Etta Houston didn’t start collecting dolls until the 1970s when her youngest child got married. First, family members would give her dolls, which I’m sure she accepted graciously, and she bought some on her own.
Soon, though, she got particular about what she wanted in a doll and started choosing them more carefully. She especially liked baby dolls, said her daughter Barbara Weir, the one whose departure sparked Houston’s doll-collecting.
“She said that her babies didn’t eat, cry, or grow up and sass,” Weir said.
About a dozen of Houston’s dolls were shown in Myla Perkins 1994 book “Black Dolls: An Identification and Value Guide Book II,” including one of her oldest. Houston died in 2011, and Weir had the task of selling off some of the estimated 1,700 dolls in the collection.
She shared stories of her mother’s collecting of black dolls in particular, and her own efforts to sell those that she and her siblings did not keep or give to family and friends:
Question:
Did your mother ever talk about whether she had dolls as a child? Did she say which dolls?
Answer:
She didn’t really talk about whether or not she had dolls as a child.
Question:
What dolls did she buy you as a child?
Answer:
When I was a child, she bought me a lot of dolls, mostly baby dolls. My favorite was a Madame Alexander Victoria.
Question:
Tell me how your mother got started collecting? You mentioned that she collected both black and white dolls.
Answer:
Mom started collecting dolls in the late 1970s after I (her youngest child) married and left home. She said she always loved baby dolls. She started collecting both black and white baby dolls, but black dolls became her favorite. She said that her babies didn’t eat, cry, or grow up and sass.
Question:
Why do you think she chose to collect dolls rather than something else?
Answer:
Mom collected dolls because of her love for babies. She loved to clean up dolls that had been neglected. She figured out that Clearasil could get many ink stains off of vinyl dolls. She would wash and repair their clothing and dress them up. She always said she loved her black babies, but she never really said why. I think maybe because they were more unusual, especially when she was growing up in the 1930s and 1940s. The black dolls of the ’50s and ’60s were rarer, and perhaps more valuable.
She also preferred black dolls that had more authentic ethnic features, rather than the ones that were clearly Caucasian dolls with dyed “skin” and hair. I remember when we searched the world over for a black Santa in the 1980s. I can’t recall when we finally found our black Coca-Cola Santa, but she was relieved. Mom was insulted when someone asked her why she wanted a black Santa, since Santa is white. Mom said that Santa is the same color as the child who believes in him.
Question:
How many dolls were in your mother’s collection? How and where did she store them?
Answer:
I don’t really have an accurate figure, but there were about 1,700 dolls in Mom’s collection when she died. Probably 70% were black. Mom displayed many of her favorite dolls all around the house. She had a group of about 30 of the 30-36″ Patty Playpal and other walker dolls, both white and black. They were arranged on top of and in front of the cedar chest in her spare bedroom. It looked like a school room in there. Most of her mint-in-box (MIB) dolls, and some of the loose dolls, were stored (carefully) in numbered boxes, with the numbers corresponding to her records, so she knew how to find each doll. Rows of large boxes took up about 1/3 of a 10′ x 12′ room, almost floor to ceiling.
Question:
What was the oldest doll in her collection?
Answer:
The oldest doll in Mom’s collection was a black cloth doll that was nicknamed “frog legs” because her legs were bowed outward. She was from the early 1900s.
Question:
Did she have a most special doll in her collection?
Answer:
Mom had many “prized” dolls and her favorites were subject to change. One of her particular favorites was Jasmine the Ballerina, designed by Rotraut Schrott for the Great American Doll Company/GADCO. She is a 28″ black doll with very realistic features. Mom loved her because she is so beautiful and realistic.
Question:
Did your mother have a certain criteria for collecting dolls? Or did she just buy what she liked?
Answer:
When Mom first started collecting dolls, she bought whatever she liked and took whatever people gave her. Later, she began to collect with an eye toward dolls she thought might increase in value. She bought several sets of Kiss (the band) dolls that she cleaned up and sold at very nice profits in the 1980s. In the 1990s, her health began to fail and she required several surgeries. The doll market was booming then and she sold her entire collection of Barbie’s (both black and white) for a decent lump sum, which helped her out. She also sold one doll, Peter Playpal, for $800 around that time (he wouldn’t bring near that much now).
By 2000, the market had really declined and Mom decided to just buy what she liked without regard to possible resale value. I think she enjoyed herself even more after that.
Question:
Did you participate in any way in her doll-buying?
