So increased supply doesn’t usually add to value since you did have a greater choice of dolls to buy after the internet was born. That said, for some coveted issues like the #1s/2s or a Midnight Color Magic, the near mint dolls were/are still relatively rare, then and now, so that keeps prices high. And you cannot discount the emotion involved with certain vintage dolls, where collectors are willing to pay more than market value just because a certain doll wins their heart.

So rarity, along with supply, can also determine value in vintage collecting. What was never identified as such in the early days of online vintage trading 20 years ago are the so-called “Japanese exclusives” – in dolls or costumes. I had not heard that description used with regard to an outfit or doll made in Tokyo but not exported to the US back then. I am not sure why Mattel created such a line for Asia alone; the concept of the original 1959 Barbie doll was to create a high-quality fashion doll with its own line of exquisitely tailored outfits to sell to little girls in the US. And maybe they were intended for export but the company instead moved on to the next issue - from ponytails to bubble cuts to swirl ponytails, to Color Magics, to American Girls to Sideparts. I mean, not only did Mattel aim to keep the party going in creating one new face and hair style after another for Barbie, but it often combined left over parts from earlier issues onto newer parts coming off the assembly line – for example, the bend leg bubble cuts or the pink skin American Girls. These dolls are both very rare but were really just “leftovers” and not a newly designed issue at the time they were first put together.

As a result, many “combination” issues or “exclusive” ensembles were left behind in the European and Asian toy marketplaces. It is true that the “Barbie in Japan” book came out on book stands in 1994 but in my memory it wasn’t sold on a large-scale basis until a decade later when I wager interest in the Japanese-only fashions became greater as the internet increased access to vintage dolls. In reading Keiko Kimura Shibano’s account of the Japanese 900-series variations, she suggested that those “exclusive” costumes were earlier versions of Mattel’s US-marketed wardrobe as the company “tried out” different fabrics in the early outfits. Also, the Barbie doll did not sell well in Japan. The most popular Japanese doll by the time of her launch in the mid 60s was the far more innocent-looking, doe-eyed Licca, made by the Japanese toy monolith, the Takara Company. So “Mattel made some effort to develop exclusive dolls and fashions to please the aesthetics of a different cultural milieu – a New Midge (and Skipper) and the kimono fashions were (also) created,” says Karen Caviale in her introduction to Shibano’s pivotal book. There was also a difference in quality-control standards in the alternative Japan-only line of clothes, Shibano points out. I’ve noticed that the so-called “exclusives” look cheaper than their mass-marketed US versions, and apparently this extended to problematic issues with fitting the costumes on the vintage Barbie body. Never mind that the materials used were cheaper with more dated patterns on the Japanese versions, they are rare with a capital “R”, and that is catnip enough to attract many vintage collectors in the US today, nearly 60 years later.  

I lost my two original Barbies (a #4 blonde ponytail and a #1 brunette flocked-hair Ken, followed by a first-issue titian bubble cut in 1961) in 1973. So for years, I pined for my lost vintage Barbies , though, of course, no one used the term “vintage” in the 70s or 80s. I finally found a somewhat beaten up brunette #6 ponytail lying in a dusty bowl in an antique shop in 1986 and quickly snatched her up. No box, in fair condition, at best, but still a vintage Barbie.

An aside: That was always the conundrum about the earliest Barbies during the 20 years following their 1959 launch date: they were too recently issued to be considered “antiques”, yet too old to be lingering on storeroom shelves in most toy stores by the 1980s. It is a different story in California where it seems former Mattel workers snatched up many of the unsold vintage dolls that had been replaced by the mod and then the Malibu and Superstar Barbie lines; I suspect that’s the reason you can still find so many NRFB or mint dolls online now and often from sellers in California. I bet you could find the earlier ponytails and bubble cuts on toy shelves on the west coast much longer than you could in most other parts of the United States. But it’s a bigger mystery to me why these former Mattel employees and their families would know to keep a “new” 1960 doll for 40 to 50 years. Why would they know, or even suspect, that what had always been a toy when it was first sold would rise to the lofty price levels now seen on eBay as MIB dolls attained the rock star status they currently enjoy?

After I located that first brunette ponytail, I began to find a vintage doll, and its 900 series outfits, here and there, mostly at consignment shops. This was in the late 80s and early 90s. Oh boy, do I remember the adrenalin rush I would experience when I would spot an old doll at an antique store. My heart would actually beat faster and I would then begin to negotiate a selling price with the shop owner. None of these dolls were mint or in boxes, however, but they were vintage so I was elated to reclaim dolls like the ones that was been in my lost collection. Then the internet became a major focus of our day-to-day lives by the mid 90s, allowing us to greatly expand our collections while also depleting our bank accounts (ouch).

At the beginning I was overjoyed to find any vintage Barbies online; I never looked for, or expected, to find mint dolls. I knew these were toys and not items that were hoarded in expectation of them becoming valuable collectibles over time. So I bought my first American Girl (ash blonde with the thinner face) and Color Magic, whose over-the-top brash yellow hair color was a bit shocking the first time I saw one. I bought back “twins” of the three dolls I had lost in the 70s – and perhaps 125 more! The internet was perhaps the biggest boon to collectors, allowing us global access to a enormous range of dolls and clothes that had always been out there but we previously had no way of knowing where they were or how to buy them.