Your dolls after your death...

Now, I'm in a better position to answer this question. I am at least 90% certain my resin dolls will be incinerated after my death should they still be in my possession. I had wanted to arrange for them to sent back to Volks in the USA but that would be expensive. I need a will in any case. The executor of my will must be able to carry out the task.

I will NOT allow my immediate family members in Canada to take over my dolls. They will sell the dolls in China online websites as illegal copies at rock bottom prices. In short, they will make money out of the dolls in any way they know how to do so. They won't spend money to send the dolls back to Volks even if I wrote that in my will. This is a very serious matter. I'm heart broken by the fact that I don't have anyone to take over the dolls safely.

Given my situation, you can see why I am no longer buying new dolls, I'm trying to sell whatever and whoever can be sold when I am alive.

 

I'm sorry that your family is so untrustworthy. It's sad to think these dolls you love so much will have to be destroyed to keep them out of the wrong hands.
I wonder if maybe a toy museum would take them on, as part of early 21st century toys and collectibles and how adults got more into the collecting hobbies? Just spitballing.

 

My dolls (bjd and otherwise) would be left to my friends who also collect. I know what types of dolls they like or collect so I’d have it drawn up in a will which collections go to who.

 

Sadly no one in my family would want to take the time and effort to sell my dolls. But this thread reminded me that I do need to keep records of all my dolls. I would need to put the info with the individual doll, because I doubt very much that my family would bother to look for the info among my papers or on my computer.

 

Would you be able to set aside the money for them to be shipped?

Also, do you have somewhere or someone that will incinerate the dolls specifically in mind? You'll need it in most places unless junkyard disposal is ok.

Crematoriums can't burn everything.
Cleaning up melted plastic in the retort is difficult. Sometimes it damages the chamber and is expensive to replace. The smokestack created by incinerating plastics over a threshold isn't allowed in some places.

People bring in blankets and toys to be cremated with the body but at most a piece is included for sentimentality where I've worked. The rest thrown out unless the family wants to keep it. Plush isn't as much of an issue but something as substantial as a resin doll could run into trouble. You will want to contact the crematorium of choice if you're preplanning to see if it's doable.

I see a sentiment of "my collection will burn with me" in a lot of hobbies when it isn't as doable via cremation as it seems. If you already know this you can disregard my reply, but maybe it can help inform someone else.

Edited for clarification, since some objects can be cremated.

 

Bury me with mine. They are a part of me and I want to rot with them.

 

This topic really got me thinking, and I started a spreadsheet that includes purchase prices for my dolls now. Hopefully that will help anyone who ends up with my dolls after I'm gone. I have no preference for what happens to my dolls after I die, but I also know it's really hard to just throw stuff away, especially when you know it "should" be worth something. (currently clearing out late parents' home of antiques...)

 

Knowing my dad, if I kick it before he does he'll just cart everything off to Goodwill. Hopefully my dolls and other beloved material possessions will find their way to someone else who will appreciate them.

I'm mainly just hoping he won't cart my pets off to the pound cause that's exactly what he did with his stepmother's dogs when she went. D:

 

Knowing what my family wanted me to do with my fathers dog when he died (Told me to straight up euthanize him because he, at least to them, was beyond saving, since he was so ill behaved. i REFUSED.) I started training him and then found him a loving home to spoil him rotten again.
But i digress...
I've pondered what to do with them once i died. If it's suddenly, my main worry would be my pets, my family is NOT trustworthy, but a dear friend of mine have been asked to take them, and he said yes. My dolls would likely go to him as well. I don't have a will, but i'll make one during this year (a string of family deaths made me realize that time could suddenly be up) Just to be sure. If i were given an expiration date i'd likely talk to my friend about picking them up along with my cats. He'd know they're expensive and i'd provide him with my DOA logg in and Discord logg in so my lovely dolly friends would be able to either help him sell them or figure out what to do with them.

 

Thanks for the heads up. I did not know that resin is problematic to burn. I can set aside money for the dolls to be shipped but the executor of my will will not do that. I am sure they will pocket the money and sell the dolls as illegal copies in the China market. I am not worried about my vintage and antique dolls because they sell easily and relatives in Singapore are more than happy to take them. It’s the Volks resin dolls that have nowhere to go. If they don’t sell, I can ship them back to Volks before I die but nobody knows the time when this will happen. That’s the problem.

 

Given that I'm an older collector, I had given some thought to this topic in the past but since I have no family or friends in the hobby, I ended putting it in the 'too hard' basket. However, two bouts of cancer in the past five years have made me give this some serious thought.

As much as I'd always thought I'd like to keep my first boy with me when I pass, I've decided to be cremated when the time comes, so sadly he can't come with me after all.

My sister has agreed to take my collection (and this is detailed in my will) but, as mentioned above, she's not in the hobby, so I'm in the process of compiling a folder for her with all the doll details, pictures, certificates, invoices etc to help her if she wants to sell them. Meantime, I will start to sell off some of my MSD boys, who have been in their boxes for a few years now. Whether I'll be able to part with my two tinies of any of my SD dolls, I'm not so sure. Time will tell. But I have more peace of mind knowing that I've made plans for my collection when the inevitable happens.

