MONTH IN REVIEW: May 2016

Ruben's Barn Pinecone doll

My Flickr account gets all the photos of the new items as I get them, so I figured I'd start doing Month in Review posts here to keep this blog updated on what happened with my collecting every month.

May brought in a lot of plush. I'm not buying as many dolls right now, because most of the ones I want are either not out yet or too expensive for my current budgeting. (I suck so much at saving more than like a hundred bucks at a time for one doll.)

I lucked into this little Pinecone Ruben's Barn guy that I'd previously eyed in the Magic Cabin catalog for a great ebay deal of $9.99. Later in the month, I lucked out even more when I got ALL ELEVEN other dolls for less than $30 shipped. So I have the complete set now and they're all adorable. (They cost $24.98 each on the site, so it really was a major deal.)

Jossie no10

Some other unpictured plush include: Destiny from Finding Dory (both from the Disney Store and the beanie size from Target), four of the Yowies, a claw machine white punk alien, an older Aurora Yeti, the Wee Beasties manticore, and 3 Gooli Monsters. I totally would have put a pic of the Goolis here, but I don't actually have one. I'll have to snap one soon, but I'm too lazy to do it for this post because I had a rough day at work and this is about the extent of my limits right now.

My first Jossie doll arrived in early May and I bought her this custom blue dress on ebay. I got a great deal from a US seller on the doll and the dress was a nice price, too. She still lacks shoes though, because they're going to cost me the same as a standard playline doll, so she'll get them eventually. Like after new doll season is over. She's a little cutie though and I wish I'd known about this line earlier.

Giochi Preziosi Millennium Ball Winx Club dolls

Mid-May brought the fifth addition to my Winx Millennium Ball collection. The sad thing is that I used to have Bloom and Stella when these came out and now Bloom is the only one I'm missing and Stella was the one I got in May. This line is obnoxiously hard to find and ridiculous in price if you do manage to find a boxed one, so I started picking them up in fixer-upper condition not too long after I moved in 2013. Musa came first, then Tecna and Aisha. Flora only just arrived in April and now Stella in May. That's actually not the Millennium Tecna doll either. It's the Magic Birthday/Disco one in the Millennium dress. I did a trade with a friend so he got the Millennium Tecna doll in the disco outfit and I kept the short-haired one, because my only other 10" Giochi Tecna is Enchantix, who has the long hair like Millennium Ball did. Anyway, all these dolls have their shoes and most of their pieces. Aisha and Flora are missing their headdresses. Flora's disintegrated and Aisha's wasn't included. But overall, they're in nice shape and I haven't paid a lot for any of them.

Breyer Wind Dancers blind bags

Also in mid-May, I discovered the Breyer Wind Dancers blind bags. I stopped into the local horse shop, which happens to be in the same plaza as my comic shop, right near my job, to pick up the third Pony Gals I needed. I got her and 2 blind bags. I fell in love with the blind bags and ended up with 7 more the next day. I did pretty well and got only 2 doubles out of 9 bags with one of the doubles being my favorite character (Medusa, the one at the top) so I certainly don't mind two of her. There are still more I'm missing, so I need to get some more of these. Sadly, there aren't many on ebay. There's my one extra and a single other auction for an open bag. It's a character I need, but I hate to spend the money and then end up with her if I buy more bags. I'll just stop by the store and pick up a few more soon.

Charlie Bears Dipsy

My Charlie Bears love resurfaced also in the middle of the month and I ended up with two new additions pretty quickly. Blog, who I don't have pictured, is a permanently seated bear designed to hold electronic devices like tablets, phones, etc. Dipsy to the left here was a QVC exclusive last year and my stockist was able to get some in. I don't usually care for the animal print bears much, but this guy won me over.

Pokemon Uxie

Every now and then, my Pokemon love rears its head. I discovered the lake trio by accident (Google image search gets me into more things) and ended up with this plush and figure of Uxie, who's my fave of the three. I'll get the other two plush eventually.

Charlie Bears Brussell

Then the new dolls started appearing on Amazon. I was able to get Ever After High Birthday Ball Blondie and Duchess, the new face unarticulated arms basic Cleo, and the tall Fashionista with the red afro. I found the multiple outfit sets of the tall blonde Fashionista and the curvy sporty one at Target.

Zelfs also got some more attention from me. I got a great deal on the first three of the Series 6 (the series not sold in the US) large-sized ones and discovered both the UK and Australia have plush, so I picked up the UK plush set.

Charlie Bears Eden

And then it was back to bears! I bought Eden from a US seller for a nice price and then shortly after saw Brussell, who was a popular QVC exclusive, also from a US seller and ended up with him, too, thanks to selling one of my bears that I hadn't bonded with. He's really adorable and tiny. It's so hard to tell size in individual photos of Charlie Bears, but he's one of my smallest.

The month ended with a gift of some Monster High minis from a friend and I bought EAH Crystal Winter from Amazon, although I haven't opened her yet. I've actually been stalking Amazon while writing this, because I was able to get Nina Thumbell tonight, but Jillian and Meeshell haven't been put up yet. I want to set my computer down and read a bit, but what if they come in stock? Argh. I'm sure all three will be part of June's Month in Review post though.

And that's it! I'll be back soon with more overviews. I've got several in the works that I just need to take some photos for or I'm waiting for a couple more additional items to arrive in the mail first. And I'm going to start doing artist spotlights on some of my favorite plush/ragdoll creators.