1988 Holiday Barbie - The First Released of the Series!

Have you ever gone to a yard sale or a garage sale and saw something on a table labelled with a price that was next to nothing and wondered if it was too good to be true?

Almost everyone who sells anything researches what they should sell their item for.  Then there's a select few that just 'wing it' and label it a price that they THINK it's worth.  This can be both a good thing and a bad thing.  The bad side can be when they guess too high, basically they overestimate what they actually have and inflate the price.

For example, this 1988 Holiday Barbie is worth a pretty penny, but those who have it out of the box, tend to think it's worth just as much as the ones IN the box.  This is a bad assumption and they're going to get no buyers for it at those prices... however the opposite happens sometimes, which is what I found!

While browsing around, I discovered a 1988 Holiday Barbie... for the price of a 1997 Barbie!  What does that mean?  This Barbie was in perfect condition (according to the picture) IN the box with the box looking in great shape, for a mere $20!!! (shipping included in the price)  Needless to say I bought this up quick!

This is the FIRST Holiday Barbie ever released.

When it was first designed and placed on the shelves, Matell never expected it to fly right back off as quickly.  It was only designed as a little gift for the Holiday, it was never meant to turn into a huge deal, but it did and people were buying them in bulk!

There are still MANY still being sold on eBay for between $600 to $1000, so finding this one was a godsend to my daughter's collection!

I believe the reason it wasn't bought before hand (as it had been listed for at least a day before I located it) was because of the way it was labelled and cateogorized.
There was no year attached to any of the information, they simply titled it "holiday Barbie" and then wrote down that it was 'mint in the box' in the description and 'that was all she wrote' so to speak.

Regardless, I'm extremely excited to find this crown jewel addition to my daughter's collection and for the perfect price!  I'll still be inspecting it when it arrives to make sure we're getting the real deal (because regardless of how much I spend, it better be what it says it is!  I don't tolerate fraudulent sales on eBay, and neither does eBay :-p)

Now I'm going to try to work backwards to fill in the blanks with all the oldest Barbies, so the next one to grab will be the 1989!!