What’s the rarest American Girl doll?
Statistically, there has to be one, right?
I don’t know if there’s way to definitively answer this question on my own, but I think I’ve been able to make a pretty decent assumption.
Here’s what I found.
This is Girl of Today #6. She never made it to the My American Girl/Just Like You/Truly Me name changes, because she was only available for under two years.
You’d assume that a doll who was available for longer than the average Girl of the Year wouldn’t be so rare, but it seems she is indeed exceedingly rare.
I was first made aware of this doll’s rarity when I stumbled across an unboxing video done by the YouTube channel sew4dolls. (If that name sounds familiar, she put out video a while back showing off her more than 100 American Girl dolls all displayed on her staircase. The video has many millions of views. It’s pretty spectacular.)
Here’s the video, where she unboxes a #6:
She mentions she’s been searching for this doll for over 10 years!
In the comments, one person mentioned that this doll’s head can no longer be replaced by the doll hospital, as they simply don’t have any replacements. I’d only heard of this phenomenon with Girl of the Year 2001, Lindsey Bergman, no longer being eligible for a head replacement as of last year. She didn’t sell too terribly well, but I would not call her rare at all.
So I decided to do a little digging, and see if #6 was, in fact, THE RAREST American Girl doll. Like I said at the top, there has to be one. If you rank every doll from most common to least common, SOMEONE has to be at the bottom.
#6 was first introduced to the Girl of Today line in September of 1995, along with her 19 sisters. By the spring of 1997, she’s still seen in the catalog. The numbers start at the top left and move right, so she’s the first in the second row.
(I borrowed the image from an eBay seller who had the catalog listed for $50).
But sometime in between–maybe over the summer, but I can’t find any interior shots of summer 1997 catalogs–she was discontinued and replaced. My best guess that she would have been gone by the time the autumn 1997 catalog came around, which is when Josefina was debuted.
(This image is from my own catalog collection).
See #6? She’s now featured with blonde hair and green eyes.
Why was she changed? My best guess is that she simply wasn’t selling well. Probably because she was too similar to #4 and to #16, who has dark brown hair and brown eyes. Pleasant Company may have considered a black-haired #6 to be redundant.
I’ve had this post in my draft for a few weeks, using that time to search eBay and Mercari for listings of a first edition #6. I’ve never seen one come up. So I couldn’t even tell you how much money they go for.
I have seen a few blonde #6 dolls, though.
This one is being sold for $65.
I searched Instagram through all the tags I could think of (#jly6, #girloftoday6, #trulyme6, even #got6 which is all Game of Thrones stuff) and I only found one post featuring this old #6, which is [here]. This user seems to confirm my findings, positing that this doll is probably the rarest of all the dolls! They also confirm that you cannot get her head replaced at the doll hospital.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.
What do the rest of you think? Is there a more rare doll out there?
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