your wishlist then vs. your collection now - how has it changed?

I actually did get a hold of a doll I desperately wanted - she was perfect.
Too perfect. She was already painted beautifully, and I had bought her a custom made dress.
She looked like she came strait out of someone's gorgeous photographs. She was everything I thought I wanted...
but I did not feel I could customize her, so I ended up selling her almost right away.

Up until that point all dolls I had bought were damaged, second hand, from unpopular companies or frankensteined out of unusual parts. So having a perfect doll was just weird to me.

One doll has been on my wishlist from the start and it is still there. It is just a rare quirky sculpt that I never see around anymore. I still want it more than anything.

But more and more I am finding that i want to shell characters rather than just buy rescue/repair projects.
That certainly changes how I look at things.

 

The first year I was in this hobby was when my wishlist had gone through its biggest changes. I’d love to know what had all been on there as most were removed as I got a better understanding of what I did or didn’t prefer in a doll. Unfortunately I really don’t remember most of these dolls.

Once I figured it out though, it’s been mostly unchanged. The only significant change is that I no longer have any Volks boys on my list at all. There used to be a bunch but after getting one, I found that I really just don’t feel inspired by them (or younger male sculpts in general really).

At some point, in 2015 I had come on here and gutted my wishlist of any dolls where the sculpts had been discontinued or the companies had closed. It’s been pretty easy for me to recreate this list though. Sometimes I will remember a sculpt but not a name and it just takes a little digging to find it again.

 

I've been looking for a place to store my old wishlist!

iplehouse barron or ryushin, or dollmore adam dry, or elfdoll k

I know I was choosing based on appearance + price. I still have fond memories of really, really wanting Barron. As time went on and I didn't find myself in a position to order for many years, I kind of forgot about th rest of them. Barron is now retired. While I still think the adult-looking sculpts are beautiful, I am no longer sure I want such a large doll, and I have another problem. I love all of them. Almost every single company I look at their 70+ cm sculpts, there's at least one favorite in there. And that is the problem. I don't like any individual doll long enough to be willing to purchase it, or even remember the sculpt name. Maybe one day I'll find one I can actually remember specifically and not generally, but for right now, I don't have the space so it's really not a priority.

Instead, I have found that a lot more animal dolls and anthromorphic dolls (more than just animal ears slapped on) exist nowadays. I find that certain anthromorphic and animal dolls speak to me while others are silent. So I ended up with just one, the gem of doll fox Orion, and I think he's awesome. I have also acquired several Dream valley dragons, Bora, Umi, Rubin, and Bor, which I intend to paint myself (Bora is already done) as personal art projects.

 

Oh my...I still have some old Grail dolls on my wishlist, partially for nostalgia's sake (anything non-Volks) but there are still a handful of regrets that I wished I had just gone for and not let slip by. Back when I first joined DoA (2007), I was so newb and couldn't afford much back then. I wanted so many dolls from so many different companies as I was still new and wanted to get a chance to see what was out there as I was limited to what was available to me (the original physical Volks USA store in Torrance) and what was available online. Now, my current collection is more align with my top rated Grail wishlist items but not so much my lower end wishlist items.

Over time, especially after having a steady income for a while and having my boyfriend-now-husband be into the same hobby has definitely helped me build my collection but I ended up being a one company collector due to health reasons and accessibility. My husband and I, back then, had promised ourselves to only buy enough dolls to fit onto a 3 doll sized dolly couch. Bwahahahaha. Like...uh...we need to redo a room in our house to accommodate what we have now. And with our finances not as stable as before because I'm no longer working and technically disabled, it's hard to want harder to find Grail dolls on that wishlist compared to newbie me that didn't have any dolls before or employed me that could afford to.

A part of me still kind of longs for certain dolls (the Iplehouse LE ones, the discontinued Luts Baby Delf ones, some Bambicrony ones), but other ones I know that they are so old that they wouldn't fit my current aesthetic anymore and that the older BJD tech for them wouldn't have aged as well as current dollies on the market. But at this point, rounding out my Volks Grail wishlist would be an investment in itself. Hahaha.

 

I was very lucky over the years, because I could always buy my holy grail dolls over the years. Not all the same time tho
Like starting with my favorite artist, Lillycat. I get Amy from her as my first doll... on layaway. Then she finished another doll, that was totally a dream. I have had no funds to own both of them, so I sold my first doll and bought this new doll...
Over the years, I could always afford the dolls I wanted this way and the help of layaway options. Of course, this is not for everyone, because I couldn't own more than 2 dolls yet at the same time, but once you have a doll, it is easier to add an extra €100 and buy a bit more expensive one....
but I never have more than 1-2 dolls on my wishlist, so I gues I'm lucky this way)

 

My original wishlist consisted of several dolls of different brands, various sizes, and multiple genders. After being in the hobby for a while I realize I really just want 4 total dolls with several interchangeable heads and extensive wardrobes. And I like for them to be from the same brand and same size so that they can share clothing and photograph similarly. I want them to be so similar that I actually want variations of the same mold, the four sisters by Volks! As of now I technically own all four dolls (one is still en route from FCS) and my wishlist is completed besides a total of four extra heads for different looks!

A bonus! For fun I think it'd be cute for each of my dolls to have their own doll in the form of a Four Sister YOSD as a prop. It's only an idea and nothing I'm actively working towards but consider that the "Pipedream Wishlist", lol!

 

My tastes have very much changed since I first got into the hobby about ten years ago! When I was new to the hobby, I had a huge PowerPoint presentation with all of the dolls I liked, character ideas, and links to where I could buy them. I then took a big break from the hobby, and finally started collecting BJDs five years ago (before that I only had Azone dolls).

