Collecting stuff is not what it used to be.
Collecting stuff used to mean hours, days, weeks, years of searching, rummaging through flea markets, visiting estate sales, scanning classified ads in newspapers and maybe, if you’re lucky, striking up a friendship with someone collecting the same thing.
The internet, of course, made collecting less a big-game hunt than a morning errand. But it also, for many collectors, diminished the best part of collecting: the collecting community. Steven Emmert, for instance, collects dolls. “Some things you learn online, but there’s much more you learn just being among people who want the same thing.”
That’s why he joined Windy City Collectors.
They meet monthly, every second Thursday, at Russell’s Barbecue in Elmwood Park. They don’t meet there for the barbecue. Or even — as far as I can tell, having attended a couple of meetings — to horse trade or decide if they’re sitting on collectible goldmines.
It’s for the love of Barbie.
All things Barbie. The Barbie you find at Target, the Barbie you find twisted inside an old cardboard box in the attic, the Barbie you only get from Mattel direct marketing, Barbie shoes and Barbie school folders, Barbie sports cars, Barbie real estate, Barbie dresses.
When you are among the women — and a handful of gents — of Windy City Collectors, one of the oldest, most durable Barbie-centric groups in the nation, you just think pink.
You think only Barbie, always Barbie.
“Our one fundamental rule,” said Kelli Simmons, “is don’t talk politics; just talk Barbie.”
Saul Vazquez is president of Windy City Collectors. He’s 48 and teaches at South Elgin High School. When he tells me about his background, words rush out, not because he wants to move past the details quickly, but because he wants to get back to Barbie. He collects only Superstar Barbies. You know, the Barbie first released in 1977. You know, Olivia Newton-John served as one of the models. You know, it first came in a pink dress. He doesn’t love every Barbie, he collects only one era of Barbie. He speaks with the breathless shorthand of the obsessed. Last summer, many of us were like this, thinking and talking Barbie all the time. This month the “Barbie” film is an Oscar contender and Barbie herself — Medicare, girlfriend — turns 65. You may think of Barbie now and again.
But Windy City Collectors have been eating and breathing Barbie for 32 years.
“When you are this into something, especially toys, especially dolls, you try and talk to people about it and they rarely understand,” Vazquez said. “It feels weird to tell people you collect dolls, and they can’t hold that conversation. They see a piece of plastic, they don’t see the value you see. But Windy City — these folks, they want that conversation.”
Sherry Baloun, a Windy City member who owns Gigi’s Dolls & Sherry’s Teddy Bears in Norwood Park, has collected Barbie dolls and accessories for 50 years. “I think a group like this sticks around so long because it does make you more confident in your choices. It’s this reminder you’re not alone, and it can be a lonely thing to collect.”
Windy City Collectors began during the peak of the last Barbie Boom, in the early 1990s, when collecting mania surged and Barbies, Beanie Babies and comic books were snapped up (often by non-collectors) and resold at artificially inflated prices. Ask a Windy City member how they feel about this latest Golden Age and they are cautiously upbeat: Mostly, they loved the movie, and certainly, their community is more active than ever. But they could do without the Barbie tourists, the ones here to make a buck — “the ones convinced they have original Barbies, and they don’t,” said Deb Paris, the group’s community service chairperson. “Those people will fade away but we will still be here.”
Peggie Nielsen, in high-top Barbie Air Nikes — a member since 1994 — nodded vigorously, then added: “You know what? I have a Barbie No. 1, with holes in the feet.”
“Wow,” Paris said, impressed, “where did you get that?”
“Right place, right time.”
“I wish I had one. I just have two No. 3s and that’s as low as my collection goes.” Paris turns to me to explain: “The first Barbies were numbered, like comic books, and the lower the number, the more they are worth and the rarer they are. But, see, for me, I like the hunt. Someday I’m going to spot a No. 1 in the back of an antique store and that owner is not going to know what he has, and there you go — that’s when I’m going to pounce.”
This was last month, at the Valentine-themed meeting. Nearly every monthly meeting adopts a theme. Christmas in December, of course. Being Thankful for Barbie (and Barbie shoes) in November. What Barbie goodies they scored for Christmas in January. But themes seem more like the organizational tool for a dizzying clamor of enthusiasm.
Did you know there’s a new Alan doll this month?
Did you know Alan’s turning 60?
You saw Billie Eilish at the Grammy’s?
Wearing Barbie’s Poodle Parade outfit? Yes!
Some Barbies are faded, some have sculpted hair that looks freshly coiffed. Many members bring a selection of showpieces to each meeting, depending on the theme. I first met Molly Kettler at the Halloween meeting. She was encyclopedic on Barbie. One of the Barbies she brought — she has thousands at home — wore a cheetah costume. At the Valentine’s gathering, she walked me through more: “I like the grocery-store special Barbies, the ones sold as specials at places like Jewel. Most of the time they would make both caucasian and African American Barbies — they are trying for more diversity. This one (a dark-haired pale Barbie in a sea of blondes) was considered Hispanic. This is Rose, a ‘Titanic’ Barbie. This one was a Toys R Us special. This one is a one-of-a-kind artist Barbie, which can be very valued among collectors. This one was made for the 75th anniversary of Mattel. This one, the dress was made with pinking shears. This one has a different kind of body, called a ModelMuse body, first seen in 2003. Kids would get a reduced bust, but for adult collectors, Barbies here look more like models, with differently sculpted legs and a thinner waist. This one has a bubble-cut hairdo.”
