Ebay: Contrasting Four Buying Experiences (UPDATED)

The first house I bought on Ebay was on a slow week, so inexpensive, dusty and inclomplete and took about a week to arrive. I was thrilled because i hadnt had my hands on one since about 1983. Both parcels were very large boxes, and the packing material was high quality & packed with care. Even all the parts were labeled, which took considerable time. I made sure to leave very positive feedback for the seller. He went above and beyond the call of duy for mailing a discounted item. Alternately, the second one i bought for spare parts was the complete opposite. I had to email the seller several times to get (and pay for seperately) insurance, one box arrived a week later on a friday, the other not till the following tuesday morning. not only were they slow to communicate, neither box had any packing material whatsoever. i cannot think of any lower rent way of offending a buyer. one of the floor pieces was chipped and there were random loose screws rattling around the smaller box with a large gaping hole in the side, and there were missing screws. This last house was so dirty for so long the dirt has stained and discolored the roofs and floors. That part was ok, because it was priced accordingly and said that it was dirty in the listing. Everything that was white was a creamy beige-darker than cheesecake. Of course the screws were rusty, too. Ultimately i am still glad i bought the second house, it has 99% of the parts i needed and i expected to have to spray everything white again. so you can see one purchase can be fine and ideal, while the next can be really bad. i let the seller know that they need to use packing material especially for large items. they were new sellers and appreciative of the input. i gave them positive feedback remarks on ebay since she did go to the trouble of following up with her post office about the location of the larger box. UPDATE: I just bought my 3rd vintage Mattel red roofed house. There were no other bidders because the seller put 'dreamhouse' instead of 'dream house'. it was $71 total, less $45 shipping, meaning the house (half furnished, and had ALL the windows in GREAT shape) was $26! It did not have the front doors, closet doors, or upper flower boxes, but was still a steal. The caveat was that the seller just thru everything in a box, with NO PACKING MATERIAL. Ugh!! But, it was ok because nothing actually got damaged, and virtually all the parts I can use. None of the parts are faded, so I can use everything to upgrade my personal A Frame. FOURTH house purchased: After weeks of being outbid on great houses by $1, for some reason I was the only bidder on this great house, shipping was $65 UPS (reasonable) and $9.99 for the house itself (white walls not needing painting, a rare orange roof, okay floors, and immaculate non faded/discolored windows and doors). it was complete minus one opper flower box, two medium windows and some flowers. there was cracks in a few places, but it was well packed, and the listing disclosed the flaws. Overall a GREAT transaction. I have noticed lately on ebay that many of the sellers out there are overcharging for very incomplete houses ($100 and NO windows or doors, flower boxes, closet, etc), they refuse to lower the price in light of this, and so what ends up happening is that it sits online forever, or an uneducated buyer overpays for it, or they end up 'tossing' it as they were not able to make alot of money on it, and lowering the price makes it 'not worth their time to pack and ship it'. I know because this is what they tell me. At any rate, good luck out there future home buyers. =-)

A Frame: Changeability and Layout Options

Arguably the best feature of the whole playset was the ability to arrange, rearrange and change again the house anyway you wanted to. You could even make a few different houses for the neighbors! What a house. I doubt mattel will ever equal the fun and quality of any house they make in the future. They dont show the triangular patio sections in these photos with added to the infinite possibilities. I am sure they still have the molds hanging around some warehouse somewhere they could just manufacture a few thousand for all us adult collectors out there.

Furniture: Bedroom: La Boudoir Por Madamemoiselle Barbie

The dresser contours and scale of the bed are great. I suppose the armoir was assuming most parents did not purchase the A frame house with built in closet. Interestingly, the computer (who in '78 had a personal computer at home?) lifts up for hideaway storage. As most know, the dresser was also the green desk with a different top. The bedding is hard to find, but due to the color, i am not intent on adding this to the A frame house itself since it is reminicent of the PINK A frame.

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Furniture: Dining Room: Feeling Blue

This is not my favorite set, mostly because of the color. I dont think it goes with the yellow and orange of the house-its not earth tone in any way. I guess it was part of the early seventies space age look. I also dont get the pink accents to the cookware and table accesories. I can sort of acccept the solid blue seats of the set pictured here, but most chairs out there have the ugly patterned upholstery. The clear table top and doors to the china hutch relate to the clear orange doors on the oven which is cool, but its still BLUE!! Brown is my suggestion to this noticable gaffe.

One needs tweezers to set this table. 

Crisp, minty, unfaded china. 

Faded to green.....

As the China Hutch originally appeared in stores. Circa 1981.

I just realized this week, in the 14 years I have been collecting and renovating the 1978 Barbie A Frame DreamHouse, I have never had the 4 dining room chairs! So, this week, I finally followed up on that and got a near complete set for about $35, great seller on Feebay, BTW. Initially, I planned to remove all the upholstery and padding that would inevitably be stuck on the seats by now, as I saw a rather good looking picture of 4 dark blue chairs uncovered, for sale, for about $45. I came to know these chairs came in different color combos of dark and light blue, as well as white/cream before they were molded in pink in the 80s. The best way to slide off the top to reveal the fabric under lining is to slowly, evenly, pry open the lower half off in a horizontal direction, be patient, and you will not break off any pegs. Also, the chair sides are differentiated, so when putting together there is an outer and inner edge to the chair sides. A few of mine did not snap on the side pegs, but basically stay together. Another fun fact, the table is stamped 1978 and the chairs are stamped 1977. Personally, I am not a fan of the fabric pattern. I think a solid blue would have been great. Here in the picture below I first toenail clippered off the original plastic parts tree debris, then carefully sanded off the remaining excess with a Dremel tool sander bit on low setting, after this, lightly clean, then lightly polish plastic parts with minderal oil (being careful not to touch fabric) and they will shine like glass, I didn't take off the fabric in this case because, as in the case of the sofa I uncovered, it's A LOT of work and the seats aren't dark blue like I thought they would be, they are light blue like the legs:

