One man/woman/child’s trash Boo Boo baby is another man/woman/child’s Treasure, no matter what you pay for the baby. It is about the joy the baby brings to the individual, don’t get caught up on cost. As stated earlier some babies for $1,000 are no better than the baby for $125.00. No one cares if it is for a Hobby or if it is your job. They just enjoy the baby. (I do not sell, this is just a Huge Hobby for me). Sometimes people pay, sometimes they don’t. Though I am slowing down on painting for some reason I am still busy
And there you have it. The reason I don’t try to make a big profit is because I enjoy hearing from my pleased customers how much they love and appreciate their new baby that they couldn’t have purchased at a higher price. I don’t give them away, except to family, but I do try to stay affordable. I still use quality materials and don’t consider mine boo boos.
There’s space for people who make reborn dolls and buy reborn dolls in all price ranges. Clearly. Or the higher priced dolls wouldn’t sell and low priced dolls would sell automatically.
At some point it becomes an art and art can and should command a higher price. I know we like to think of reborning as an art straight up and it is, in the same way my 5 year old nephew makes art and so does Bob Ross. Not all are fine art. It is what it is. There’s wonderful artists doing beautiful sketches for 5 bucks in the McDonalds on Hollywood Blvd though. But no one is selling their Rembrandt for 5 bucks.
I definitely have and I’m sure you have on this forum as well.
My first reborn was 180 dollars and she was perfect. A dream. So it’s not the cost that determines quality all the time, at all. Reborn pricing is all over the place.
The gender thing was a question. If you read my post, I was asking if you saw a gender bias, not implying that you had one.
I’m afraid these kinds of discussions are hard online since I just feel like we’re talking over each other. I try to be specific and almost everything I said or asked was ignored.
Thank you to those who truly saw some of the points of what I was trying to say and agreed, and the same goes for the “other side”. The point isn’t to be on opposite sides of the fence, but to try and understand why we are there.
Perfectly written! Your Imani STILL hasn’t sold??? That’s crazy!!!
I agree with not using credit, only dolly dollars to keep my supplies up. I do not hoard kits. I have a small amount, and when I sell a doll I buy another sculpt. I do charge more for expensive , and sole, and limited edition sculpts. I charge less for bb sculpts especially if I bought them on sale. I charge more for my rooted babies. My point is… I list my dolls all over the place price wise. BUT, I always use premium supplies and never cut any corners… no matter what I sell them for. So… buying a doll at 300-400 would still be a doll that was made the same exact way as one of my 600 plus dolls.
Someone will buy her!!! Make sure she’s not priced under 600!!! No, seriously!!! ! You paid way more than that, and she is worth it!!! She is gorgeous and perfectly made… it’s just a tricky sculpt. Christmas is coming , and she deserves a higher price. Really, she does. 400 is a steal for her!!!
I started off selling my babies for $299…worked my way up quite a bit over the years…plus the fact that sculpt prices have increased also…I now have pretty much a set starting price…with bigger babies being higher…and if I do a BB sculpt it is a little lower…
Sony…you are right…alot of people these days have no clue the difference between and LE kit or a BB kit and the difference in kit cost…
I don’t make reborns. I haven’t bought one yet. I’m certainly not a collector unless you count dolls that aren’t reborn, like Ashton Drake dolls. (That name almost seems like blasphemy but they are addictive) I got one as a gift and then ordered 2 more because I fell in love with my little Elijah Franklin.
I see beautiful babies all over reborns.com. Price isn’t a big deal to me. I have a budget that will leave me lots of room for THE perfect baby. (It isn’t cash laying around. I save for a few years at a time just to spend it on some luxury or another) I don’t dismiss a $200 baby just because it is $200. I will admit that cheaper reborns just don’t seem to appeal to me. They just aren’t the kind of look I like. I’ve seen plenty adopted though.
I have not really looked at ebay or etsy because I’m a little terrified at the idea that I might buy a baby at a high price and receive something not at all what is pictured. Given that a lot of artists will not accept returns makes it even harder. I’m not saying they should, I’m just saying it makes it harder to choose an artist to buy from.
High prices aren’t driving me away from a doll. I have sifted many nurseries and although I haven’t found a baby that jumps at me in a “I MUST have that baby!” kind of way, I will admit that babies between $400 and $900 come the closest to what I’m looking for.
For me, the kit has more to do with liking a baby than the paint job. Some kits are just cuter and seem to tolerate a lower skill level of painting.
Of course I can’t speak to the market for these because I don’t even own one yet. Again, the fear of a gorgeous photo and an ugly baby in my arms has really limited my drive to even look outside of reborns.com. I’d love to find some venue that I could see some of these up close and, more importantly, touch them. I have a silicone one with a cloth body. The body isn’t weighted because it breathes and has electronics in it. That feature turned out to be far less than expected and I’d rather have a weighted body. Or would I? I don’t know because I haven’t held one yet. Even if I had held one, it comes back to the caliber of artist to me. Will it be weighted well? Just to put it out again, even $400 is a lot to pay only to find out, it is not at all what you want and you can’t return it.
Now that I’m done whining about the dilemma of buying a reborn for the first time, I gotta say, I do appreciate that ebay and etsy can be a good place to look. I appreciate the feedback on how to really analyze a baby on those sites too. Perhaps I’ll go take a look with that information in mind. So thank you all for the conflicting views. They actually help to see this better from an artist’s perspective.
I do not know about ETSY but Ebay has buyer protection if you do not receive the exact item you order. You would return it and get a refund if you prove its not what you ordered.
Weighting is definitely something that surprised me, because it’s not just the actual weight but what I call the “flop”…!! meaning how the baby is distributed in the cloth body and the weight that’s in the head so that it falls back when you pick the baby up. I love that. Nothing more realistic than feeling the need to hold a baby’s head/neck for support.
Most of my reborns are in the 5 to 6 pound range… I personally like the heavier ones since they feel immediately good, but if you hold them for a while, they begin to feel too heavy! lol
As for flop… I like them floppy because they seem more cuddly, like so delicate they will fold up in your arms. Babies that are more stuffed/stiff don’t feel the same to me, but they do “pose” better if you try to sit them up.
I totally get the desire to want to feel them before you buy them. Unfortunately, it’s not feasible in many cases. For me, I felt confident that the artist I was buying from had weighted them and “flopped” them well because they were all about the most realistic feel as possible.
The very first reborn I purchased – just this summer – was from reborns.com and the artist uploaded a video to show the way the baby moved and this helped me understand the way the baby might feel without actually feeling it.