Sort of Country-Club Barbie, I said.
“Or Debutante Barbie,” she said. “It’s from the ‘60s.”
Sandi Wagner of Skokie is a new member, for less than a year. At the Halloween meeting, she told me she joined accidentally: She went to the Barbie collectors convention intending to sell her dolls but ended up meeting Windy City. She feels like an amateur among pros, she said. “They’re hardcore,” she said, looking around another crowded meeting. “I collect ‘Playline’, meaning the stuff you can get at Target, and many of these women won’t do everyday common Barbie. I remember noticing how Barbie’s face would change and then I came here and suddenly you’re hearing ‘Well, her faces changed in this year …’ and ‘Also, faces changed again when …’ It’s so overwhelming.”
Windy City Collectors were founded by a Chicago collector named Julie Bronski. She posted handbills and flyers looking for anyone to start a new Barbie club in the Chicago area. She put an ad in Barbie Bazaar, the Barbie magazine based in Kenosha, Wisconsin, that served for decades as a Barbie bible for collectors internationally. (It folded in 2006.)
“I think Julie saw it as a way of sharing common experiences,” said Linda Dembek, who attended the first meeting in 1992 and is now the group’s membership chairperson. “Like, how do you wash the hair? Is your collection insured? You see those new dolls?”
About a dozen people came to the initial gathering, at the West Belmont branch of the Chicago Public Library. After that, and for 25 years until it closed, meetings were at a pizza place in Northlake. In the decades since, membership has grown to around 60.
Bronski, many members say, became so active in Barbie circles, she gave the group a national profile among collectors, and in 2022, Windy City hosted the annual Barbie convention. Thousands attended, but it was bittersweet. Bronski spent years caring for her ailing parents and had health problems herself. She got sicker as the convention approached, “though it was all she talked about,” Paris said. She was too sick to attend.
She died soon after, at 53.
Barbie debuted on March 9, 1959. Ruth Handler, her creator, “had no thought of Barbie as a collector’s item,” said Robin Gerber, Handler’s biographer. “She didn’t picture her selling beyond three years, which was the normal lifecycle of a toy back then.” The high concept of Barbie, however — a point often forgotten decades later — was that Barbie herself was an adult in a genre of toy that mostly portrayed females as babies or children. She connected to young girls who wanted to be adults one day, Gerber said, and now she connects to collector communities that want a link to their childhoods.
The typical Barbie collector today tends to be “a pretty positive person,” said Margie Schultz, a Cincinnati-based Windy City member, as well as the moderator of In the Pink, the online chatroom that’s an international hub for the Barbie collecting community.
“But also, like collectors of anything, they’re people and people will get cutthroat.”
At the Halloween meeting, Stacy Berns did not come across as the cut-throat sort. She came across like a firehose of Barbie information and collecting chutzpah. But between the lines you could hear anxious scrambles for Barbie rarities. She said her biggest problem with collecting is “dialing it back, resisting the urge to get something else, and then something else, and then something else.” She sat behind a Stevie Nicks Barbie.
A member approached. “Whoa,” the woman said, “insane how fast Stevie sold out.”
“She lasted a few hours,” Berns said.
“I missed her on Mattel, on Amazon — the world was out. It was like with Gloria Estefan.”
“Which you can find now for like $30,” Berns said.
The room was a swirl of jargon, Barbie craft projects, Barbie-inspired real-world clothing, Dreamhouse hacks, discussion of manufacturing materials, talk of the holy grails that got away, the just-missing-out-on Ken car keys, the price of Skipper’s pencil.
Kelli and Cristal Simmons, sisters from Morgan Park, sat beside each other, taking it in. Their father was a model railroad enthusiast. Their brother is a “Star Wars” collector, “and he thinks Barbie collecting is nuts!” Cristal said. She joined Windy City first, in the ’90s. “Back then I was the only African American here, but like Barbie, it’s more diverse now.”
Like Barbie — who has been a pancake chef, a rapper, a chief sustainability officer, a dog walker, a ballerina, a surgeon, a paratrooper, a Canadian Mountie, a paleontologist, an entomologist, an astrophysicist, a boxer, a cheerleader, a matador, a pianist, a race car driver, an airline pilot, a beekeeper and a McDonald’s cashier, among many, many other professions over 65 years — the members of Windy City Collectors contain multitudes. They have been microbiologists, flight attendants, teachers, accountants. Cristal Simmons is supervising epidemiologist for the Chicago Department of Public Health.
But now many are retired, at least 60 years old.
Dembek — who at 59 describes herself as semiretired, with an eBay business — said they have tried to add younger members, and children have joined the group now and then, “but I don’t even see my grandchildren playing with Barbie much now.” It worries her. Most of Windy City has been close with their Barbies, on and off, since childhood.
But not all.
Vazquez, the president, at 48, is a younger member. “I grew up in Mexico, and the machismo culture doesn’t really let you play Barbies if you’re a boy. I had a sister and was exposed to Barbie at about 6, but there was shame if I would play. I would be scolded.” Later, after a niece was born, he began buying Barbies himself. About 15 years ago, as an adult with disposable income, he began buying more, and more. He landed a rare Magical Mansion, and a rare Superstar Hawaiian Barbie, and a Mexican Barbie. Eventually, he bought so much Superstar Barbie, he realized he had everything.
He doesn’t go to Windy City Collectors now to collect so much as simply be there, as part of a community. “Now I have everything I always wanted. Everything. I have plenty.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
