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New Research Shows Your

Vintage Barbie Could Fetch

As Much As $27,000 on the

Resale Market

businessinsider.com – If you have old Barbie dolls that are gathering
dust at home, there’s a chance you can make a quick buck by selling
them online.
BonusFinder, an online casino comparison website, released new
research about the most valuable Barbie dolls of all time using data
from online marketplace BarbieDB.com to find the maximum selling
price of dolls released between 1959 to 2020.
The original Barbie #1, which was produced in 1959 and sold for
just $3, ranked top with a maximum resale value of $27,450. Ruth
Handler, who was part-owner of the toy company Mattel that
produces these dolls, was the brains behind the first model.
The first Barbie is known for her signature look of a strapless black
and white print swimsuit with stiletto heels. She was 11.5 inches tall,
had blonde hair, and worked as a fashion model.
The second most valuable Barbie doll is Dahlia Barbie, created by
Robert Best in 2006, and has a resale value of up to $2,423. The
Dahlia Barbie wears a strapless white gown with black lace, white satin
gloves, silver earrings, and a brooch with Swarovski crystals, per
BonusFinder.
The maximum resale value for other Barbies on Bonus Finder’s list
ranged from $886 to $1,451.
Greta Gerwig’s hotly anticipated Barbie movie featuring Margot
Robbie and Ryan Gosling has created a resurgence in the hype around
the doll in recent months and is set to hit theaters in July. Mattel
recently released a new collection of Barbie dolls based on the cast of
Gerwig’s movie.
Barbie and Ken Were Named

After a Brother and Sister

businessinsider.com – Barbie
and Ken are one of the best
known couples in the world
of pop culture.
As well as selling millions
of dolls, the pair have
spawned a 1997 Europop hit
by Aqua, a “dream date’
board game, and even
appearances in Toy Story 3.
But the real-life Barbie
and Ken were never a couple. The plastic dolls were actually named
after a sister and brother – the children of Mattel cofounder and
Barbie creator Ruth Handler.
Throughout the 1950s, Handler had wanted to make a fashion doll
for girls too old for baby dolls whose play was limited by the paper dolls
popular at the time. But it wasn’t until she stumbled across a doll like
the one she’d envisaged during a trip to Europe in 1956 that she finally
managed to persuade Mattel to start producing an adult fashion doll.
Handler had wanted to name the doll after her daughter’s nick-
name, Babs. But that had already been taken – and so had Barbara. So
Handler settled for Barbie “fairly early in the design process ... in
honor of our daughter, of course, whose innocent play with adult
paper dolls had inspired the idea,” Handler wrote in her autobiography
Dream Doll, and gave her the full name Barbara Millicent Roberts.
“If it hadn’t been for Barbie,” Ruth told The Los Angeles Times in
1989, “I would have never come up with the idea for the doll.”
Almost immediately after Barbie hit toy shop shelves in 1959,
Mattel started receiving “hundreds of letters from little girls begging
us to make a boyfriend for Barbie,” Handler wrote.
So a boyfriend for Barbie came out two years later in 1961. Just as
she’d name Barbie for her daughter, Ken was named for Handler’s
son. Ken sold for $3.50 and was half an inch taller than his girlfriend.
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