Custom Bobblehead | Custom Bobblehead Dolls | Personalized Bobbleheads

“My bobblehead - one of a kind.” Wouldn’t you like to be able to say that when you start showing off your prized bobblehead collection? All collectors thrive on having not just the best quality bobbleheads around but to have a bobblehead – one of a kind collection on hand and secure in equally high quality bobblehead cases. But how does one go about gathering a bobblehead – one of a kind collection anyway?
First, what type of bobblehead –one of a kind varieties do you feel like specializing in? This is valuable because you can devote your financial resources, time and energies to looking for such bobblehead –one of a kind figurines without wasting effort agonizing whether to buy other types of bobbleheads. If you want to focus on buying bobblehead – one of a kind celebrity figurines , then be devoted to that bobblehead one of a kind figurine category. You may be surprised how far that gets you.
Second, focus on which sub-category in that bobblehead –one of a kind category you will be zeroing in on. If you are mad about Marilyn Monroe and want to look around only for bobblehead – one of a kind celebrity figurines that are about Marilyn Monroe or related in some way to her celebrity mystique, then cool – focus on that. This gives your bobblehead – one of a kind collection a bit more of a distinctive character that sets it apart from other collectors who may have cast a wider net for their celebrity bobblehead – one of a kind collection. It also keeps you from going nuts wondering how you can afford all those celebrity bobbleheads that are being auctioned off online and around you.
Third, try to figure out what attracts you to that bobblhead celebrity in the first place. For instance, Chicanos (people native to Mexico or who have bloodlines from Mexican forebears) might go nuts over the Chingo Bling bobbleheads because Chingo Bling is a rap artist who comes from a Mexican family. If you collect the Chingo Bling bobbleheads, you will find they really qualify as a bobblehead – one of a kind collection because it seems no other rap artist has chosen the bobblehead as a marketing tool. Chingo Bling even likes to kid around that other rap artists might be jealous because he sells Chingo Bling bobbleheads and these other rap artists don’t. Could that be true? Well, if the Chingo Bling bobbleheads get even more popular among Chicano rap listeners then, yes, maybe Chingo Bling has a point there.
Fourth, try to ask yourself why you are spending all this time, energy, and money trying to build a bobblehead collection in the first place. You can’t bring it with you everywhere you go, most of the time your bobbleheads will be stocked up in your home or office their special case, and how many people would actually engage with you in a long detailed discussion about your bobblehead – one of a kind collection anyway? This last question helps you find out the meaning behind  your collecting mania and lets you know the value of a bobblehead – one of a kind collection for you in the long term.

What is a bobblehead anyway? Actually, you are probably very familiar with bobbleheads which is a type of toy that has a head that bobbles or wobbles on a spring connected to the body of the toy. This type of collectible also goes by other names which are wobbler, noddler, and bobbing head doll. You have probably seen a lot of these bobblehead toys on cars – particularly on the dashboard – where the slightest movement of the car will make the bobblehead wobble on its spring. The toys are glued or screwed into the surface they rest on so that they don’t fall off.

One use of bobblehead collectible items are for promotional purposes of different organizations, like by sporting events organizers. The modern type of bobblehead first made its public appearance back in the 1950s. In fact, one very famous type of bobblehead collectible series cropped up in the 1950s which was the Beatles collection. Bobblehead collecting was a craze until the 1970s when the trend seemed to taper off.

Though bobblehead collecting became less urgent for some time, once bobblehead manufacturing became less expensive to pursue with the switch to use of plastic as raw material, more bobbleheads were produced of varying types and bobblehead collecting became fashionable again. A key feature of modern bobbleheads is that the head of the toy is usually much bigger than the torso and other body parts which makes bobblehead toys stand out.

If you are mad about bobblehead collecting, you may want to know more about the background of the bobblehead toy series you are purchasing so that you become a true-blue bobblehead aficionado.

Bobblehead Doll in wikipedia
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A bobblehead doll, also known as a bobbing head doll, nodder, or wobbler, is a type of collectible doll. Its head is often oversized compared to its body. Instead of a solid connection, its head is connected to the body by a spring in such a way that a light tap will cause the head to bobble, hence the name.

Although bobblehead dolls have been made with a wide variety of figures such as vampiric cereal pitchman Count Chocula, beat generation author Jack Kerouac, and Nobel-prize-winning geneticist James D. Watson, the figure is most associated with athletes, especially baseball players. Bobblehead dolls are sometimes given out to ticket buyers at sporting events as a promotion. Corporations including Taco Bell (the ‘Yo Quiero Taco Bell’ Chihuahua) , McDonald’s (Ronald McDonald), and Empire Today (The Empire Man) have also produced popular bobbleheads of the characters used in their advertisements.

The earliest known reference to a bobblehead is thought to be in Nikolai Gogol’s 1842 short story The Overcoat, in which the main character’s neck was described as “like the necks of plaster cats which wag their heads”. The modern bobblehead first appeared in the 1950s. By 1960, Major League Baseball had gotten in on the action and produced a series of papier-mache bobblehead dolls, one for each team, all with the same cherubic face. The World Series held that year brought the first player-specific baseball bobbleheads, for Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Willie Mays, still all with the same face. Over the next decade, after a switch in materials from paper-mache to ceramic, bobbleheads would be produced for other sports, as well as cartoon characters. One of the most famous bobbleheads of all time also hails from this era: The Beatles bobblehead set, which is a valuable collectible today. By the mid-1970s, though, the bobblehead craze was in the process of winding down.

