>>6461787Let me share a story of the downfall of the best thrift store for dolls within a 2 hour drive of my home
For many years, the thrift store was a haven for anyone looking to buy used toys. They had 3 double-sided shelves for toys, plus organized toy bins with labels so that you could easily find whatever you might be looking for. Dolls? Check the doll shelf. Toy cars? Check the toy car bin. Board games? Board game shelf. You get the idea.
The doll shelf was always a treat. You might find gently played with Monster High dolls and Barbies, with clothes and sometimes even the shoes and accessories, for 99 cents each. Or a pile of Barbie clothes from various eras, including a few pieces from the 50s and 60s. Or Disney dolls, including newer ones. Or you might find (as I did, once) a shelf stuffed with what must have been the cast-offs of a collector, all low to medium level collector Barbies loose but in near mint conditions--dolls of the world, Civil War/Patriot/etc Barbie, you know the type, for $2 each. There were always nice but unremarkable porcelain dolls, sometimes some neat international dolls, and the occasional vintage doll find.
And then one day I showed up, excited to see what the toy section had in store today, and... it was all gone. The shelves? Gone. The bins? Gone. What replaced them were two very large tables, so wide you can't really get to the stuff in the middle. And all the toys were simply tossed, literally, onto this table, piled high. It was if they just took the warehouse bins of toys and dumped them out, which is probably what they did and do now. If you manage to find any dolls in the giant pile of mess, they are almost always damaged. And they raised the prices to $2.99 for each Barbie-sized doll, regardless of whether or not it has clothes, the condition, etc. There was a doll with ink all over its face, naked, with half its hair chopped off... $2.99. I haven't see any porcelain/international/vintage dolls since this change.