The set I saw online, gorgeous specimans, either fabric was never applied (since the upholstery rots to the seats, or it was meticulously cleaned off, there is a slight fabric pattern to the hard platic seat pieces:

Below is a chair I repaired; had a missing leg and didn't want to spend another 30-45 on another set of chairs to complete my set, so made it out of dollar store poster board by tracing the leg it had on it, carefully carving out with a sharp exacto knife, sanded it, put 2 coats of dollar tree or Walmart baby blue water based paint on it, let dry, drilled 2 of the smallest drill bit holes to pop it on, fits tighter than the vintage plastic leg, I could add the little crossbar at the bottom but it's steady enough for now. 

Furniture: Patio Furniture & Barbeque

I posted this set seperately since in theory the furniture can go without the pool just fine. The pool came furnished and unfurnished just as the house did. This would be the accesories for the triangular floor pieces to the A Frame DreamHouse. Or if you wanted to give barbie her own veranda off the bedroom. Again, not crazy about the pink. I know everything cant be orange, white and yellow, but maybe brown and green? I have never seen a BBQ, patio chair, chaise lounge or umbrella in real life that anything resembles these toys, but i guess that lends itself to childhood whimsy. The patio table itself is well designed and period. Is that an apple martini?

Box: Circa 1982 or '83?

Another incarnation of the DreamHouse box. It looks circa 1981-83, probably not long before the pink version came out. I am still looking for a picture of the green box (unfurnished one, i think) i remember seeing in Kay Bee toy store in 1982. This one looks to have the pink and white stove, and no triangular patio sections. I wish they would have included them in all the issues of this house so they wouldnt be so rare now on ebay...=-(








1978 Mattel A Frame Barbie Dream Doll House Red roof yellow floors mod groovy 1970s 1980s custom OOAK 

The Instructions

Almost nobody kept the original instructions. You can get a photocopy on ebay for $5-$7. They arent crucial for putting it together, but are nice to have with the house. The color brochure is even harder to find since it cant be photocopied easily. Here is the inventory sheet, hard to read on this post, but ask me and i will let you know how many of what was included. Mattel (and Kenner) were good about making it easy to order replacement parts at the time. The time was when instructions were easy to follow and only came in English.

The instructions will not mention that the toe kick needs to be on top of the balcony floor, or else the doors will not open outward and the balcony will be bowed upward. 

Nearly 50 pounds with furniture! And only $20 more for furnished =-) 

1978 Mattel A Frame Barbie Dream Doll House Red roof yellow floors mod groovy 1970s 1980s custom OOAK 

Color Variation: Pink House Circa 1985-1991

Beautiful sunlight streaming through the openness of the house. 

Original box for the 1985 house. 

Dark pink framed windows. 

I think this is where most A-Frame fans divide into two camps. For me, this is a bad concoction of groovy seventies architecture and big eighties PINK. I can see where Mattel was coming from with this. About 5 years after the original came out in '78, they were probably needing another dollhouse to market and still had the molds to produce the A-Frame, but in the mid eighties orange and yellow were no longer in style colors. It makes sense, but to me is hideous. I am sure there are some A-Frame fans out there that have no problem with it, but as an older fan there is no replacing the original. They even regurgitated the Harvest Gold stove and fridge in pink and white to go with this house (the stickers are better and cooler though), i have never seen the other furniture recycled.

Hot pink dinette set. 

Pink and black, very sharp! Looks like the hutch sticker has seen better days. This is the lighter pink dining room.
=-) 

A wee bit fuzzy, but in all its glory! 

Pink 'vette, cottage and dream pool. These are either repaints or foreign issue. 

Light pink frames. 

Light pink frames. 

How to get a minty, complete house affordably...

You may not like this, but its the truth. The way that I got a nice, complete house (for under $100) was to buy two icky ones, completely clean, repaint (the white only) and lay out all the parts, construct one complete one with all the best parts, and put together a second one with the leftovers and sell it higher to help pay for the first one. I managed to buy aquarium flowers, include photocopied instructions and a green outdoor carpet mat for it and got a decent price for it ($30-40 more than i paid). Also, I included the yellow kitchen appliances (not so great ones i had spare) and billed it as partially furnished. I didnt intend to buy a second when I bought the first, but decided after I got it that I really did want a mint complete one. Right now you can get a mostly complete house on ebay for $85-$125 including shipping. The average price of one piece is $10-$20 (and parts are VERY hard to find). I added everything up and it came to at least $200 if bought seperately, not including shipping. To date, I paid $60 on the first house, $10 on paint, about $15 on the green carpet, and used $10 worth of aquarium plants. The second house i bought for parts was more, about $125 I think, plus more paint and $10 for copied instructions. The caveat is the triangular patio floors. Only about 1 in 8 of the houses i see online have the triangular patio floors. If you want those, you will pay dearly for them.

Colorforms: The 'virtual' A-Frame house.

The reason for making a colorforms version of the A-Frame is unclear. Maybe after a kids sugar crash its just easier to move around cut outs rather than actual 3-d furniture. =-) Looking at the box art, i wonder how the sales would have been affected if they had marketed it as 'The Barbie Califronia Dream House'. Has a nice ring to it and southern California blonds and Malibu was very popular at the time.

Travel size!

Buy your new Colorforms kit on Amazon (2020-now) for under $20! 

search "barbie colorforms house"

architect architects idea ideas goal aesthetic eames eichler palm springs by the sea malibu granola earth tones earthy autumn wexler wood slats open playful fun 1960s 60s open playful play timeless heirloom