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The BJD Crash

Aug 15, 2010

    1. Urban vinyl has changed the landscape of toys, creating artistic
      possibilities where none existed before. Toy designers want the
      credibility that comes from being associated with art rather than
      commerce; artists want access to a wider public than the relatively
      small art world. A worldwide collector's market for limited edition
      toys that imitate the international art market seems to be the goal of
      shop owners and toy manufacturers. There is certainly a big potential
      audience for these boutique toys, but where there are markets there
      are inevitably crashes
      . It's a balancing act. If the boutique toy market
      gets too large, it could collapse as early adopters and scenesters try to
      avoid commercial dilution of their work.

      But that won't really matter. The ruins will be fascinating and
      some new movement will grow up to take its place. Its just another
      cycle.


      Excerpt from the Conclusion of Plastic Culture. Woodrow Phoenix. 2006.

      Originally Posted by kwmelvin [​IMG]
      One of the earliest well-documented financial crashes occurred in Holland in about the year 1637. Many people lost their shirts over, of all things, tulip bulbs.


      If there was a BJD Crash and BJDs lost their current value, would you still love your dolls the same way you do now? Would you still be interested in collecting them?
       
    2. Interesting idea ^^ I certainty would still collect them and love them. I have always collected dolls. I think it might also be easier to collect them because they would be cheaper. I might be a little miffed about seeing the expensive sculpts I'd bought sell for lower, but I never collected things just for monetary value.
       
    3. There's a lot of factors in that statement that aren't mentioned at all....Tulip bulbs back then might have been very expensive and valuable, as they didn't have means of growing massive amounts easily like we do today. I don't find it strange at all if people had invested in the flower business and were upset because they were in a 'crash' so to speak.

      <A> Uh. fyi, bjd's don't really hold much of their original value at all these days, and I don't see why I'd suddenly lose interest in them. A person's source of income is separate from the doll hobby. This means that I wouldn't technically be losing any more money than what i'd had originally spent on them. Therefore, it wouldn't really matter. There aren't stocks to buy for BJDs that I'm aware of, the sum I pay is a one time deal not susceptible to change by financial factors like crashes etc..

      If anything, they'd become insanely cheap and then people would just buy them more because of the increased availability and lowered prices.
       
    4. I would still love collecting BJDs, regardless of a crash or not. I get so much enjoyment from my hobby and that's what drives me. If anything, it might be easier to afford more dolls and accessories! I don't plan on re-selling my dolls, so the drop in value would probably not be a big deal for me.
       
    5. Yep, infact I'd be pretty happy because that would give me the opportunity to snatch up some otherwise unattainables. If BJDs suddenly dropped a few hundred dollars in price? I wouldn't lose sleep over it, I'd have the comfort of 5x the amount of dolls I would normally be able to buy. I don't collect BJDs because they're expensive, I collect them because I like them.
       
    6. LOL you are correct about the dutch tulip madness in the golden century, on bulb costed as much as a house on the canal in Amsterdam ! Rosalind Laker wrote a hilarious book about this "The Golden Tulip"
      Now OT, it would not make any diffenrence to me I dont see my dolls as an "investment" to me all my dolls are equaly valuable.
       
    7. I'd be thrilled if suddenly, their values and prices went down.. my two current dolls, are from one of the cheaper companies to start with.. their base prices being 160(msd) and 230(sd) when I bought them.. I didn't buy them for monetary value(well.. I was restricted to cheaper ones, but I absolutely love their scuplts so I'm perfectly happy about it)

      And well.. I play with them hard, and my first, though he's not enough a year old.. has a goodly amount of damage, and my seconds quickly catching up. so I'd already have to sell them for a fraction of what I paid for them if I ever did have to part with them..
       
    8. I don't think tulipomania and bjds are a good comparison. At the height of the tulip craze some bulbs (worth: maybe 3 dollars max) sold for ten times the average person's annual compensation. I'm not aware of any dolls that cost that much, and of the ones with extremely high aftermarket values (Bermanns, some Volks LEs) the dolls have gone for five to ten times their original cost. If they were selling at tulip prices it would be one to ten thousand times their original worth.

      My point is that for most dolls retail cost is not that much more than cost of production, and that for coveted dolls, aftermarket prices are not that much more than original cost, relatively speaking. Hopefully anyone going for a really rare, coveted doll understands that its value may plummet. There's a reason people say to collect what you love, and not as an investment strategy-- that way when the price drops you won't be wiped out.

