Growing up I loved playing with my Barbie dolls—all 18 of them. I was obsessed with Barbie and her clothes, and her friends, and her accessories… you get the idea. Eventually, I grew out of my Barbie phase and my mom carefully packed up my entire collection and placed it in storage. Looking back, I don’t blame her for being so meticulous, after all, she and my dad, grandparents and other family members must have spent hundreds, perhaps, thousands of dollars on all of my Barbie paraphernalia.
In the years since, I occasionally looked on Ebay to see how much I could possibly get for some of my Barbie stuff (not much). Which is not to say Barbies aren’t worth much—just ask a Barbie collector who just spent more than $15,000 for a single Barbie. A 1965 Barbie in Midnight Red doll sold for a world record $17,000 on Tuesday. According to Christie’s Auction House, who ran the sale, the doll, became the most expensive Barbie ever to be sold at auction.
“It was very competitive,” a Christie’s spokeswoman told reporters. “People were taking this very seriously. We had interest from all four corners of the world.”
When the dust from the bid battle settled an anonymous phone bidder was the proud owner of the Midnight Red doll. Turns out the anonymous bidder came to do some serious shopping. According to the auction house, the same bidder also paid $12,600 for Gala Abend Barbie — a high color doll produced for the Japanese market — and $8,820 for Barbie in Midnight Pink, both dating from 1965.
And, do you remember the very first Barbie doll to hit store shelves–the 1959 brunette Barbie No. 1 — clad in a zebra-stripe swimsuit with sunglasses and hooped earrings –well, it set a sales record too. Someone shelled out more than $5,000 for the doll, which surpassed pre-auction expectations of $2,100. All tolled, the sale, which spanned the entire history of Barbie and her friends, family and fashions brought in a record $200,000.