Suburban woman's collection of nearly 3,000 dolls auctioned off

When Mary Voigt worked in downtown Chicago, she frequently stopped in the Marshall Field's and other stores to look at the dolls.

"If I saw something I liked, I just bought it," Voigt said.

Voigt liked quite a few, amassing a collection of 2,800 dolls over the past 35 years.

And while Voigt included the requisite Barbies in her collection, it was the posh Madame Alexander dolls that attracted her and helped to fill her three-bedroom home in Downers Grove.

But Voigt is now downsizing to a smaller home in LaGrange Park, and Sunday morning, she watched as her collection was auctioned off at the Pheasant Run resort in St. Charles.

"There are no home shopping show dolls here," auctioneer John Prigge of Elgin said.

Voigt displayed her dolls on stands in glass cases, frequently moving them about the house. But the dolls were returned to their original boxes for the auction.

"She took such good care of them," Prigge said. "If the doll didn't have a box, it was neatly wrapped in tissue paper."

Prigge said it is rare to find such a large number of dolls from a single collector, and it took him five car trips to pick them all up.

Mary Spurlock of Quincy buys dolls and sells them online. She was impressed with Voigt's collection because so many were in the original packaging.

"The collector will pay the most money for a doll in the original box," Spurlock said.

"This is a hard-core crowd," Prigg said of the 50 or so people who came to bid on the dolls. "I see some store owners here."

There were hard-core collectors too, like Sandy Tatgenhorst of Hobart, Ind., who owns more than 1,000 dolls.

"I've been collecting since I was a kid," she said. "It's the anticipation of finding what you want."

In the early bidding, individual dolls were going for more than $100. Prigge said there were some that likely would net more than $1,000.

Voigt will keep a few of her dolls in her new home, but did not seem saddened at parting with the bulk of her collection.

"I'm starting a new life," Voigt said.