My original wishlist had a wide variety of dolls (over 200 dolls!), from realistic looking sculpts to anthropomorphic dolls! I also had a lot of tiny dolls on my wishlist, whereas most of my dolls are 1/4 or 1/3 nowadays. I had a lot of dolls from Dearmine, Fairyland (mostly Pukipukis), and Neo Angel Region. I believe the dolls I wanted the most back then were a Minifee Celine, Volks SD Coco, Volks SD Lieselotte, Dikadoll Ann, Angell Studio Cinderella (the pink dress version), and a Soom Idealian Hornblend (human ver.).

The companies on my wishlist back in the day, that I also own from now, are Fairyland, Aimerai, DIM, Chicabi, Luts, Peak's Woods, Ringdoll, and Myou. The only doll on my wishlist that I own now is my Zuzu Delf Fenny, who I just ordered from Luts in their discontinuation sale. If I could, I would still buy a Dikadoll Ann and a Soom Hornblend!

 

I guess I can't give the best answer because I don't have any kind of old written wishlist I can reflect on now, however I think my taste (by now) is pretty similar to what it was in the beginning. I started in 2010 and and was interested in some variety of things, mostly boys, sweet/pretty old-style faces (think volks, dream of doll, crobidoll, Aria Doll, doll in mind), curious about anime dolls, interested in "mature" (you know, like late 20's ) characters in 70cm scale, big big fan of 60cm size, interested in a mix of realism/fashion and style in places you could find it like Iplehouse and fairyland chicline, angelsdoll's girls, impldoll.
One thing I can think of that I definitely learned I don't like as much but thought I did is leaner pointy-chin faces. The old Immortality of Soul faces: Chaos, jaguar and shadow are a great example. I eventually got two of them, and they were big big grails! But it's a type of mature face that just doesn't suit me as much, so my collection has very little of that face shape (even though I think these last 5+ years it's probably dominated the hobby).
I've been lucky to have many dolls and enjoy most of them, explore the variety I was interested in at least to a degree. I would have liked to have more colorful resin remaining in my collection now (shades of browns and fantasy shades too) but I never bought it as much as I wanted it because it was pricier/and it sold off again better in times of need, not to mention I was basically a second hand scavenger all these years. I scavenged most of my wishlist I think, or at least, touched on every niche at one point or another.
Most of the dolls who remain in my collection now are dolls I have had since a few years into the hobby, so they are the relics of the early wishlist: Aria Doll Narvy, Elfdoll Lydia, and Loongsoul ChenXing are all sitting around my house right now and were some of the ones I remember spending many many nights gazing at wistfully in the computer.
The way my collection differs most from my early wishlist might be that I came to love a certain handful of dolls in my collection so much that I built a world around them and didn't need or want to collect everything I had been interested in. I don't really have any realistic dolls right now, and I avoid dolls who are even as big as the old 70cm size because they are just too heavy for my lifestyle. There are still dolls from the old wishlist I would want to add in theory but luckily they are mostly too impossible to find and I don't have the resources for that anyway.

 

Though I still don't have anything in my physical collection for the time-being, I used to bookmark tabs upon tabs of different online sites and of different sculpts/dolls that I'd be thinking I'd 100% want down the line once I'd saved up for it! Some of those links were completely dead when going back, I had to figure out what some of the sculpts even were with some basic detective work.

Many of the sculpts that I had favourited at the time didn't really stand out to me at all anymore and had me wondering what I might have seen in them back then. Perhaps it was aesthetic differences, as my tastes at the time leaned heavily into different styles. Many dolls I liked had quite feminine and softer facial features with very few being advertised as boy dolls at all, but I seem to lean heavier into androgynous sculpts now. I used to really enjoy dolls with irregular bodies like DC's collections but that interest has unfortunately waned. Maybe I've just matured a bit and considered the impracticality. Though mostly I think that now I can look at dolls less at their face value, as just purely their promo pictures, and instead, I can consider the various changes or customisations I can do myself. Perhaps another reason was whatever was fuelling my search at the time has disappeared. I wish I could ask my past self!

A few dolls that stuck around on my wishlist are Maskcat's Yael, Xaga Doll's Elsiee Island Doll's Sparkle. I'd absolutely love to have a Maskcat, it's very high up on my wishlist! And Soul Doll's Zenith F sculpts in general, I couldn't pick and still can't. It feels like the sculpts that stuck around are all the ones with an air of melancholy to them. Given how new to the hobby I am, most of my dolls aren't limited or hard to find in any way so I wonder how much my wishlist might shift within the next couple years as I familiarise myself better with the many ones out there.

 

I usually wait a long time before making big purchases, so my wishlist has remained roughly the same for a while. I really want one of the larger T&D boys, and I have for several years. My current one and only doll who's a DF-H was a gift, and I love them so dearly! But A T&D boy is my dream. It used to be Jiuze but I think my taste has actually shifted more towards Shen Yanzhi, which makes sense I'd fall in love with a more recent doll. I actually completed almost all of my new years resolutions this year, which I decided I'd reward myself with a new doll finally. So hopefully my one wishlist doll will become a reality in the near future.

 

It’s so cool to read everyone’s stories and see how peoples taste have evolved!! Personally I feel like my taste are still within the same ballpark, but there have definitely been some changes that I wouldn’t have expected! My older taste were for cute girl dolls like luts kid delf Darae or Pudding. I still think these are gorgeous dolls but nowadays the dolls I tend to gravitate towards tend to be more male dolls, admittedly rather androgynous looking male dolls but still haha, like kid delf Pepper!