8" Betsy McCall
Books, Links and Articles
with More Information
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Betsy McCall's Wardrobe by Lisa Heino.
Lisa published her book herself and originally sold it for $38 but she
no longer has any copies available. If you want to encourage her to reprint
it, you can write to Lisa at lisa@austin.cc.tx.us. This book lists all
the clothing produced for the 8 inch Betsy McCall doll by various categories:
type of outfit, type of cloth, type of color. It also gives the prices
that you might expect to get selling some of these items. At the
back there are several pages of colored photos of dolls wearing the clothing
and a list telling you what each photo is. Because it is so well
organized and indexed it is extremely helpful to collectors trying to identify
an outfit.
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Betsy McCall, by Marci Van Ausdall, Hobby
House Press. Came out in November, 1999. This is a wonderful,
extremely complete book on all types of Betsy McCall dolls with tons of
beautiful color photographs of her and all her outfits. The 8" Betsy
information fills about half the book.
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Zillner, Dian Dolls and Accessories of
the 1950's has several pages of Betsy photos and descriptions, including
furniture.
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Judd, Polly and Pam, Hard Plastic Dolls
(3rd Revised Ed.) has a few pages on Betsy with some nice B&W photos.
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The September 1999 Dolls magazine,
p. 40, has an article on the "First Betsy McCall national convention,
held May 21-23 at the Sheraton Uptown Hotel in Albuquerque, New Mexico."
It includes a photo of 14 8-inch Betsys in original outfits. This was organized
by JoEllen Brown with participation from many others including the Robert
Tonner company. The year 2000 one will be in Dallas, Texas May 5-7-- I'll
add more details as soon as I have them!
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Judy Izen is working on an American Character
dolls book, tentatively scheduled to be out in Fall, 2001. She is looking
for good quality 35MM photos of American Character dolls, so if you have
some you would like to share with her please contact her at Jizenres@aol.com.
If you are aware of other good references,
please let me know -- send e-mail to kari@umich.edu
Betsy McCall Clubs
The 2nd Annual Betsy McCall Convention
was held May 5-7, 2000, near Dallas Texas. In 2001 it will be at the Sheraton
in Arlington Heights - suburb to Chicago. However, this year it was
filled by Tonner Doll Club members before it even opened to the public.
The 2001 convention will be May 3-6 (1st weekend in May) for 4 days - early
check-in on Thursday, with 2 full regular days (one devoted to Betsy and
one to Tonner Doll Company) and some activities on Sunday as well.
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"Betsy's Fan Club" has a newsletter
for Betsy McCall, c/o Marci Van Ausdall at P.O. Box 946, Quincy, CA (916)
283-2770. This is Marci Van Ausdall's Betsy McCall Fan Club and membership
costs $16 a year, which includes the club newsletter and other useful information
for collectors. You can write to Marci at dreams@psln.com if you have further
questions about joining her club. She also sells on ebay (www.ebay.com)
as moodiblue.
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The Robert Tonner Collector Club is listed
at 77 Cornell St., P.O. Box 1187, Kingston NY 12401 (914) 339-9537 and
their web page is www.roberttonner.com
(includes a link to the club). Their email is info@roberttonner.com.
Members receive a newsletter, invitations to special Betsy-related events,
and opportunities to purchase the club doll, Jane, and special outfits
for her. There is also a club e-mail list.
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There are at least two Betsy McCall clubs
on Yahoo - Go to www.yahoo.com and look for clubs, and search on "Betsy
McCall" or click on Betsy
McCall Dolls for information on the doll club and Betsy's
Travels for the Betsy's travel club link.
Other Links
The About.com
Collecting Dolls page has tons of information and links for collectors
of 50's dolls.
The Robert
Tonner Doll Co. produces a modern 14" Betsy McCall
Many great outfits are shown on Jackie
Anzuini's web page for Betsy.
Joan
Dawson has a site with information on all types of vintage Betsys and
her paper dolls. It also has links to other great Betsy sites!
Marni Wilson has a great site "Presenting
Betsy McCall."