      Having said all that, if the value plummeted I wouldn't be too concerned. I'm not collecting them as investments, but because I love them.
       
    9. Interesting question, and posed at about the right time, since I for one think that the BJD bubble isn't far off bursting - The secondary market is saturated and companies keep knocking their prices down and down.

      I'd still love my dolls, though the one that I'm trying to sell would always rankle a little - I can't imagine being stuck here with a doll that I don't like, that's too valuable to give away but that nobody (at the moment) will buy secondhand. I suppose that since I paid reasonable (aka very, very low) prices for all of my dolls, I wouldn't resent how cheaply people might begin to be able to buy dolls for in the future.
       
    10. I bought my dolls to play with, not as investments, so I don't care if they lose their value. If they were cheaper, I'd probably be tempted to buy even more.
       
    11. I for one would still collect as long as I have the funds to and I would maybe finally get grail dolls I could only look at with much desire before this so-called Crash happened. Plus would allow me to keep the ones I have easier.
       
    12. I don't get this analogy. Tulips are not dolls. Tulips were a major export product, and so people lost ALOT of money when they dropped in value. Not to mention this was in times where owning one dollar meant you were wealthy (bit of an exageration, but still).
      With dolls there's not so much of an issue. Dolls are there to be enjoyed, despite their price. I don't own dolls because they cost alot of money, but because I love them.
      The value in tulips dropped because less people bought them. The doll industry is too tiny in comparison and too personal for the companies to lower prices alot because people aren't interested. And in the case of doll going down in price, there's still alot of people in the hobby that would buy even more dolls.
      The value of an object has to do with the offer and the buyer. The buyers in this hobby are pretty consistant.
       
    13. A tulip craze basically occurs when there is an increase in the value of something, and a number of speculators invest heavily to take advantage of that increase &#8212; this speculation then causes a further, often more rapid, increase, which encourages further speculation. This sort of speculative increase cannot, of course, continue forever, and once the value levels out or begins to drop, a massive drop typically results. This phenomenon is also often discussed in terms of a bubble inflating and eventually popping.

      http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-tulip-craze.htm
       
    14. I think some people are over-thinking the tulip/BJD analogy posted in the OP :doh: Surely you can understand the basic idea the OP is trying to get across???

      "If BJD's suddenly became worth a lot less money, would you be bothered by the original cost of the dolls you have""

      See? Simplez! ;)

      Now for my answer to the OP, no it wouldn't change my view of either my dolls or the hobby itself :)

      When I bought my 1st doll, $700 seemed like a lot and I missed out on some fab dolls because of my reluctance to spend. Now my opinion has changed greatly, and if I want a $700 doll, I will spend whatever it costs at the time... yes it would be rather annoying if it then suddenly dropped in value, but hey... I still wanted that doll, and would love it anyway :) I don't really look so much at cost when I buy a doll, so as long as I've personally deemed the doll worth it's cost when I buy it, my feelings wouldn't change if the price dropped.... I'm not in the resale game :lol:

      And like others have said, it would be a darn good excuse to buy lots more pretty dolls!!! :aheartbea
       
    15. Sorry but did you even bother to read the rest of my post? I explained how the tulip business is nothing like the doll business. They're two extremely different industries and the chance of the doll market crashing is extremely slim. It is so personalized and based on 'wants', not 'needs'.
      The investors in the tulip business figured people would have a 'need' for tulips, or more like that the sellers had a need. In the doll world it's a case of an individual 'want', not a global 'need'.
       
    16. If the value of dolls dramatically decreased I would still love mine but I would fear the bjd companies would stop production and sculpting o.o
       
    17. I love this! :lol:
       
    18. "Tulip craze" huh. Nowadays we just call it a bubble. There's a topic touching on this in the debate forum.

      Personally, I wouldn't affect my attitude toward my dolls. I am an end consumer, not a speculator--I don't buy dolls with the intent to resell. The part that would affect me is that companies shut down in a crash and perhaps some of my favored ones would be part of that.
       
    19. Ahhhhhh... I think you've hit the nail on the head. Thanks for the translation. :)

      It would certainly open the door for me to acquire a first BJD, if the BJD I wanted, came down in price, after a Crash. I think that certain artists can command the price they are asking for their BJDs, because theirs are works of art, and they aren't affected by any kinds of Market prices. They will always only be able to produce just so many of their dolls by their own hand, and there will always be collectors who desire their art work because they love that particular artist's work.
       
    20. Thanks for that link! You are probably correct in thinking that not all doll companies would survive a Crash.