It would take nearly two decades before bobbleheads returned to prominence. Although older bobbleheads like the baseball teams and The Beatles were sought after by collectors during this period, new bobblehead dolls were few and far between. What finally prompted their resurgence was cheaper manufacturing processes, and the main bobblehead material switched once again, this time from ceramic to plastic. It was now possible to make bobbleheads in the very limited numbers necessary for them to be viable collectibles. The first baseball team to offer a bobblehead giveaway was the San Francisco Giants, which distributed 35,000 Willie Mays head nodders at a 1999 game. The variety of bobbleheads on the market rose exponentially to include even relatively obscure popular culture figures and notable people. The new millennium would bring a new type of bobblehead toy, the mini-bobblehead, standing just two or three inches tall and used for cereal prizes and such.

It has to be emphasized first of all that a bobblehead has to represent a person or character of a certain organization. Thus, if you are looking for a sport bobblehead figure to have mass produced, that sport bobblehead has to have some kind of significance to you and to anyone who will be the recipient.

Take, for instance, a sport bobblehead modeled after Hideki Matsui (a baseball player with the New York Yankees) – the value of the official sport bobblehead is that it comes as a Limited Edition product, meaning there are only a few of them made at one time so that the uniqueness and exclusivity of the product is retained. A sport bobblehead made by the millions has less uniqueness and maybe no exclusivity compared to a sport bobblehead under a Limited Edition manufacturing license.

This is where the concept of a collectible sport bobblehead comes in. A sport bobblehead that is made in a limited volume (like, say 500 items only for that type of bobblehead) is deemed more collectible (or has a higher value as a collectible) compared to a sport bobblehead that has been made by the millions. Even if the quality of manufacture is comparable or even exactly the same, it is the uniqueness and exclusivity of the sport bobblehead that will determine if it is a true collectible or not. And the value of a collectible lies with the perception of a person doing the collecting. A person who values one sport bobblehead of Michael Jordan will pay a good price for it even if that edition was made by the millions simply because the collector thinks that sport bobblehead has a good value for him.

This is a sample of custom sport bobblehead.

Does a sport bobblehead have to be highly expensive to be highly valued? Not at the start, no. For instance, if you bought your Michael Jordan sport bobblehead back in year 1990 when it was priced at $19.00 but nowadays (due to the scarcity of Michael Jordan sport bobbleheads) is priced at $100 each, you may observe that the rise in financial value of your bobblehead was due to the lower supply at present, the rise in perceived value of that bobblehead version among collectors, and the fact that Michael Jordan is no longer as active a player as he used to be. There is a saying that for memorabilia of celebrities to go up in value, it helps if the celebrity in question were to die. Though we don’t necessarily want Michael Jordan to die yet, if he does pass away soon, rest assured practically all sport bobblehead items out there made in his likeness will shoot up in value real quick.

In sports, your value as a player rests a lot on your performance per season. But there may be players who are not so scintillating yet still remain quite popular among their fans anyway. For such players, the love of their fans will keep their memory alive even when their performance has left them on the reserved players bench for the rest of the season.

Your collectible bobblehead may come in a variety of types – and the world of bobblehead collecting becomes more interesting as new and more unique types of bobblehead collectibles get created every day. For instance, if you are into sports, you might choose a bobblehead collectible representing someone from the NBA player pool, a bobblehead patterned after a US baseball player, and another bobblehead that was designed to look like an NFL football player. On the other hand, if you like TV shows, then you might be amused to get a bobblehead likeness of top businessman Donald Trump who stars in the reality TV show “The Apprentice.”
Star Wars fans will be happy to know that there is now the Darth Vader bobblehead and a host of other bobbleheads which were designed after characters in that same movie series. If you are a religious type, surprise surprise! There are now bobbleheads made to represent key religious figures like Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Pope John Paul II, the current Pope who is Benedict XVI, and the Protestant preacher Billy Graham too. On a more irreverent note, you can also look for companies that will supply you a bobblehead of Homer Simpson, and bobbleheads of Beavis and Butthead.
Politically-inclined people may enjoy collecting a bobblehead of President Dwight Eisenhower, President Harry S. Truman, the Republican Party mascot (which is an Elephant), the Democratic Party mascot (which is a Donkey), Crown Prince William of the UK, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, ex-Mayor Rudy Guliani, President Theodore Roosevelt, and the first President George Bush of the US.
Because a bobblehead is often considered a novelty item, it is not surprising that cartoon and comic-strip characters are made into bobbleheads or that bobblehead collections are often composed of cartoon and comic-strip characters. Futurama fans might want to snatch up their own Doctor Zoidberg bobblehead, Fry bobblehead, or Leela bobblehead so that their Bender bobblehead will not get lonely. Snoopy of the Peanuts comic strip has a loyal following, and so do the other Peanuts characters such as Woodstock, Lucy, and Charlie Brown. If you like the Looney Tunes characters a lot, then you could try collecting a bobblehead of Marvin the Martian, Yosemite Sam, Tweety Bird, Elmer Fudd, and of course the biggest cartoon hero there is – Bugs Bunny.
Celebrities have a special place in the hearts of both bobblehead makers and bobblehead collectors. You can aim to have the biggest collection of bobbleheads in your neighborhood simply by setting aside $15 per month for your next bobblehead purchase. Now, the choice of which celebrity bobblehead to buy depends on which celebrity you like. Some might aim to get a Marilyn Monroe bobblehead while others might want a James Dean bobblehead instead.
So long as there are creative bobblehead designers and manufacturers, and so long as people still like collecting bobbleheads, there will probably still be a market for new and unique bobbleheads in the near future.