I’m unable to access the forum since my nursery is free, but I’m seeing a lot of posts in reborn groups about collectors feeling as though artists don’t value them at all, since their buying and reselling is part of the process. Can anyone fill me in on what’s going on over there? Some really inflammatory stuff, it seems…
Yes, it’s becoming that way, imo. Bickering I think.
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I really think a lot of these collectors are gnat being honest, I think there are quite a few that are buying and selling for only the purpose of making a profit. I have never been a collector, I paint because I enjoy the process and the joy it gives me. Now I admit to not being on the scale of many artists but I’m not ashamed of my work, I don’t get the huge amounts and I probably sell to people that really want to own their first doll. I was getting more for my dolls when I first started five years ago, I believe when Covid kept so many folks home and bored, artists exploded . I see many dolls on Reborns that are getting a great deal more than I am, but I do no outside advertising. Angie stated on here she felt BB constant sales was one of the reason it has become harder for the more “skilled” artists who buy the more expensive kits to sell their dolls. We all start somewhere, there will always be folks that can’t purchase the expensive dolls or kits including me, but that is true in all areas of life. Also BB now seems to be catering to silicone which I have no interest so there may be a way for artist to switch over and make a better profit. The real reason sales may be bad is the less fortunate folks living on less money aren’t buying as before, and the baby world is over saturated. I believe pre owned dolls has been a way for many to buy high ended dolls turn around at a profit, and for some it has become almost an addiction. I have seen several excellent artists that are on this forum being re-sold on Realborns and they in my opinion beautiful and it seems hard to believe this purchasers just haven’t bonded!! As I said earlier I am not the usual artist. I have three un painted dolls in my possession, I don’t have the funds or. The space to hoard more. When I did have money to hoard anything many anything, it just isn’t my personality.
I hope I don’t anger anyone, it isn’t my desire, probably what is happening with doll sales is same thing that has happened many times before in our society. The innocence of buying and collecting changes over time. I’m not sure how the Reborns.com situation is going to play out, but I do know when I started on the site it was a safe place to sell artist made dolls and then other types of artist dolls and artist extra items and then pre-loved dolls, etc. ps I don’t believe what some collectors are saying now is that artist would not have sales if it weren’t for the collectors. I believe for many collectors have turned this into a big way to make money.
Agin I wish to state I’m not trying to anger and judge, but I do believe there are some making lots of confusion because they are not being honest about how they are truly salespeople out to make a profit and they have a lot of energy in keeping this alive!
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I try to keep up with where my babies are and several have been resold and rarely for a profit. I don’t feel like any of the purchases were with the intention of making a profit on the resale?
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Joy I am just catching up but from what I gather the pre owned crowd is upset that the survey Dave put out has the majority voting to take the pre owned doll section off the front page. Dave says he will move pre owned dolls to a tab on the top of the page and put only artist dolls on the front page. In response a collector has made a post on Reborns stating that artists don’t care about collectors to have voted this way and that artist dolls should be under a tab, not pre owned dolls. Of course that is not at all true, artists are no where w/o collectors. One artist on the site I think puts it best when she says that artists deserve the front page because unlike collectors many hours of work go into making the new doll and to some this is their way to earn a living. xx
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Funny thing is I’ve been there so long I remember when the only distinction between new and preowned was a tab “orphans”. No one complained and we all got along. Imagine that.
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Of course we value collectors. They’re our customers, but everyone can’t be on the front page. Just having listings broken down into single tab categories of Featured and Just Listed (new on front page), pre-owned (rotating) and alternatives (rotating) would make it much simpler for people to find what they’re looking for without going through hundreds of listings that they’re not interested in.
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To me it basically comes down to what Dave wants reborns dot com to be. If it is for artist to market and sell their work then that is what should be there on the front page or elsewhere. In that case Dave should not offer paid artist membership to collectors. If reborns dot com is a place for reborn dolls to be sold by whoever is selling them, then I do not think he can take their money and not provide the same service. Early on I thought it was for artist to sell their original art, then there were a few collectors that did use it to sell their dolls, now I see many more collectors selling there.
