If you ask me, walking into an antique store is way more exciting than walking into a Home Goods type store. I don’t know what it is about other people’s used stuff that is so interesting. It just is.
And I’d happily bet you that somewhere, there is a Grandma with an empty curio cabinet who’s not happy her Hummel collection ended up at the antique store for pennies on the dollar.
Does anyone know what these originally sold for? Where did people buy Hummel’s from anyway? Hallmark? QVC? Mail order?
Did you have this doll as a child? Did it come with a bad haircut? Do you remember her name? Is this the original outfit she came with?
I don’t even know what this is. Or what decade it was from.
Or this one.
Do you have any of your original dolls from childhood? I can’t think of a single thing I still have from when I was a kid.
Is that odd? I wonder if any of my old dolls are sitting in an antique store waiting to be bought.
What a strange thought.
~Mavis
Tracey says
LOVE LOVE LOVE a charity shop – I always schedule 1/2 a morning while away to hit the shops – Dublin last month and what a hoot!
Brianna says
I had the second doll with the open mouth. I remember you could put her thumb in the mouth. I used to call her Thumbellina. My mom kept a bunch of my old toys, but she has been downsizing and I am sure they went to the dump. She doesn’t donate, just puts stuff on a community table.
Nancy Settel says
Wellllll I was an antique dealer for 30 years but I only delt in late 1700-early 1800’s primitve New England furniture and accesories and still to this day it is my first love. When I have to go into a new furniture store for things like a bed or mattress it gives me the willies. A good antique store (especially a multi dealer one) I could stay for hours. When I saw the Hummels which I never cared for but I know people collected I think of an elderly aunt who collected them after her twin sons who were both stationed in Germany at the time started a collection for her. Here in the states they were sold in high end department store and jewelry stores. A woman I was dealing with recently who was helping me figure out some investment stratgies said yes I am getting rid of my mother and aunts items. I told her what to take them to sell and she said her aunt had a china cabinet full of Hummels and a friend told her no one wants them anymore so she put them in a box out front of her home with a free sign on them! She said they were gone in no time. Everything comes around again and I am sure they will. I have a few things from my childhood but not much.
Cecile says
Bambo I think was the first, and the second is the girl Campbell’s Soup doll. I kept two dolls at my inlaws for my kids to play with until they moved and they disappeared! I still have my fake Cabbage Patch doll, they were always sold out when my mom went to get the real ones. My uncle gave my aunts real cabbage patch doll that he bought for her to my daughter who is named after her great aunt! I kept it and my daughters baby cabbage patch, the smaller verson for younger kids.
Dawn says
I love other peoples stuff! There is a two building antiques mall in Lawrence, MA called Canal Street antiques. I’ve still only made it through one building because it’s 3 floors and it takes hours to get through all the booths.
The only things I have left from my childhood are my Nancy Drew books. They were gifts from my grandmother and someone will have to pry them out of my cold, dead hands before I give them up.
Susan Williams says
I used to love browsing through antique stores. Now, my style has changed a bit and I don’t want stuff.
This summer, I helped my sister-in-law’s aunt (78 yrs old) pack up and get moved out of state to be closer to her other niece. She had a curio cabinet full of figurines that are worth almost nothing. I ended up getting a ton of her stuff and she told me do whatever I want with it and whatever money I make, keep it. (which I’m thankful for!) I ended up finding an estate seller to take it all and the auction is going up online next week. I’m hoping I get some decent money for the stuff, but my goodness there was A LOT of stuff! (She was also a quilter and I’m VERY thankful for the 20 bins of fabric I got to bring home!)
Lisa says
The doll in red is from Campbell’s soup?
Nancy D says
I thought so also! “Campbell‘a Soup Kid”
SueD says
The first doll may be a Patty PlayPal. I don’t think the outfit is original to her, but she would have come in something similar, but less dressy. Hummels…my friend used to order them directly from Germany, back in the 70s and 80s. Even with shipping, they were a lot better priced than in US shops. Germans, for the most part, did not collect them. The figures were mostly found in German import shops or stores like Macy’s. I have one that my friend gave me as a hs graduation gift.
Sue says
Ugh, Hummels! Blech. So glad my mother/maternal grandmother never collected them.
Never really liked dolls, either. My cousin and I would drag them through mud puddles and hose them down for fun.
I love antiques/junk stores and looking at old stuff, but I don’t like things that aren’t practical or useful (crap I have to dust). I have some nice old pyrex, and that’s it.
Linda Sand says
My SIL is an interior designer/collector and she has dolls from my childhood. I don’t. My mother kept several of my dolls for years, but I didn’t know that. When we left my Dad we weren’t able to bring much along. Apparently Mom took a bunch of stuff to Grandma’s before we left which finally showed up again when Grandma died.
Margo says
I had some fancy stuffed animals and a set of large dolls you could make manually walk. My mother got rid of them when we left home. And wouldn’t you know it…. I saw them both on Antiques Roadshow priced at a small fortune! Oh well, one mother’s trash is another’s treasure, to paraphrase an old quote.
Sue S. says
I still have a Ginny Doll, her baby sister Ginette with all of her stuff (trunk, clothes, high chair, crib with mattress), another ballerina doll and my favorite stuffed bunny in plain clothes, along with a brother and sister standing rabbits pair which I put on the mantel at Easter. I keep mine in my cedar chest. Don’t ask me why. Actually I still have my rocking horse which lives on top of my tv cupboard.
Nancy D says
The dress from the first one reminds me of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Unfortunately, my Mother In Law has many collections and she is the only one who thinks they will be valuable to her 3 kids. Hummels, teak elephants, clocks, and nutcrackers to name a few. After downsizing at least four family members, my husband and I are determined to not put our children through the same pressure and are “minimizing” and organizing and labeling photos and videos and labeling family heirlooms. It’s awful to not get the stories handed down to the next generation. We have a rocker that came over in a covered wagon on the Oregon Trail!
Nicole says
I still have my Fisher-Price Jenny and Mandy dolls, Ginny dolls, Raggedy-Ann, and Strawberry Shortcake dolls. Treasured memories. The Cabbage Patch dolls are still in the family too. Special toys like this have all been shared with the next generations in the family.
Sandy says
I am currently in Yorkshire Dales hiking across sheep farms & villages. Heaven ! You don’t see many toy shops here but lots of sheep !
Tiffany F says
Hummel figurines were first sketches done by a Bavarian nun in the 1930s and later turned into figurines. They became popular in the 1940s because soldiers stationed in Germany were sending and bringing them home to girlfriends and wives.
About 30 years ago I was working for an insurance company and we had a customer who had a special add-on policy for her Hummel collection. She had a couple thousand of them. A couple times a year she was adding another 10 or so to her collection. It was crazy!
Brenda Robertson Robertson says
When my MIL passed, she had a large collection of decorative plates and calendar plates, she really enjoyed them. We stopped in an antique store and asked if they had any value. They immediatly replied….they are good for skeet shooting. Members of the family pick through and took what they wanted. We donated the rest.
Sherry in Sumner says
I am 77 and have Hungy Bungy, a rag doll with a plastic face. My sister and I used to fight over whose she was, so to spite her I bit Hungy bungy’s nose and cheek. I’m just an old softy but I can’t get rid of her. She’s in the basement snuggled with a big teddy bear. I also still have my dolls in a box, mostly Nancy Ann Storybook dolls. That’s mostly the extent of my childhood treasures, but oh, my poor son when I’m gone!