German Doll Collection, ca. 1900
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GUEST:
I know that they're from my family. I don't know what...how far back they go. My mother displayed this one at the state fair back in '63, and since then, they've been in a cedar chest.
APPRAISER:
Okay, what you have, you have some late 19th century German dolls. The one nearest you, there's three of them-- there's the mother, the little boy, and the baby-- were made by a company called Alt, Beck & Gottschalk in Germany, around 1890. The little girl here in the middle, that's going to the hair dressers, if you see her plastic hair curlers. And then the little girl nearest to me is what is called a German china-head. This is made by a company called Kling. The first three all have a closed mouth. The girl in the middle, with the hair curlers, has an open mouth. The doll collectors of today really love dolls with closed mouths. They have more value than supposedly the doll with the open mouth, but the open mouth dolls in their time, in the 1890s, were more unusual than the closed mouth dolls. The Alt, Beck & Gottschalk lady doll over there, she's probably, because of her original clothes-- everything here is original, their hair, their clothes, their shoes-- it's probably $1,200 to $1,500.
GUEST:
Oh, okay.
APPRAISER:
The little boy, probably $900 to $1,200. The baby in the white dress which is also an A.B.G., probably $700 to $900. The kid with the open mouth and the hair curlers, probably $400 to $500. And the china doll, $200 to $300. If they did not have these original clothes, it would be half the price. So you have a lovely original set of dolls, like probably around $3,500 to $4,000 for the lot.
GUEST:
Wow.
APPRAISER:
So congratulations for keeping them that well all these years.
GUEST:
Thank you.
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