 

Short answer: It doesn't matter. I won't care when I'm dead.

If I go before my mom, she knows the approximate costs of them and can get in contact with at least one of my friends who will be able to sell them for her. She might keep some of my girls but I know my boys will be the first to go. Turns out no one likes them as much as I do.

Hopefully I make it longer than her, and I hope my future family will care about my hobbies. If they don't and donate all my dolls, that's their problem. 100% their loss. I do try to keep track of all my info and their history, but good luck searching through my hard drives. I don't think I'll be capable of caring when I'm dead.

Unless my feelings change, you'll have to pry them from my cold dead hands because I'll take my collection to my deathbed. None of them will be sold out of fear of death. Technically, I'm already living on borrowed time and I'm sure not selling them this early in life. Yeah, I would prefer they end up with someone who values them as much as I do, but I want them around for as long as I'm alive and I won't let fear of death control my life. I can't take the money with me either so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

As someone who owns a bjd from an estate sale (my Lati Yellow Lumi, with another bjd from a sale on the way), I think I'd feel better knowing my dolls were sold to fellow collectors rather than being buried with me. My collection is small and kinda inexpensive but I still want someone to care for them just as much as I do! Also I feel awful for dolls that have lost their owners so I now have a habit of looking for them, it's silly I know ^^"

 

I bought my daughter's first BJD for her when she was nine, at about the same time that I started collecting for myself. All of my dolls will be left to her, and she knows this. She will love and appreciate them not only as a doll collector, but also for the sentimentality of having actually been there to see them unboxed and adored by her mom. I couldn't leave them in better, more admiring or capable hands.

 

At some point I think it won't matter. But for now at this point in my life almost all of my dolls will go to my sister she's younger than me by quite a few years... She's not in the hobby but she knows their value and can either pass them along to other people, or keep some to herself. One doll will go to a friend of mine, it's a LE and she's always admired it and has it on her grail list. My first doll (Pukipuki Sugar) will go to my mother. She helped me pick her out, and through that we bought a Puki for my Aunt which upon her death went to my mother.

I am also going through the motions of documenting for insurance, mostly because I have some limited dolls that go for a lot of money and I do love them. If something happened I'd want to either be able to recover them or buy something new to soothe my soul. It's hard because when I first started collecting I didn't keep a lot of documents or info in terms of purchases >.>

 

I've actually had this set up for a while (thank goodness for law classes in college), but I have a 'living' will set up with specifications for my husband and my brother to carry out. All of my dolls are to be sold (unless my husband wants to keep them) with the exception of a single doll: he is to be given to someone who is new in the hobby, at no cost to the newbie. Currently I am working on a list of what my husband should be expecting to get out of the dolls themselves and the worth of their accessories/etc.

I'm also compiling a list for insurance purposes just because we move every few years and heaven help someone who destroys one of my dolls in transit (this almost happened, I nearly had a heart attack because the box wasn't labeled and it was crushed). It'll be going into the 'oh crap' folder that travels with us that has the important paperwork, plus backups on Google in case of disaster.

 

*snip*

That is such a great idea! I hope you don't mind if I steal that idea from you, its a really nice way to help out someone after you're gone.

*snip*

That too is a great idea! I should do that as well, in case something happens to my notebook. I think I'm going to print out pics of each of them and add them to the notebook anyways.

I've seen that some people actually have spreadsheets on their dolls and their accessories. I have My Crew's accessories labeled in ziplock baggies in a dresser I got specifically for them, so that's something.

Ryu

 

The doll in question was given to me (for free) as a newbie and I've taken great pains to care for him and keep him as pristine as possible. I'd feel bad if my husband sold him, but giving him as a gift to someone who's just starting out seemed like the right thing to do. And...I won't be around anymore, so why just leave him sitting around when he could go to a good home and to someone who would love him just as much?

Feel free to take as many snippets as you'd like.

 

Thank you!

I already told my partner that "any one doll that he chooses is to be given away to a newbie to this hobby." and he said that "I'm going to give away your Alucard (vampire from 'Hellsing' minimee) BJD, along with a bag of blood."


Alucard from Hellsing by Ryuichi Sakuma, on Flickr

He's still very much a WIP.

Ryu

 

A dear friend of mine who was in the hobby passed away very unexpectedly two months ago. It's difficult to even know where to start with their collection, because their husband was only tertiary to the hobby, and I think I was their only in person friend who also collects BJDs.

My plan, as the hobby friend, is to try to both uncover their DoA username if I can (to see what they have listed as their collection, as a starting point-- especially for some of their rarest pieces) and to try to find as much information as I can about their collection once I am actually able to sort through it, as it's not currently an urgent priority for their husband. Then, I'm going to try to sell anything the husband doesn't want to keep, to help offset the costs of my friend's remaining debts, funeral costs, etc, and help their husband make ends meet while he figures out his path moving forward. We do plan to sell to collectors, because we both know my friend would have wanted their dolls to continue to be loved.

Thinking about my own dolls, I plan to put together a spreadsheet of my inventory, cost, and value, and make sure that it's shared with my partner so that someone has access to it in case anything should happen to me. Because the worst thing about digital files is if they're behind a password that died with the owner, they're as good as gone.