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Haha that is cute!
I’m wondering if the sagging economy is why there are more second-hand sellers. People needing to sell for the money. Then there are the artists who are selling new babies and now going up against the increase in second-hand dolls. The second-hands are usually cheaper than the new, and so artists are selling less. What I think makes the best sense is only new babies made by their artists on the front page and showcased, and then there should be a tab for buyers to click to go to another part of the site for second-hands, if that is what they are intersted in seeing. Like a department store, in a way. The main section for new reborns listed by their artists, and then second-hands in their own separate section.
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Latest info from Dave:
New membership pricing to go into effect in mid January 2024
Come mid January 2024 new pricing will go into effect
Membership will increase to $29.99 for 30 days which will also allow you to feature one doll (or item) a day.
You will be able to manually feature your items, or set your account to automatically feature items for you each day.
The site will remain commission free and you can still list as many items as you wish (as it currently is).
Membership is increasing for the following reasons:
• Traffic and sales to the site have increased exponentially over the past several years and more value is being delivered.
• Increased traffic to the site costs more in bandwidth.
• Storage costs have increased due to a recent improvement that allows for detailed image zooming.
• About a year ago the site was moved to bigger and faster server and this costs more.
• New site features have been and are constantly being added to the system.
• Pricing on the site hasn’t changed in almost 10 years.
• Membership price increase should reduce the number of sellers on the system which will reward those who remain with more orders.
Some new changes will also be introduced to the site in January, mainly being that pre-owned and alternative items will no longer be shown on the front page of the site (by default) and will be displayed under their own menu option. If you try out the site and are not happy with these changes I would be happy to refund you on a pro-rated basis. Any unused credits (purchased previously) can also be refunded or converted into additional membership days also.
What questions do you have?
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Thank you for posting that for those of us in free status right now. I will keep using the site. The fee increase does not seem unreasonable to me and I think he is offering us a fair compromise.
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I will not be able to afford that anymore. In cad$ it’s too much. I don’t sell one doll a month. It’s already expensive as it is. And he did raised his prices a few years ago (2-3?).
I don’t know what I can do now. It’s hard enough like that to sell nowadays.
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I think that fees may have increased for some more recently than 10 years because Dave did away with the different plans. First he eliminated the bronze plan and then the silver. Then only the gold plan remained and I think that probably has been the same price for close to 10 years- however the services provided with the gold plan did not stay the same. When I first used it, the gold plan gave more exposure on the front page, but when everyone was kind of moved into gold since there was no other option we started to have to buy those feature credits. Dave also pushed the new listings to the reborns Facebook page and another social media…Instagram, maybe? Although nothing was mentioned I noticed that my listings were never “pushed” and asked about it. Dave responded that there were too many artists to do that as it would cause reborns dot com posts not to be shown as often. Instead artists were selected randomly, so some got lucky and had several listings pushed while others had none. I am not sure he does that at all now. I will have to read through what the new pricing includes. While it is reasonable if you sell- the last several dolls that I have sold on reborns, were actually sold to clients off reborns through my own marketing and work. I just listed them there for the ease of payment and record keeping. A 50% increase in price is a sizeable price hike though I am sure the costs of running the site have gone up.
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I only pay for the months I have something listed I want to push to sell. Otherwise I stay in free mode (like I am now) and use it like you said as a place for ease of payment and to refer my customers to go make the purchase. I do more self advertising than anything.
I do remember when we had the tiers like bronze, silver and gold. I never paid for more than the cheapest one. I have bought 10 credits a couple times.
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I do that too and honestly for the last few years even when I was paying almost all my actual sales were to people who already had dolls I painted or saw my work on social media. It has been awhile since the buyer came to me through reborns dot com.
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I’ve been on there just under 5 years and I remember the bronze, gold, and silver plan or whatever it was…$10 a month was what I paid. So yeah definitely hasn’t been 10 years since he upped prices. I’m not going to renew, too expensive when not selling anything for months on end.
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Are the Feature credits going up, too, or are they included?
That’s crazy 
I’m a little confused, but i will figure it out!