experience, I was flattered.

 

I was pleased that a lot of convention-goers took pictures of our dolls due to them being 'pretty', but it's the ugly ones that were 'memorable'. We were displaying our dolls as part of a cosplay display to promote our fandom merchandise. This two teenage girls came up and asked are the dolls for sale, which I cheerfully replied "No, but I can tell you whe-" She straight-away said "What ever you display them for if they are not for sale?!" and walked away with a huff. It was common for some booth to have dolls in an ACG convention here.

The same convention had 3 ROWS of table displaying figures which are not available for purchase anymore, and they were personal collection to help promote a toy/figure/figurine shop, which are only for collectors. I wonder what are their response to that displays.

 

I put up pictures of my Ducan, James on DA. A girl commented on the pictures saying how much she loved him and asked how much he was. I told her and she freaked out on me saying she can't imagine ever paying that much and I must be crazy, blah, blah, blah. I told her off and she apologized, having not meant to rude. She just joined DoA and is buying her first doll.

 

After some pretty scary encounters and my numbing shyness I stopped taking my dolls out with me. No one ever asked for them or asked if they were for sale.

One time I was going through a Taco Bell Drive through with one of my boys on my lap and the cashier asked about him and asked where to get one like him because he thought his daughter would like one. I answered his questions and then he asked, very politely, how much I had paid for him. I told him and he got rather sad and said "Oh, so they're not for a nine year old." I told him it depended completely on the maturity of the nine year old, which he laughed at and replied: "They're not for my nine year old."

 

Besides asking about the price and where the doll came from, no one has asked to buy my dolls. That's probably because they only get out a few times a year though. Otherwise, it might be more of a problem. Mostly, they stay around my house for photoshoots and what-not.

Some of these stories are honestly scary, especially at conventions. So I'm kinda glad they don't get out too much.

 

i haven met this kind of situation before, the situation that i always met while i take my boys outside is "OH,the doll look soo cute and pretty, can you tell me where and how much for this doll? i wanna buy one for my daughter/granddaughter/niece."But if i met tis kind of people in the future, i supposed they might be quite rude for getting the doll that their like? specially for the people that like to show off the $$, i'm really not sure about tat...

 

I am lucky to not have this happen to me (though I've never taken them to a mall yet), but if it did, it might put me off even going back to the mall for a while. Most stores I go to can easily be accessed elsewhere, and I would probably stay away from that mall until I could go with a friend or two.

All I know is that it would be incredibly awkward to have someone at any age come up to you and offer to buy your doll. If someone offered to by my doll from me, I would tell them 'no', and that they weren't for sale. I'd also explain why I was there with it - that I was there to meet a bunch of hobbyists, and that we collect them... Hopefully, that would create some sort of sensible dialogue, and things would end on a good note. Hopefully.

In this scenario, I'd also be wary about telling them how much my doll costs because even if you give them an inflated price, or give them the impression that the doll cost a lot, they might be motivated to stalk you around the mall, and try to rob you at your car or something.

Clearly, I haven't read all 14pgs of this thread, but I'm surprised at the way non-BJD people have tried asking for your doll in one way or another. It sort of boggles my mind that people will beg you - and be persistent - about you selling your doll to them because they want it. In jest, I probably wouldn't be affected, but if they were super persistent about it, I'd say 'no', and and start walking - preferably in the direction of a security guard if possible, but into the closest store would help, too. I could always tell someone that this person was bothering me and ask them to call security if I felt threatened/annoyed enough. I just don't get it.

I would not be so brazen to flat-out ask to buy something off of someone. If I was interested enough to actually want one, I'd ask questions, ask for websites... but I'd never throw out a price.

I think that the people who flat-out ask to buy your doll, even after you refused, would probably bend to someone tossing out an amount if they owned the doll. To most of them, it's more about how much money they can get for something of theirs rather than considering if that item means anything to them. It's probably natural for people to assume that everyone is like them, and assumes that you'll be greedy and take the money if they offer a high enough amount.

As I said, I haven't read every post, but I'm surprised that the more stubborn people didn't attempt to rudely bump into you, or cause you to make your doll take a fall because they were jealous of what you had, and wanted to ruin things for you.

 

This reminds me the last time we had a public meet (a picnic in an area we specifically booked for the "private occasion", by the way), some woman walked up to another member and asked to buy her camera. Bag and all. We were just like... WTF? And then when she was told that it wasn't for sale, she got all huffy and snippy because we "shouldn't have looked like we're selling stuff" or something like that, and went muttering to her equally angry-looking husband. Um, your assumptions =/= reality.

As for actual doll-buying situations... No one's done it to me yet, thankfully (except my little sister keeps trying to invite my dollies over to play with her dollies, but she's an intelligent and polite little girl who easily takes "no" for an answer. Besides, I might even humour her some day). I've had a few odd compliments here and there, but no one outright offered to buy a doll I didn't already list for sale.

I do see that a lot of the more popular BJD owners have an obligatory "My dolls are not for sale" clause, and I can't imagine how annoying that would be, to constantly receive offers for your doll - some less educated and polite than others. Truth is, it's not a compliment, and anyone who wishes to make a compliment can just as easily make it a, y'know, real compliment, not a grabby-hands solicitation that they try to justify as a compliment to make it alright in their head.

 

Such a sort of ...dark post...

?

A story of a stranger breaking someone's doll wouldn't surprise you? Someone pushing a person's property to the ground out of jealousy seems likely? Maybe when we were 5 years old or MAYBE if the person was cracked it might happen. However, I seriously doubt that most overly enthusiastic but unknowing people outside this hobby need to be painted in such a harsh light as I see happening in this thread.