'My Christmas Baby' now you see her, now you don't...

       At first glance, this baby by Eugene from 1987 looks mint. But inside this sealed box, mold, mildew and permanent staining from unstable fabric dyes are destroying the doll. She is not "mint" she is anything but perfect condition. However, the person who sold the doll to me was taking a risk... The risk was that I would be the same kind of collector and would keep this doll inside it's box or that I would resale an inferior product and pass on the disappointment to another collector. Well . . . I am neither. So here I am at a loss but it could be somebody else's gain at least, if you take my advice to heart.

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        NIB or new in the box does not always mean that your collections are being stored properly, folks. Remember that dolls are not usually boxed in acid free cardboard. In fact, almost never. It would not be sound thinking on the part of manufacturers to do so. Because toys, are created to be played with, not stored. If a toy company is going to produce packaging that is only going to last for a short time, they will produce something that hopefully helps sell their product. They will put their money up front on the design work not on things like acid free inks or acid free cardboard packaging. Acid free or archival inks are expensive and most usually reserved for things like fine art prints, not doll packaging. When collectors leave dolls of any quality inside of their packaging they run the risk of doing the toy harm the longer it is kept this way.

Style No. 61290 - 1987 "My Christmas Baby" by Eugene is so adorable at first. NIB she looks
 perfect anyway.

This doll reminded me of the dolls I cuddled as a child. But she is much smaller than the one
 I had from the 1960s. Her look is innocent and sweet...

It didn't matter that she was sold from a "smoke free home" because she had been stored in
a damp environment, which can cause mold and mildew to attach to new or old vinyl no matter
 what kind of box or drawer or closet or trunk you store dolls in. Well you get the picture. When
 I opened her box to see how she had actually looked, the damage was revealed.

Here you can see that as I pulled back her sleeves only to discover that the unstable red dyes
 in her sleeves had permanently stained her chubby vinyl arms. I tried to remove these stains
 using many different methods but unfortunately it is permanent.

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