We just bought a collection of Annalee Dolls from a long time collector. They’re available for sale in our eBay Shop – to celebrate we thought we’d share a few fun facts about the creator.

Here are a few:

• In 1933, Annalee sold her first dolls through the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen and to local stores.
• Originally she used pieces from her husbands shirts, sons clothes and her own dresses to create accessories.
• In the 1960s, the first Annalee factory was built, known as the Parkersburg

And one not so fun fact:

• In late 2001 production changed from the USA to China (hopefully they’ll return to America again soon).

Wondering how to date your Annalee? Here are a few tips:

• Manufactured Annalee dolls had no tags before the mid-1950s – although the very eary 1930s dolls had hand-sewn and painted labels with Annalee in block letters.
• Sometime during the 1050s tags had red lettering on white, these tags included company name and date of copyright (not date of manufacture) – any second date was the copyright date of head or body redesign only
• It was not until 1986 that a manufacturing year was included on Annalee tags (as opposed to just the copyright date)
• In the late 1960s, labels were made of white fabric with embroidered red lettering.
• In 1976 the company switched to a folded label

 

If you are looking to add to your collection this season please click here to visit our store.

If you have a collection you’d like to sell – please don’t hesitate to contact us!