Montville man seeks collector for his late wife’s 4,000 dolls

A 92-year-old man from Montville is hoping to find someone to take his late wife’s collection of 4,000 dolls.

News 12 Staff

Nov 15, 2019, 3:49 AM

Updated 1,631 days ago

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A 92-year-old man from Montville is hoping to find someone to take his late wife’s collection of 4,000 dolls.
Bud Ballentine says that his wife Donna loved collecting dolls, and would buy as many as she could.
“We have three floors and she utilized every freaking corner,” he says.
Most of the dolls are in their original boxes and many are full sets. There is a Rocky Balboa doll, a Freddy Kruger Doll and even a doll of Bill Clinton. There are also many, many incarnations of the most famous doll of all – the Barbie doll.
"The few times I accompanied her to do some shopping, she headed right toward the Barbie counter first,” Ballentine says.
Bud and Donna were married for 62 years. Donna died about 10 years ago.
"My mother used to take our dolls when we were young and put them in cases and that's what started her collecting them and she just started collecting and kept going and going and going,” says Debbie Marowitz.
Ballentine and his daughter decided to start cleaning out his home last year so that he could move. They were surprised to see just how many dolls were in the house.

"I thought she would never stop bringing down dolls. And she says she can't believe it, they're under the bed, they're in closets, they're everywhere,” Ballentine says. “It was frightening.”
Ballentine says that he doesn’t want to just get rid of them since his wife loved them so much. He and his daughter spent a year counting and cataloging the dolls and are now looking for people to sell them to – people who will cherish them as much as Donna did.
"What money we get from it will go back to charity,” Ballentine says.
The family says that they are thinking of donating what money they get from the dolls to a children’s hospital – something that was close to Donna’s heart.


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