Not me, actually, but a close friend. Her mother passed away last month and an inventory of the house uncovered lots of dolls. I quote: From ‘fashion’ dolls to designer fine bisque Baby dolls, brides, nursery rhymes, fairies…sandy &I counted over 150 dolls, still in their original boxes. She has no idea how to get the maximum possible for these things. Anybody know any good doll forums around? Groups on Facebook that know what they’re talking about?
I sell a lot on eBay, mostly stuff I don’t know about (as in, someone out there is a collector but not me). I just search for the item on eBay and filter the results for “sold” and see what the item sold for in the past.
Usually I will post everything as an auction, with an auction starting price of what would be my lowest, and a Buy It Now price of what would be great to get. I’ll leave the items at auction for a couple weeks (so, two auction cycles) maybe tweaking the starting and BIN prices for week two.
Then I put all the leftovers up at Buy It Now, sorta slowly tweaking down the prices until they’re all gone.
I never expect to make a killing, but I try to price to sell and remember that for the most part any money I make is more than I had before. Even after fees.
There are collectable toy dealers.
Drop a bill or two on getting them appraised.
You might be surprised.
Also, watch for a Barbie labeled in German, called “Bild Lilli”.
If you have it, you hit the jackpot.
I would recommend contacting a local auctioneer, and if they don’t specialize in something like this, they will know who does.
Good luck!
Re Local Toy Dealers
Last time I checked, the standard fee for an appraisal was %10 of the value of the items appraised. So this might not be cheap.
Keep in mind (I say this as a sometime toy dealer) that a dealer can give you at most %50 of what an item is worth. Some dealers will be honest with you. Most will attempt to screw you as royally as possible.
I second the suggestion of E-Bay. It beats the pants off the old days of having to go to Barnes & Noble and look through multiple price guides.
Oh I almost forgot!
Unless you are an expert or do not care about destroying an item NEVER NEVER clean it.
Do you know if the dolls were bought new by the owner’s mother? And if so, what are the approximate range of dates that they were collected?