Sick and Stalking Nellie

I have apparently caught my first illness of the school year. Just a nasty sore throat sort of a thing, but I have seen a few co-workers fight it for a week or more, so I am taking their advice to take it easy. The timing is bad, we had Andrea and Alyssa in town and Lydia and I were scheduled for a few adventured with them that got cancelled. Alyssa turns three on Monday and I am hoping we didn't give her our germs as a gift.

While I have been resting, I have been stalking a little orphaned Irish girl named Nellie O'Malley! This is Nellie. She is an American Girl Doll that was introduced several years ago. Long enough ago, that some little girls who bought her are now older and their parents are now selling her on ebay. That's the good news. The bad news is that Nellie was apparently retired or discontinued, or took a purity promise or whatever it is that happens to American Girl dolls that makes them rare and unusual and expensive. Anyway, a new American Girl doll is around $100. A mint condition Nellie in the box with her purity in tact is going for $325 and up on ebay.

I don't really care all that much that Nellie is an American Girl Doll or that she is rare or whatever it is that makes her crazy expensive. I like the idea of getting Lydia an 18 inch doll and making them a few matching outfits. As long as they are going to match, I thought it would be neat if they looked similar. From what I have researched it seems like you can buy new American girl dolls from the "Like You" line for around $100. The historical American Girl dolls cost about the same and are also ethnically diverse so they might look like you kid as well, but they also have story books about their little orphaned lives and that is a neat bonus. You can pay a little more and get a My Twinn doll that is custom made to match, but they are bigger and more fragile and their aren't as many patterns for matching outfits. There are several cheaper brands of 18 inch dolls and several of them have a token readhead, but the hair is always really long and really red. I have been searching and researching for a week or so and then I saw this strawberry blonde doll. And I couldn't help compare it to my strawberry blonde doll.

Same hair length, same coloring, same side part, and she almost always has a bow in her hair. So I am searching ebay trying to find the rarest of all auctions. The auction where the seller doesn't know what they are selling. I thought I hit the jackpot when I found a Nellie that was labeled with the wrong name. So people searching for that doll wouldn't want to bid and people searching for Nellie wouldn't find it. Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the seller, someone told them their mistake and the doll sold for almost $100. So I am back to searching for vague descriptions, like "American doll", and wading through thousands of auctions, looking for a doll that isn't named as Nellie, is hopefully missing her originally outfit, and may even have some minor damage, preferably in a non-visible location. I have my moments, when the cold medicine haze wears off and I wonder if I shouldn't admit defeat and buy the knock off red headed Madame Alexander doll that looks sort of like Lydia. And then I found 3 auctions buried in the recesses of ebay; 2 auctions for slightly abused strawberry blond American Girl dolls who (hopefully) shall remain nameless until I can be the high bidder on one of them, and one auction for Nelly's doll. Did you know some of the American Girl Doll's have their own baby dolls to hold? Neither did I until I was searching for Nellie and this doll popped up instead of Nellie.

Why did Nellie's doll catch my eye and restore my energy to search on? Nellie's doll is named Lydia! Weird or just the cold medicine talking?