Answer:
When Mom first started collecting dolls, family members and friends would give her dolls they thought she would like. This helped boost her collection early on. I recall when my brother-in-law found a doll in some garbage out on a curb. He thought of Mom, so he picked it up. When he called to tell me about it, he said the doll was dirty, but otherwise in good shape. He said she had freckles. I became excited, thinking it might be Chatty Cathy. Indeed it was. Mom was so excited to get her. She cleaned her up, restyled her hair, and washed her (original) dress. A few years later, I divorced and was very short on funds. Mom sold that doll for $75 and gave the money to me. It couldn’t have come at a better time.
Question:
Tell me about how the dolls helped ease her depression when she became wheelchair-bound.
Answer:
Although Mom became wheelchair-bound, she always seemed to find a way to get things done from her electric wheelchair. She managed to live alone until several months before her death, across the street from my husband and me. She was short of breath, easily fatigued, and in chronic pain, which limited her activities. But keeping up with the doll market on eBay, buying new dolls, taking care of her collection, etc., kept her busy. She particularly liked to find nude dolls, buy cute outfits on eBay and dress them up.
Question:
Did you mother ever have her collection appraised?
Answer:
Mom never had her collection appraised. She kept track of the market via doll magazines, Ebay, etc.
Question:
Tell me about the dolls in Myla Perkins’ book that belonged to your mother.
Answer:
Mom had several dolls pictured in the book and are identified by plate number.
1) Pair of Dan Dolls, made in Denmark, a native man and woman with a baby in a sling on the woman’s back. (Plate 567)
2) Frog legs (Mom’s nickname for her), a black rag doll from about 1914. (Plate 163)
3) Topsy and Eva, a 9.5″ blue-ribbon-winning rag doll from the 1930s that is two dolls in one. Mom referred to these types of dolls as Topsy Turvy dolls because when you turn one doll upside down and pull her skirt up, the other doll is underneath. (Plate 259)
4) A 30″, 1970s girl cloth doll in a yellow dress by Jean Sipes. (Plate 315)
5) A 30″, 1970s boy cloth doll in yellow overalls by Jean Sipes. (Plate 316)
6) A 1956 Rushton 16.5″ Coca-Cola Santa (the one Mom and I looked so long and hard for). I still have him. He adorns our living room every Christmas. (Plate 1201)
7) A beautiful 1980s Zaph 19″ Jonina doll. She sold at auction; I don’t know for how much, but I am sorry we sold her. (Plate 1329)
8) A pretty little 16″, 1950s vinyl doll with molded hair in an upswept set. (Plate 1333)
9) An unmarked, 21″ anatomically correct boy doll. (Plate 1369)
10) A 27″ hard plastic walker doll with four little teeth and a glued-on wig, redressed in a Saucy Walker dress. (Plate 1388)
11) A 6.5″, Native man souvenir doll. (Plate 1398)
12) “Ugly but Snuggly,” an adorable 18″ artist doll by Pat Kolesar. Mom really liked her (my granddaughter was afraid of her). She sold at the auction we had in Houston to a woman who wanted her to keep her. We were so glad, (we felt like) she would be appreciated. (Plate 1584)
12) A 24″ partially porcelain 1979 Sammy Davis Jr. doll by Diane Snow. (Plate 1685)
13) A partially porcelain Redd Foxx doll by Diane Snow. (Plate 1686)
14) An 18″ partially porcelain “Mammy” doll by Diane Snow. (Plate 1687)
Question:
Tell me about how you became the one to sell the dolls in the collection.
Answer:
Since I lived across the street from Mom, it was logical that my husband and I take most of the responsibility of liquidating the doll collection. My sister, Lois, lives about 90 miles away in Arlington and she helped us get the dolls to auction and handle the subsequent “doll sale” at my house. My other sister, Cindy, lives in New York and was not present for most of this process. Although we all kept a small number of things that belonged to Mom that held special personal significance, none of us had near enough room to keep her entire doll collection. To tell the truth, I was quite overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the collection and the amount of space it required. I am kind of a minimalist at heart, easily overwhelmed by too many “things.” I tend to find blank, clutter-free spaces soothing. This was quite an adjustment for me.
Question:
Now let’s talk about how you went about selling the dolls.
Answer:
As soon as Mom’s health declined in March of 2011, she agreed that we needed to start selling some of the dolls. We started on eBay, where we sold all of her MIB Ashton Drake reproductions of the Playpal dolls (maybe 20-30), and some of her other dolls that were still in original boxes. It was then that I began to inventory and photograph all the dolls with Mom’s help.
