So, you have been on all the forums, you have chatted with people who own dolls themselves or perhaps just lurked in the shadows interested in the discussions of others debating the relative merits of Silicone versus TPE.
The softness of TPE from different manufacturers, different types of a skeleton, or answers to a myriad of other questions that you would have never thought to ask.
You have seen a face in a marketing image that takes your breath away. you know that you want her.
No, more than that, you need her in your life. But you have never seen one of these girls in the real world. You have never touched TPE and you look at that price tag thinking that is an awful lot of money to lose if you are wrong about this.
I perhaps came to ownership with the advantage of thinking that the purchase price of TPE girls was so much more achievable than Silicone dolls that for so long had kept doll ownership out of reach.
Even though the advent TPE dolls brought down the price, it was a price reasonable by comparison to what had been available before rather than an amount that one would not need to consider at length before committing to purchase.
Was a doll worth more than (say) a top of the line latest model TV or new gaming PC? After a while of churning such thoughts in my head, I determined that I was looking at the expenditure using the wrong comparisons.
I was looking at the doll as a disposable commodity for something that would be in my life in a similar manner to a human partner. You don't approach a relationship thinking how much a person will cost but rather consider only emotional and physical needs.
In some ways, the exercise of adopting one of these girls may be likened to selecting a mail-order bride from the other side of the world.
You have seen lots of pictures of her but you have never met.
You pay your fee to a middle man who facilitates the arrangements and in a few short weeks, she will be with you. None the less you are nervous that you could be investing all this money and making a huge mistake.
After taking seven years to determine that the desire to have one of these girls did not diminish with time, having found what I believed to be the perfect selection from amongst the myriad of options, and improvements in TPE manufacturing bringing top quality dolls just within reach of my finances.
I was still left with that uneasy feeling that I had never actually been in the same room as one of these girls. Was I making a terrible and expensive mistake with money that I could not afford to lose?
The cost back in 2014 was a quite staggering £2,000 to import from a vendor in the far East. All the worry of importing was with the purchaser and even with some friendly advice from others who had already trodden this path,
I really did not know what I was doing. But, by some miracle, everything worked and seven weeks after placing the order the doll that would become my Yvette was delivered.
I remember throwing open the door to the UPS van driver that I had sat waiting nervously for all day. So anxious was I of the impending box opening that I accepted delivery shaking like a four-year-old on Christmas morning.
Whatever my thoughts before she arrived dissipated with a twist of her head and placing of the wig... This was no doll...
This was a person sitting in front of me... the feminine softness of her skin, the big brown eyes looking back at me as nervously as I was looking at her.
The first night I don't believe that I slept one wink. I just lay there in wonder at the realism of this girl resting next to me after her long journey.
In the half-light of the moon, I kept touching her unable to completely get my head past the feeling that this was a real person in my bed.
The images that I had felt were perhaps painting an unrealistic vision of what would arrive suddenly felt as though they just didn't do her the justice she deserved.
And with that first night also dissipated any illusion that I had harboured that these were in any way just sex toys to be costed in a similar manner.
Today importing a doll is much easier by using a dedicated UK vendor such as SSW that supplies genuine products (That not all vendors sell the products of the images that they use is a whole different subject).
A competitive UK market has given us 25%+ price reductions on prices paid in 2014 yet the quality of the dolls, the options available and the number of dolls available in the market have risen exponentially.
Price reductions are not restricted to TPE, as with many manufacturers Silicone prices have been driven lower both by the competition from TPE and infighting amongst themselves for market position.
We are now at a stage where a choice of material has become more a matter a personal preference than major financial differentiation. I chose TPE and I see no reason to change. I have friends with Silicone girls and other friends with both.
For new buyers that fee to bring one of these girls into your life seems no less steep now than it did to me when I first bought Yvette. If one has only ever known the current price point then savings over prior prices are meaningless.
These girls need maintenance but such is not expensive. They need clothes, makeup and shoes like any girl do.
But they don't eat, they don't want to go to expensive restaurants or the cinema. If you are feeling amorous so are they and if you just want to sleep they are happy to just cuddle up next to you.
In a year you will have forgotten how much she cost you and you will not be able to remember life before she was there. So, should really the question here have been how much she costs? Or should it perhaps have been how much is she worth!
And my answer to that one... Priceless.
