Looking Back: My Trip to the 2017 American Girl Benefit Sale

 I've seen a lot of posts on the subreddit lately asking questions about what exactly is at the Madison Children's Museum benefit sale. I also keep wanting to share my experience, but I don't want to write it in multiple places, so I will share it here. I also want to note that I last attended the benefit sale in 2017, 6 years ago. Many things have changed since then, and because this year's benefit sale is being held in a brand new location, it should be noted that this blogpost, is NOT an official guide to the sale. r/americangirl will be hosting forum questions about the sale, but we also are not an official source of Benefit Sale information. 

For the latest up-to-date information on the Madison Children's Museum Benefit Sale, Always refer to The Official Facebook Page of the sale. Additional information is also available from their official website. These two links are the official sources of information on the Sale. 

About a week before the sale, a price list will be released. This list will not include every single item available at the sale, but it will give the general prices for items. It should include all the categories of dolls (Historical, Modern/Truly Me, Girl of the Year, World By Us/"modern characters", Create Your Own, etc.) as well as the limits of each type of item per ticket. There are some accessories and playsets available at the benefit sale, but the specific items and accessories are not known until you actually go to the sale. The focus of the sale, however, is the dolls. If you go to the sale expecting to buy a specific item, you will likely end up disappointed. This has caused a lot of confusion in the past when people think the sale is exactly like shopping at one of AG's retail stores, which it is not. 

    When I went in 2017, I ended up getting Melody's Bed for a great price. I also remember seeing Melody's recording studio and Lea's rainforest treehouse as well. I also got Melody's Hairstyling set at the sale that year, along with three of Lea's smaller plush animals. One of the best accessory items I got though were the hangers! The benefit sale was a great place to score hangers, and I'm very glad I bought so many at the sale before AG changed their design. 

My mother took advantage of one of the AG Shutterfly Photobook Coupons we got from the sale and made me this photo book with memories of the sale. 

When I went to the sale, we stayed in the Benefit Sale hotel block. I got a goodie bag that included a Lea mini doll, which was super fun seeing as I was missing the dolls I already had back home, and was anxious to get to the sale to get other dolls!

We (My mother and I) stayed in the benefit sale specific hotel block when I went in 2017. I would recommend trying to stay in a hotel block if they are offered. It was a ton of fun, we got a goodie bag, and it was also nice to have other people around us going to the sale too, it makes you feel like a bit less of an odd person hauling around huge bags of dolls through the hotel lobby when there are other people doing it too. 

Here are some of the only photos we took of the actual sale. My mother and I aren't really vloggers, and the benefit sale is also crazy busy. Lots of long lines, tons of people, and it can even get pretty hot. 

Here are the few photos we took from waiting outside of the sale. We ended up getting very early tickets, so we left the hotel around like, maybe 6:30am at the latest. 

    This process is going to be very different this year since the sale is being hosted at a brand new venue. I don't think there's been any information yet on whether lines will be inside or outside, but be prepared to stand in the heat and wait a bit for your ticket time. If you have an early ticket call time, make sure to be there well before that time. Camping out overnight before the sale used to be a thing way back in the early 2000s, but now it's quite discouraged and also not really necessary since the tickets have an assigned entrance time, and you can't enter the sale before then anyway. 

Here are some photos we took after we did our first round of shopping. 

Dolls cannot be brought into the sale, hence the photo in the top right hand corner with the sign reading "Welcome to Doll Daycare". We brought our own blue Ikea bags, but Madison Children's Museum also hands out the iconic big purple bags for all of your shopping needs.

Here I am with my first haul after day 1! The doll on the rightmost side was actually my mother's first AG doll, but I purchased the other 5 dolls during the first day of the sale. 

Here are some other photos of each doll, plus the mess that unfolded in our hotel room. 

Here's what our bags looked like once we got in the door, as well as our ticket numbers for the sale.

A final photo of my doll Genevieve, who I took out with me on some of the other stuff me and my mother did in Wisconsin on the trip. 

I hope some of these photos can give a little more insight into what the benefit sale is like. For even more information, we have compiled a list of general benefit sale information on r/americangirl available here. As the sale gets closer, we will do our best to keep up with the information coming from the Children's Museum. Our live discussion mega-thread will launch on r/americangirl June 20th, and by then more information about the sale should be revealed. Please continue to leave posts and comments about the benefit sale on r/americangirl as they come up! 

Gwen and Just Like You#12: What's the difference?

 There are two dolls from the American Girl brand that are very similar, and in researching their differences I haven't come across any resources I'm satisfied with that adequately illustrate the differences between them. So, I'm going to write another version of this resource, hopefully with all of the information you will need to identify whether a doll truly is Gwen, Girl of the Year Chrissa's best friend, or whether the doll is modern doll #12.

This is Gwen, Chrissa's best friend in 2009

Or rather, this is Gwen. Gwen had the first hairstyle in January of 2009, but it was then modified in February of that year. (p.s., that pink ribbon around the waist of the dress is actually the headband from the previous hairstyle!)

Gwen was introduced in 2009 as one of the friends of Chrissa, that year's Girl of the Year doll. Gwen has blonde hair with bangs, brown eyes, lined eyebrows and light skin. 

