I'm guessing because I haven't counted them all in a long time but I think somewhere around 450-500 but they're mostly thrift Barbies and dolls I got for my birthday and Christmas not dolls I bought at full price. I've been seriously collecting dolls since 2002 or so, though I had a couple of Barbie heads and my 2 wet and drink dolls from my childhood before that. My Mom tried to throw them away when I was 10 but I rescued them and hid them. I didn't have that many dolls as a child. 4 or 5 for my whole childhood and my first one I lost in a truly devastating way. I have never forgotten that. That's probably half the reason why I am so nutty about them now, can't stand to give up even one, but I really, really loved them and I wasn't happy when she did that. It was my call to make and I would have never thrown them out on my own. Now, I'm doll crazy. It's play therapy in a way, I suppose. As a kid I barely got to play. My parents were down on toys and real big on chores. Now that I am an adult I make some time to play and have plenty of nice toys.
I do have some Tonner sized dolls but most of my dolls are the 9-12" playline kind. I know several people who resell toys locally too and I'm always getting non-vintage Barbies in trade from them. I know a lot about dolls. Sometimes they pick my brain or I help them out at the flea market and I get paid in dolls. My biggest collections that way are of Barbie and the My Scene dolls though I do have some Bratz, Liv, and Jem dolls and various other dolls like that from Hasbro etc.
Most of them were not the expensive collector's dolls though. I don't go there often. Probably 90% of my Barbie stuff is thrift store/flea market/garage sale finds. I do some auctions but not a lot. I get the big dolls from my family. That's all I ever want for my birthday or for Christmas and they know it. I've got them pretty well trained. They want favorite meals cooked, errands run, computer help, pics taken, or whatever? I get paid in little dolls or Target cards, lol. Big holidays=Big dolls.
Dad actually had me outside today spreading mulch in the front garden and he knows I totally hate yard work. (Besides which sun is toxic to me.) He had to bribe me with the offer of a new 12" doll. I get to go to Target tomorrow to shop! I guess I really should count them again, but I'm kind of afraid to. I mean it's one thing to guess you have a few hundred dolls it's another to know you do to the last proper digit. Hundreds of dolls, that's a "darned doll museum" as my roommate says, but I am unrepentant. I will keep collecting dollies till the day I drop, even if they completely take over the house and I have to ask the roommate to move out....
But it's not as big of an investment as it seems. I'm not one of those doll collector's that drops thousands every year on dolls. Couple, three hundred maybe. I'm a budget doll collector. The "walls have dolls" thing that does kind of fit though. I have to rotate my dolls 3X a year at this point just to give them all out of box time. Sometimes I do feel like maybe I should cut back though. I had to lug the stored ones all out yesterday, all 12 of the 30 gallon storage boxes worth so an electrician could work on the wall behind them. Between that and the mulching my back is just killing me...