Buying a BJD secondhand

Dealing with a limited budget, or is the doll you want simply not being sold new? Then you can take a look at the secondhand market. Older dolls, dolls with small defects or whose owners are simply quitting the hobby can be bought here, generally for a fair price. But also rare dolls who are no longer being produced pop up here, thought the price for those can get quite high.
As with everything secondhand you need a little luck and knowledge, but you can certainly get a good deal here!

Preparation
The most important thing you can do to have a secondhand purchase go smoothly is to prepare yourself well. Make sure you have the following sorted out in your mind;

Which doll do you want to get?
Are you looking for a specific model or brand? Or do you have a number of dolls that you like and will go for the first one of those that you find?

What's the market value?
BJD prices can vary wildly; popularity, rarity, and the overall state can make hundred of euros of difference. Make sure you know at least what the price is/was for a new product, and see if you can find (completed) sales adds to get an idea of the current value.

What's an acceptable product to you?
Do you only want good-as-new, or do you enjoy bringing a neglected doll back to form? Eyes and wigs can easily be bought later on, but maybe the doll also needs to be re-strung. Think about how much work you want to put into this.

What's your budget?
Are you stuck to a hard limit, or are you prepared to go far above the original sales price? Are you okay with spending more for, for example, extra clothes, or rather not?

Avoiding scammers
Our scam-prevention page describes the most common ways of scamming within the BJD world. On the secondhand market these are the biggest red flags:
- A price that is far below or far above the market value
- Packaging/COA do not match those of the dollmaker
- Seller lists no brand or model
- "aliexpres", "temu" or "Oueneif" are listed as the maker/brand
- "Recast", "(R)" or "(RC)" are listed as a feature

Finding sellers
Now that you (hopefully) have a pretty good idea of how much you want to spend on what, it's time to go doll-hunting. But where do you begin? Unlike clothes or shoes BJDs generally aren't found in the secondhand shop, so this takes a little searching.

Fairs, Conventions and Doll Meets
There is (for as far as I know) no faire or convention dedicated to secondhand BJDs, but it's also not entirely unusual for a stand-holder to sell a doll looking for a new home alongside their own products. These locations/events also provide an opportunity to talk to fellow hobbyists, and you never know; maybe some just happen to be thinning out their collection!

(Online) secondhand stores
After 20+ years the BJD scene in Japan at least has grown big enough that dolls do show up in the secondhand shop, at least if you enter one such as Mandarake, Doll Up!, en Dolly Teria. In these stores the turned-in products are checked for quality and authenticity, and you can generally assume that they will ask a fair price. And for those who don't happen to be going to Japan, these stores also sell their goods online!
Mandarake Earth [JP]
Doll Up! [JP]
Dolly Teria [JP]
Suruga-Ya [JP]

Individual Online Sellers
For most this will be the most obvious group of sellers to choose from.
Right now there is only one international secondhand website that specialises in BJDs; Resin Market. Aside from that Vinted, Marktplaats and eBay are old hands at the secondhand world where BJD listings pop up with some regularity. One big advantage to these sites is that you can keep your searching within the EU; that way you can save on shipment- and import costs. A downside is the lack over overal quality-control, so it's up to you to determine the quality of the sale.

A little bit of extra certainty can be found in the "Marketplace" sections of forums like Den of Angels and Doll Dreaming. These forums have strict rules for trading users, and known scammers are banned. The downside is that is takes more effort to even access the marketplace, and with a mostly US-based userbase odds are you will get hefty shipping- and import-costs on top of your purchase.

Written by Isabel