When Mom became too ill to live at home anymore, she agreed that her entire collection (with the exception of her favorites and all of the really small dolls) needed to be sold as well. With approximately 1,700 dolls (along with quite a few toys and books), we knew it would be more efficient to sell them at auction. I continued the inventory process, went through every box, and photographed every doll and the tag that accompanied it. I matched this information up with Mom’s written records.
I searched the internet and found surprisingly few auctioneers that would deal with dolls. My research led me to Mike at Kims Korner Antique Auction in a suburb of Houston, Texas. He had little experience with dolls, but was in the middle of his first doll auction after he purchased an estate in the Houston area. Mike agreed to take on our little project. So we borrowed a truck and hauled the dolls in a trailer to Kims Korner. It took several months before Mike got the dolls organized and ready to auction (Mom had hoped to attend the auction, but she died in December 2011, and the auction was not held until May 2012).
Although he advertised well (including online), the turnout for the auction was dismal. My husband, my sister (Lois) and I attended the auction and were able to provide answers to some of the buyers’ questions. We sold only about half of the dolls, most at VERY low prices. We were devastated, and relieved that Mom was not there.
About a month later, we took a trailer back and picked up the dolls that were left. We stored the dolls at my house until we could figure out what to do. I inventoried the dolls that were left. We had a doll sale at our home in early December 2012. Turnout was better than I expected. We sold (again) at VERY low prices, as our customers were not collectors. However, this was a bit different. My sister (Lois) and I got to meet people who were buying dolls for family members, some of whom were collectors and some children. We felt like the dolls would be appreciated, rather than simply resold on eBay.
After that sale, we still had several hundred dolls left, all in my spare bedroom. I continued to sell single dolls and small lots on eBay (user names: bweir1962 and moweir58) until I whittled the collection down to about 150 dolls, which I sold in one lot to a nurse who had cared for Mom during her stay at a local nursing facility. She is a doll collector. She was so excited to get these dolls and shared with me her memories of the many conversations she had had with Mom about them.
After that, the only stored items left in my spare room were 15 or so boxes of Mom’s stuff in the corner, which I have gone through in my spare time. Low and behold, there near the bottom, I found a couple more boxes of dolls, the small ones that Mom had saved. So, I am back on eBay.
Question:
You mentioned that you also had a sale of the dolls at your home? How did you go about that?
Answer:
We advertised in the local paper, on Facebook, with signs posted locally, and in the Facebook group “Bosque County Buy Sell Trade.” I posted pictures online. This was not nearly as much trouble as hauling a bunch of dolls to auction. We had no commission to pay. Our house (spare bedroom, living room, dining room) was a mess for a couple of weeks. Prices were CHEAP, though not any cheaper than the auction.
Most (not all) went for about as much as they would have gone for on eBay, and there was no shipping expense. This was also MUCH faster than photographing and posting dolls one at a time on eBay. Downside: Audience is severely limited. Few collectors. On eBay, you have a wide audience that includes collectors, nostalgic buyers, etc., from all over the world. Occasionally, there will be a doll (good luck predicting which ones) that will cause a bidding war and go for more than you expected.
Question:
What advice would you give others who are trying to sell off a collection of dolls?
Answer: Have patience. Hope you have a spare room(s). This will take TIME. EBay has recently begun offering 12 free pictures for each listing. This helps with accuracy of item descriptions.
Question:
Which of your mother’s dolls did you and your family keep?
Answer:
Of course, my sisters and I kept our favorites from Mom’s collection. We did give some dolls to other family members and donated some to needy families. Mom bought a 1950s Cissy doll for me and each of my sisters. We of course kept those. My sister (Cindy) has a lot of Mom’s fashion dolls and a few other of her favorites. I kept several of the baby dolls, both black and white. I also have the black Coca-Cola Santa.
Question:
Tell me a little about your mother’s background?
Answer:
Mom worked for Trinity News Company until she became disabled in her 60s following a back injury. She loved to read, particularly true crime. She loved listening to country music, ’50s and ’60s music, big band and swing. She was a big Elvis fan. Mom belonged to the Fort Worth (Texas) Doll Club at one time, but dropped out when her health declined.
_________________________
If you collect black dolls or know someone who does, please let me know. I’d love to write about them and their collection. If you have any doll memories, please share those, too.
Here are the other blog posts in the black dolls and their collectors series:
Barbara Whiteman and the Philadelphia Doll Museum
Memories of a special doll and a love for baby dolls
My chance meeting of a black doll collector
A surprising mix of black dolls at convention
When black dolls talk, Debbie Garrett listens
