Collecting Cabbage Patch Dolls

Collecting Cabbage Patch Dolls

In 1982 Cabbage Patch Dolls became the hottest doll on the market.  Christmas of that year saw adults fighting in the store to buy the doll for their children for Christmas. While children still buy new CPKs every year, most CPKs are owned by collectors. It's not unheard of for an avid collector to have their doll rooms filled with Cabbage Patch Kids. Many of these collectors trace their CPK roots to the early CPK crazes of the 1980s. Some were children then, and now remember their first CPK as a beloved doll. Others were parents, who quickly become more engrossed in the craze for CPKs than their children were, and realised that dolls purchased and stored without opening might be valuable decades later.

There are also many special Cabbage Patch places that collect 'unwanted' Cabbage Patch Kids. The 'unwanted' CPKs are generally the ones that are in too poor of a condition to attract collectors, or do not have their boxes or papers. These orphanages may find their dolls at garage sales or the local Goodwill, or may receive them as donations. Most of the orphanages have a small 'doll hospital' on site, where incoming dolls are cleaned up and repaired if need be. These dolls can then be 'adopted' for a low fee by the public.

A collector might pay a few thousand dollars for a rare soft-sculptured doll, or as much as a few hundred for one of more rare types of mass market CPKs. 

The value of these dolls may depend on the following:

• manufacturer,
• year made,
• type of CPK,
• head shape,
• hairstyle and colour,
• eye colour,
• ethnicity of doll,
• clothing,
• condition of doll, papers, and box, and
• where and when the doll is being sold.