These Old American Girl Dolls Are Selling For $3,000
Good news for anyone who's insisted on keeping their entire American Girl doll collection in the basement of their childhood home: it might actually be worth a small fortune.
According to Apartment Therapy, OG favorites like Felicity, Samantha and Molly have become legitimate collector's items, some fetching thousands of dollars on eBay. But before you go digging Kirsten out of the attic, take note that your doll has to meet certain conditions to be truly valuable (monetarily, that is; no one can put a price tag on the unadulterated joy you felt as you dressed Miss Larson in her Santa Lucia dress on Christmas morning in 1994).
The most prized dolls are the ones manufactured by American Girl's original owner, Pleasant Company, which was founded in 1986 by Pleasant Rowland. She sold the company to Mattel in 1998, and in 2008, Mattel began "retiring" the original four American Girls—Samantha, Kirsten, Molly and Felicity—making them extra-valuable as collector's items. (Felicity and Samantha were later re-introduced.)
If your doll is a "white-bodied" version—meaning that their torsos were made from white cloth instead of the flesh-colored fabric they use today—the price goes up even more. (Only three dolls, Samantha, Kirsten and Molly, were ever manufactured with the white torsos; the flesh-colored fabric was introduced in 1990 ahead of the launch of Felicity, whose dresses had lower-cut necklines than her predecessors'.)
The dolls really raking in the big bucks are the ones that were signed and numbered by Rowland herself. This Molly doll and this Samantha sold for just under $3,000 each. Don't despair if your doll lacks a signature, though; one unsigned Samantha from 1986 still commanded $1,640—and that's despite the fact that one of her eyes sticks a
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