All Dolled Up

All Dolled Up is the name of my site at http://www.barbigirl.com

Ever since I received my first Barbie way back in the Dark Ages, I have been a doll collector. At first it was OK to collect dolls because I was a kid. However when I turned thirteen my mother told me there would be no more dolls for Christmas or birthdays...I was too old for dolls. So I packed all of my dolls, Barbie included away in boxes and hid them in the basement. During my teens I tried to forget about dolls, but I still loved to see them in the toy store, when we shopped for younger siblings and relatives. After I was married and my girls were old enough for dolls, I thought I would give them my dolls. This however brought a resurgence of my repressed "doll collector" fever and I decided to buy the girls some Barbies of their own.

So my dolls made their way to a small closet in my study...I had become a closet collector. My family thought I was slightly crazy...an adult with dolls. About a week after I set up my dolls, my neighbour Anita came over for coffee. The cupboard door was open and she saw them. Anita literally screamed....OMG you have your Barbies......I have mine too. I'm taking them out and putting them on the shelf. And thus began Anita and my excellent adventure into doll collecting for real.

We managed to find a publication called Collectors' United, because we were still in the infancy of the Internet and eBay hadn't been born yet. Through snail mail we gathered together more Barbies and other fashion dolls. My dolls made their way out of the closet and into the rec room.

It was a slow process, but then one day something called eBay appeared on my computer screen.