Doll collector David Mansour sits in a room at his home in San Diego with his vast doll collection. Photo / The Washington Post
Doll collector David Mansour sits in a room at his home in San Diego with his vast doll collection. Photo / The Washington Post
How many dolls is enough dolls? This question recently entered our political discourse via US President Donald Trump, who, bracing the nation for the possibility of higher-priced items as a result of his tariffs, declared that a “beautiful baby girl... that’s 11 years old” doesn’t need “30 dolls”, and that “three or four” dolls should suffice.
Try telling that to David Mansour.
“Let me have my 1700 dolls.”
Hold up. Seventeen hundred?
Yes. Mansour, 62, has been collecting Barbies for 37 years. His happy place is his “Barbie Room”, a space in his San Diego apartment where he displays 500 of them.
Mansour, 62, has been collecting Barbies for 37 years. Photo / The Washington Post
Looking at all those Barbies “gives me a lot of joy”, he says. “It’s fun to have people come over, and I get to show them. I feel like a curator from a museum. I get to explain, ‘This is the Peaches and Cream Barbie. Oh, here’s the Barbie and the Rockers that were my first dolls.’” (Mansour asked this reporter about her childhood Barbies, and the interview diverged to a five-minute tangent about Animal Lovin’ Barbie, circa 1989 – which, yes, he has.) He even has a President Barbie, who he says “probably would make better decisions right now” than the current US officeholder.
Mansour is not a beautiful baby girl who’s 11 years old. Nor are many other members of the very real, very passionate doll-collecting communities of America. But some took note of the President calling out voluminous doll collections in his austerity message. And they did not like the idea of Trump toying with their hobby.
“He tells American consumers to pay more and buy less but wants to spend millions on a military parade for his birthday,” Mansour says.
“He’s asking others to sacrifice, and he’s not willing to sacrifice himself,” says Sherry Groom, the Guinness World Records titleholder for the world’s largest collection of Troll dolls – those chubby little imps with whimsical coiffeurs. (She has more than 8130 unique trolls, but if you include duplicates, her collection numbers more than 41,000). “Is he going to get rid of any of his toys?” Groom continued, referring to the president’s homes, golf courses and other precious possessions.
'President Donald Trump tells American consumers to pay more and buy less but wants to spend millions on a military parade for his birthday,' Mansour says. Photo / The Washington Post
“Where does he come off telling people how many of anything they can buy?” says Birdie Dapples, president of the Heritage Doll Guild of the Yellowstone, a doll collectors club in Billings, Montana. “I beg to differ with him there. I need 200 dolls.”
The Trump administration this week lowered its tariffs on Chinese goods from 145% to about 30% for 90 days – a temporary reprieve while talks between the two nations continue. “It looks like Christmas for doll-loving American children isn’t canceled, after all,” quipped Politico’s Playbook after the news broke. Still, the long-term impact of Trump’s trade war on doll prices remains to be seen.
Doll collectors understand that not everyone appreciates their unconventional hobby. “When my kids left home and I had some money that I could spend on myself, I wanted to buy some dolls,” says Dapples, 82. “Now, I’ve kind of gone overboard, maybe a little bit.”
But even if troves of Cabbage Patch Kids or spooky Victorian baby dolls aren’t everyone’s idea of a necessary indulgence, the collectors say they are doing their part to support the economy by making sure their disposable income keeps the gears of capitalism churning, with domestic purchases of vintage dolls and ordering of new dolls from overseas.
Groom’s collection has become the Troll Hole, a museum in Alliance, Ohio – it draws curious visitors to her town, who spend their money at coffee shops and other small businesses. She also sells Troll dolls, including one in the president’s likeness. (“NOT A TOY, NOT INTENDED FOR CHILDREN.”) It’s a top-seller. But most Trolls are made outside the United States, Groom says, so when she orders new inventory from China and other countries for her museum store, she will have to start marking up her prices by 30% to offset the cost of tariffs.
'I feel like a curator from a museum,' Mansour says. Photo / The Washington Post
Dapples focuses on vintage and antique dolls – she has Ginnys and Tonis from the 1950s, and many fragile dolls made of bisque, a type of porcelain popular in the mid- to late 1800s that is “supposed to look more like flesh”, she says. She even has a Reborn Doll, a type of hyper-realistic newborn baby doll that cost her around $700.
A Reborn Doll collector and seller responded to an interview request, replying in an email saying she was “not one for the lefts propaganda. My sells of dolls have never been better my collectors own more than two dolls.”
The reasons adult collectors might want to own two, or 200, or 2000 dolls are the same that beautiful 11-year-old baby girls might want them too: because they make them feel good.
“No one can tell you that you cannot express yourself creatively through the things that you love,” says Groom. Though, yes, her children are “seriously embarrassed” by it, she says.
Kathy Dilgarde, 64, of Casper, Wyoming, finds joy and comfort in her hobby.
“I’m reliving the past that was wonderful and simple, and things aren’t so simple anymore,” says Dilgarde, who collects Barbies, Liddle Kiddles, and 1960s-era Heidi and Jan dolls. She’s preserving a piece of women’s history. And she feels a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment when she completes a grouping of dolls, or finds all the components for an outfit.
“It is a small thing that we can control,” Dilgarde says, “when the rest of our existence feels out of control.”
