1884 Schmitt et Fils "000" Bébé Doll
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GUEST:
My doll has been in the family for at least 50 years. And before that, I'm not sure where exactly she was. I was... I have not a lot of information. I was told that she was a French fashion doll. My parents were antiquers. On Sundays they would go to different antique shops in Massachusetts, and because I was the youngest I got to go too. Not very long into that I hated it. One Sunday-- I used to stand in the corner while my parents would look at all the furniture-- there was this doll, and my mother said, "Do you like it?" And I said, "Oh yeah, I really like it." So they bought it, took it home. It was my doll, but I wasn't allowed to play with it.
APPRAISER:
(chuckles)
GUEST:
It was put behind glass and I could look at it. And because I'm a real hands-on doll person, I kind of went, "Well, no big deal there." As my parents got older, we were breaking up the home, and I was talking to my mother and I said, "Can I have my doll?" And she said, "That's not your doll." And I said, "Oh." So when my mother passed away, my sister said to me, "Would you like your doll?" So she came back into my family. We knew that she was probably worth a lot of money since it's the original outfit, so we took her to this doll hospital, and that was kind of creepy. The man that came to the door was very interesting looking, and we walked in, and the dolls were all in pieces, and they were all staring at you because they're all hanging on the walls. And it was very dark, it was just not pleasant. And then there was another man there who had a very long beard, and he looked at the doll and he said, "Can we keep her to evaluate her?" A week later they called us and said, "You've got to come down, you've got to come down. This is the highest-priced doll we've ever saw." Really. So we went down and they said, "She's worth $16,000." And we went, "Okay," and just kind of... So then a few years later, we went to this wannabe roadshow-- it was not the ANTIQUES ROADSHOW. And we had her evaluated again, and they told me it was worth $3,000, and they wanted to purchase her. And my husband's, "Oh no, she's worth $16,000." And again, it was, like, really?
APPRAISER:
It's very inappropriate and unethical in our business to offer to buy something after we appraise it. This is a little doll made by Schmitt et Fils of Paris, France. So she is a French doll. She's not a French fashion doll as you described, but she's actually a French bébé. She's in her original French costume with her little straw hat, her little lace dress, her wonderful socks and original labeled shoes. She's made of bisque, and she has paperweight eyes and a composition body. When we turn her around, we will see that she is marked. And it's very difficult to see under her little wig, but there's a little shield mark with "SH" in it, and that stands for Schmitt. And then we have "000". I saw that. And then also on her bottom we would see that it's marked the same way. She has pierced ears with her most likely original turquoise earrings. These dolls were made in the 1880s.
GUEST:
Oh, wow.
APPRAISER:
And they were sold as the finest French dolls.
GUEST:
Fabulous.
APPRAISER:
Beautifully made, very excited to see her. So now we need to decide if the fake appraisal fair, or the weird man with the long beard...
GUEST:
(laughs)
APPRAISER:
...is right about her value.
GUEST:
Okay.
APPRAISER:
A little doll like this at retail would sell for $16,000 to $18,000.
GUEST:
Oh, my goodness.
APPRAISER:
I've even seen them at auction sell for more.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
Very desirable, high-end doll.
GUEST:
Well, I guess I shouldn't have laughed. (laughs)
Appraisal Details
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Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
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