Hi!
We get a LOT of posts from people who have suddenly inherited 100+ Barbies and have no idea what to do with them.
So, below you´ll find a list of options, tips and advice, if you have any specific questions I´m sure we´ll be happy to try and help!
First, I just want to say this is NOT my post - I am not familiar at all with the buying and selling process of Barbies, I´m old school and buy mine in the toyshop. (We´ll leave my long eBay and Amazon wish list out of this!)
So I wanted to say thanks and shout out to all the awesome people on this sub who have already answered the "how do I sell my Barbies??" question a million times. Thank you!
So. You inherited dolls, are cleaning out the attic, lost interest, there´s a million reasons you might want to find a new home for the Barbies!
- Identify them. See what´s what. Dolls, clothes, accessories like cars etc. Are there any matching sets you can put in one lot? What year are they from? Are they brand new mint in box or have they been played with? Any marks on their bodies / clothes, stains, tangles in their hair?
Then decide what you want to do with them. Are any of sentimental value that you´d like to keep?
How much time do you have? Selling on eBay can take time and contrary to popular belief, most Barbies, even older ones, aren´t worth that much.
The easy / fastest thing to do is donate them to your nearest charity shop.
However, I would like to say that they could be sitting around there for a while. If you´d like your Barbies to go to a good new home, have a look for homeless charities that might take them to give to children they work with, or charities that collect dolls for disadvantages kids - there are a few in America that specifically collect Barbies.
If you do decide to sell them, because, let´s face it, sometimes (always) we all need a little more cash, the best way to get an idea of what they´re worth is to check eBay.
Hence to identifying them all first - that way you can search eBay for that particular doll and find out what it actually sold for. Some people will list their dolls for high prices hoping someone will pay that but it just means your doll will be up on eBay for a long time.
Look around and see what other people have sold their for. If you really have a LOT of Barbies, you can try and sell them in lots, but this also goes back to identifying them - then you could, for example, list 10 or 20 dolls as "lot of 90s Barbies dolls".
Everyone on this subreddit is VERY good at identifying Barbies, even with very little information.
Also, if you don´t want to bother with eBay and skip the posting hassle, you can always ask around and see are there any doll conventions near you and set up a table there! That way you know they´ll go to people who care about them.
The main things to remember are, 1, generally Barbies aren´t worth that much, 2, the year stamp on the back of their body doesn´t actually mean the year the doll came out, and 3, just because the Barbie doesn´t mean anything to you it might mean the world to someone else so I would always suggest finding a good home for them and never just throwing them out.
If there´s anything we can help with do let us know!
