Iasked Peg Szekely if she considered herself an expert on Barbie. She said not really, but 10 minutes into our conversation I was convinced that Szekely probably knows as much as anyone about Barbie.
Szekely is proprietor of the Doll and Mini Nook in Quakertown. I hunted her down after I read that Barbie is turning 40 this year.
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Forty! That puts Barbie in my generation. No question, Barbie has weathered the years a bit better. I'm losing my hair, carrying a paunch, watching my blood pressure and calculating my pension. Barbie still has high cheekbones, a wasp's waist, a gymnast's legs and no need for a tummy tuck.
Both my kids played with Barbies, but both soon outgrew them. Right now, there are two crates in my attic. One says "Michelle's Barbies," the other "Ashley's Barbies." One day, they'll be turned over to grandchildren, I'm sure.
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My wife also has her first Barbie. She claims it's an original from 1959: a blond, ponytailed teenybopper dressed in black and white striped maillot. Unfortunately, at some point in the last 40 years, my wife's Barbie became separated from her head. She still has the head, but it isn't attached. When I told her that I would be interviewing a Barbie expert, she said be sure to ask whether Headless Barbie is worth anything.
I told this story to Szekely. She found a price guide, paged through, and deduced that my wife's Barbie is worthless. Oh, she said, if it was still in the box, never played with and had its head intact, yes, it could be worth as much as $7,800.
And be wary of fakes! Just because you find the words "U.S. Pat. Pend. 1958" stamped on Barbie's tush, you shouldn't assume you have an original 1959 Barbie. Szekely said Mattel used that imprint on dolls manufactured as late as 1966.
She paged through some Barbie
collectors' books and found photographs that showed the difference between Original Barbie and Subsequent Barbie. The originals had arched eyebrows and narrow, come-hither bedroom eyes, while the later Barbies had wider, golly-gosh saucer eyes. Also, Szekely told me, 1959 vintage Barbies had holes drilled in their feet so you could prop them up on their stands. The later Barbies didn't have that feature.
"It's amazing what people will do," she said. "They will actually drill holes in their feet. I always ask them whether they also have the stands, and they never do."
Uhh, right. Back to Barbie. Apparently, at some point in Barbie's life, she went from being a toy to an investment. No question, she's still a toy -- just check the Barbie aisle at any Wal-Mart and you'll find dozens of variations of Barbie, dressed in hot fashions, and for sale at prices around $10.
But you take that same plastic doll, dress her in frilly designer clothes, make her available in limited quantities and boost the price to as much as $250, and suddenly she ranks right up there with pork bellies and OJ on the commodities market.
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I looked along the walls of Szekely's store and found Evening Sophisticate Barbie, Neptune Fantasy Barbie, Grecian Goddess Barbie, Empress Bride Barbie and Madame Du Barbie, all dressed in drop-dead gowns designed by Christian Dior, Bob Mackie, Bill Blass and other incandescent couturiers.
Szekely pulled down a box to show me the latest arrival -- Fantasy Goddess of Asia Barbie. It had just arrived, she said, and already had a customer's name tagged to the top.
She lifted the cover off carefully, untied a gold ribbon and revealed Barbie as an Asian princess, her black hair trussed up in colorful beads, her dress a floor-length green sequined gown that fit snugly to her hourglass figure.
"There are some people who would have died if I opened this box," Szekely told me, adding that she knows some collectors who won't even take the box out of the corrugated cardboard carton that comes from the factory.
Don't laugh. If you never take them out of the box, they'll never lose their heads.
