Annette Himstedt First World Children Summit

Have you seen the new Annette Himstedt dolls for 2005? You can see them on the Internet,(I have some great photos of the dolls at Toy Fair at my Doll Collecting at About.com site) or in their beautiful, full color catalog.

We have been surprised at how popular these dolls have been this year! The doll are always hard to find, and always hard to order for the store, since many are done in editions of only about 300 dolls worldwide. However, we weren't sure how collectors would respond to the ethnic/world dolls theme. Well, they love it! This year, my store was allocated Munria, Kaschmiri, Ilai, Mapi, Kimi, Salinda, Mugi and Nia. We have totally sold out of Ilai and Nia, and we are close to selling out on most of the other dolls.

If anyone doubts that dolls are art, they need to take a look at these beautiful, life like dolls, totally made in Germany by hand.

My New Book, the Official Price Guide to Dolls, Just Published!

Its hard to believe that its been a month since I last posted here, but owning my doll shop (Katherine's Cottage) has been a bit of a whirlwind in the last few weeks. On the plus side, my new book, The Official Price Guide to Dolls has just been published by Random House books. I've really enjoyed meeting collectors and discussing the book in my shop so far.

On the down side, I crushed my left index finger in a car door that slammed on it. Ouch. Makes it hard to move doll boxes around the shop, type on the computer, change doll clothing--you know, just about everything I do all day long at the shop!

We're still tripping over new doll boxes at the shop, and we've had our yearly drama about Annette Himstedt doll allocations (we still have a few dolls available). We are eagerly awaiting many of the new Tonner dolls, yet dreading what is sure to be an avalanche of Tonner doll deliveries in May through July.

We've already received many of our new 2005 Madame Alexander dolls. We didn't put them out right away because we are waiting for a display case, buy we got sick of waiting, so we put a bunch out. We are sure that will mean that the case will now arrive immediately.

If you are curious about my new book, visit The Official Price Guide to Dolls