Canterbury Bears couple.

[Kathy]

Except they're all "collectable", not bears my grandchildren would be given to play with at those prices. :down:

I think the few bears I saw would frighten little children, I thought they looked rather ugly....Steiff bears get my vote, lovely and collectable...

 

[Vienna]

I don`t know anybody who collects bears but I do know someone who collects those lifelike baby dolls and TBH they give me the heebie jeebies. She has them in her dining room and most of them are so lifelike it`s as if they`re going to wake up and cry. She gets them from an American site and they`ll even make dolls from a photograph to look like peoples deceased babies. I know she`s paid a fortune for some of them but when I stay there and in the early morning you have to walk through her dining room to the kitchen and pass all those quiet, still " babies " in moses baskets, prams, lying on a sofa or in cabinets believe me it is really spooky. She doesn`t sit cuddling them ( so she says ) but each one has a name and she regularly changes their outfits and rearranges them.

 

[mr tom]

I dont mind there being bear shows as it makes a change from clothes, beauty products an bags/bloody lulu guinness

 

[BusyMum]

I agree Autumn, I really don't get it. Along with fleecy pyjamas covered in polar bears! But each to their own I guess.

ouch...I love my fleece pj bottoms which are black and covered with different coloured polar bears..!

 

[qwerty_uiop]

I thought some of the Canterbury bears were nice but I think at those prices I'd go for a Steiff.

As for 'collecting' bears. If you don't like them you're never going to understand why people do it are you? I don't 'get' collecting dolls, they creep me out (I was never a doll person, even as a child). Also, I don't quite understand the idea some people seem to have that owning bears is either adult collecting with them displayed, pristine of shelves or childhood cuddling and playing. Surely it's a sliding scale? My bears are on shelves because I need somewhere to put them. I'm a grown up (in the loosest sense of the word!) but I still cuddle them: my Charlie Bears, other bears and the ones I have from my childhood.

 

[catstail]

Canterbury Bears were on in the early days of QVC

 

[Akimbo]

They were, along with Deans and Hermann Spiel-wotsit, and others too which fell by the wayside.

I have a couple of Charlie Bears, one Steiff and three from my childhood. I've never been a collector (though I am a hoarder!) but if I see something that appeals to me I might treat myself without analysing my motives too much (therein lies my problem I think!). Still as habits go, at least I have something to show for mine; whereas my alchy sister has pretty much p!ssed hers away (love her really).

 

[thatu]

I don't mind people collecting bears but I don't understand the doll collectors - they freak me out a bit ever since we had a middle-aged American guest who had a "travel doll" that goes everywhere with her in its own little bed and she changes its clothes every day. It wasn't even a pretty doll and she talked about it as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

 

[Weathergirl]

Having said what I did about collecting pristine bears and dolls, I should admit to still having an old-style Sindy doll in a suitcase that opens out to be a hotel bedroom (had for my 10th birthday) And a rag doll made by my mum for my 7th birthday out of the remnants of a dress she made for me. I called her Sally Ann. And I still have my Nat West Pigs. I am no horder, though, much the opposite but I am a sentimental old fool.

 

[KimP]

I've got several Steiff mohair bears.

Who buys them? Well those with an interest in social history or craftsmanship, those with an eye to an alternative investment vehicle, those who buy because they like them and feel no need to justify what they do with their money to anyone. However, if it makes people feel better to make assumptions that we are in some way needy or lacking then who am I to deprive their small minds that pleasure.

 

[speckledhen]

I would like to add to this post that there are other reasons why a person would collect or treat themselves to a 'child-like' item:-

a)not everyone has been lucky enough to have an idyllic childhood, some childhoods are hard and brutal, and to be 'survived' rather than 'enjoyed' - as a result in adulthood it is common to 'give yourself' the items that you went without. It is a form of comfort and 'putting things right'.
b) some people had such a good childhood that having items that remind them of their childhood comforts them, when the adult world gets hard to bear (pardon the pun).

I won't say which one I am and I do not have a teddy bear, but am not averse to getting one, if I see one with a face I like - but I do have fleecy printed pyjamas, my childhood books, and a few other items that I would never give up and I don't at all care what people think, because they have not walked in my shoes. I say whatever makes you feel good/better do it, goodness knows life can be hard enough.

 

[donna255]

I have a very old battered teddy from when I was a child, its stuff with sawdust perhaps??? A panda which actually belonged to my big brother. They do not sit out but shoved in a black bin bag somewhere in the flat. Sentimental reasons for keeping, I actually do not believe they even had names!!!! Just Teddy and Panda. A white one my mum bought me for some reason when I was in my 20s, its also in a black bin bag, but the cats have dragged it out on a few occasions. I think they are trying to beat a confession out of it, trying to water board it in the water dish!!!!