#literally my frankie and clawdeen are kinda ugly but i wanna be able to resell them someday

[death-limes]

I’m currently collecting Monster High dolls and I cannot tell you how frustrating it is that New In Box dolls are considered so much more valuable than opened ones, even if they look like shit because they’re old and the packaging doesn’t secure them completely!!

One of my recent conundrums (conundra?) was whether or not to gently unbox my original first-wave dolls just to restyle them and re-secure all the accessories — since their poses have become janky and their accessories have come loose in the box — then carefully put everything back so it looked like new. Other collectors pretty universally said that’s a bad idea if I want to retain the dolls’ value. As-is, their worth is easily in the $200-$400 range, but unboxing them to IMPROVE their appearance could easily bring it down to $100 or less.

So like…. it’s not even about the appearance either. That’s partly it, or maybe that’s just what people like to think it is because they don’t want to admit the truth, which is that it’s about the weird borderline-superstitious belief that an object is more valuable if it has Never Been Touched By Human Hands.

If the original packaging wasn’t a good way to display them I would almost definitely unbox & display my dolls, even if that superstition were still in place. I get that we want to see the product we’re buying but like… a responsible company is gonna quality-control their products and respond to negative feedback. Put a product photo on the box. If you must have the doll be visible, maybe have part of the box show the doll without a plastic window, like how some of the Mermaze Mermaidz have exposed tails that you can actually touch.