This is Modern Doll #12 (image credit)

This is modern doll #12. Here I'm using the term "modern doll" to attempt to keep this post relevant for as long as possible. #12 was introduced in 1995 with the original series of the first 20 "American Girl of Today" dolls. (Which then was revamped to "American Girl Today", "Just Like You", My American Girl" and finally "Truly Me".) #12 has blonde hair with bangs, lined eyebrows, brown eyes and light skin....

Without their wigs, these dolls would be perfectly identical to one another. Between the two dolls there are differences between the wigs, however these differences can vary between different eras of production, and are be really hard to determine in photos listing the dolls online. #12 has what is commonly known as "Pie Bangs", meaning there the bangs are sewn into a single spot of the wig. Gwen has bangs that are sewn across the top of the wig in a line, and not just from a single spot. There are also some differences in hair color and texture. However, these differences are not consistent between different production eras, and are very difficult to discern in photos online.

Because the dolls are so similar, only the body tag is a reliable method to determining if your doll truly is Gwen, or if they are #12. The body tag for Gwen will have two parts, a long piece with the regular tag information, and a second shorter piece with 4 digits. These 4 digits can vary greatly, and it is simply the presence of these digits that you should look for if you are seeking a Gwen doll. These digits could have had some use within the factory to differentiate bodies or some other reason we are unaware of, but the important part is that, if the doll has two body tags, and a second tag with 4 digits, it's Gwen. If there is no tag with 4 digits, whether it be a doll with one or two tags, that doll is not Gwen. Only Gwen has a tag with a four digit number. 

If you want a memory tool, G-W-E-N is 4 letters, whereas #12 only has 3 characters. 

Here are some applications of this identification process:

Confirmed Gwen doll from u/amaicha1237 on Reddit

A Gwen Body Tag

The Wikia pages for both dolls:

Just Like You 12

Gwen

Information about "Tenny's Guitar for Girls" or, the Taylor GS Mini x American Girl Collaboration

A member of r/americangirl recently posted asking where to find the girl-sized version of Tenny's Guitar for purchase. As I began looking into information to find listings for this guitar, it became a very interesting case, and I thought I would post the information I've found so far here on my blog. 

I think this is a really interesting case because it shows one of the ways we can find certain branded or licensed products after they've been discontinued: by looking into the manufacturers of the product instead of the brand or license that is on the product. It also reminds me of the way Pleasant Rowland manufactured some of the early Pleasant Company accessories. 

Because she didn't have the resources to create certain items herself, lots of early Pleasant Company accessories were things Rowland found in certain stores or things that were produced by other companies at the time. 

For example, we had a discussion on r/americangirl where user LibraryValkyree stated 

    "My assumption with her Nutcracker doll was that - since it's from early Pleasant Company days - that it was probably a repurposed Christmas ornament or something similar.

I was in a kind of cheap-y souvenir shop or something once on a family road trip in like 1996 or 1997 or so that had several in a basket for a few dollars each, and I remember thinking it was super weird at the time - they had no other AG stuff or anything to lead me to think they were secondhand, but they had various other knicknacks and things." 

Some other items, such as Samantha's early glassware/china sets, were also produced in collaboration with real China companies, and ended up being scaled down versions of human-sized china sets available in the 90s. There are many more stories like that, but the story of Tenny's Guitar for Girls is an interesting parallel to them. 

In 2017, American Girl collaborated with Taylor Guitars to produce a girl-sized version of the "Taylor GS Mini" which was decorated to match Tenny's doll-sized accessory. The "Taylor Guitars" brand is very well known and has been used by popular music artists such as Taylor Swift and several others. Its original retail price was $599, with $100 of each guitar going to Notes for Notes, an organization that helped give musical equipment to Boys and Girls clubs as well as after school programs so they could create music programs without having financial difficulties of purchasing musical equipment.

 The American Girl Wikia article on the subject specifically lists this guitar as the "American Girl Taylor GS Mini" and confirms the other information found in the press releases. The press releases do not specify that this item was a limited release in any capacity, so it can be assumed to have been produced at the same rate as the other GS Mini models from Taylor Guitars. 

Although the press releases are very easy to find across the web, the actual guitar itself seems to have become very rare. One of the only listings I have managed to find through surface-level searching is here on a site called Reverb. 

Looking at the Taylor Guitars brand site, this is the page for the GS mini. Interestingly, the retail price is still $599, meaning that the American Girl collaboration wasn't given any sort of price increase as some might have expected.

The specific American Girl GS mini has been discontinued for quite a few years now. If you're looking for it, your best option would probably be to look through used Taylor GS mini guitars, not including the American Girl brand name. 

Additionally, if you're curious, here's a review on YouTube featuring the American Girl x Taylor Guitars GS mini, although it is not in English. I asked for a summary from a friend I know and here is what he said:

"This guitar, the "Taylor GS mini American Girl" is a special type of Taylor GS mini. It's the product of a collaboration between Taylor Guitar and American Girl.

The story: An American Girl named Tenny Grant is a lively young singer and songwriter. She is pursuing her music-loving dream in Nashville, the capital of Tenesse, accompanied by a small Taylor guitar with six cords. 

After this introduction, the reviewer present the technical aspects of the guitar.

Finally, Taylor Guitars is going to give a donation of $100 to charity organizations for each guitar sold. The intention of this is to help young people who want to play music [be able to do so]. "