Dollfie Dream Lottery & Purchasing FAQ (2024)

Thank you very much for the article! It helped me!

I was very afraid to participate in the lottery. But your article gave me confidence!

I almost missed the chance to win my doll. Letter about the win was in spam.

Thank you for these particulars!

This is so helpful, even for those who live in Japan! Insta Bookmark!

Tonight I updated the top few posts to reflect the current realities of how Volks is doing business. A lot has changed in the 2 years since the FAQ last needed to be updated!

 

Below this line is the old information that I'm archiving here for curiosity's sake, or in case business practices change back to these methods in the future.

 

*Entry at Japanese physical stores used to be a separate pool from online entries. Back when they actually delivered the dolls to the stores for win/pickup at the AfterEvents along with the clothes.

 

When are lotteries held?

There is a general pattern you can expect if the event is a Dolls Party though. If a Dolls Party were held on Day X this is when the lottery entry periods will be:

 

Dolls Party: Day X

Japanese online: Day X + 3 weeks

Japanese in-store: Day X + 3 weeks

International: Day X + 3 weeks

 

Entering the lottery at dolls party

If you want to be the first in the world to get a new doll, this is where you do it. I didn't put it first in the list since it won't apply to many readers, unless of course they come to Japan for vacation. Dolls Party is a specific event on a specific day, and you must go it in person in order to do the following.

 

It is important to note that Dolpa is a line-order lottery and not an individual item lottery like the online ones are. Your number will dictate what place you are in line, and those at the head of the line can buy as many of the limited items as they want (one copy of each). So, you could go home with all the dolls or none of the dolls. It's not winning on a case-by-case basis here. So, you should bring lots of money just in case.

 

1. Buy a Dolpa Guidebook before the day of the show, either online or from a Japanese Volks store. This is your entry ticket and also your ticket to draw a lottery number. The book costs 2200 yen for Tokyo Dolpas.
   
2. Arrive at the venue during the number drawing period, usually 7:30-9:00 am. Even though it's a lottery, earlier is better so less of the good numbers will be taken and you can more easily do something else in Dolpa if you lose.
   
3. Find the Limited Items Entry Line and get at the end. Eventually when you get to the door, the line will split off into three separate line at three large boxes. Pick any of them.
   
4. Hand your Dolpa Guidebook to the first person at the table, and they will snip a specific corner off the back cover.
   
5. Draw a paper roll from the box yourself, any is fine, and then hand it to the next person at the table. They'll open it and give it to the last person at the table.
   
6. The last person stamps it with an official Dolpa stamp for authenticity, then hands it to you.
   
7. Take this paper and read the number on it. This determines your fate. There are papers with numbers up to 6000+ on them. 400 or less and you're extremely likely to get your doll(s); 400-500 is a maybe and probably worth sticking around; 501+ then forget about it because everything will be sold out. If you lose, go and do something else at Dolpa.
   
8. If you get a decent number, then go inside to the holding area and stand near the sign that has your number within the range printed on it. Wait.
   
9. Between 9 and 10am they'll start processing all those who are waiting. When you get to the front of the actual line there will be a table there with tickets for each of the limited items. Ask for a ticket for each Limited Item that you want.
   
10. Take your tickets over to another line where the actual cash registers are. At 10am they'll start processing payments.
    
11. Once you've paid, hold on to your ticket and receipt. You can exchange it at any time you want, up to 4pm, over at the redemption booth to get your actual dolls. Yes, you get to take them home that very day, and even spend the rest of Dolpa getting to know them if you want!

 

Some people buy multiple Dolpa Guidebooks and go through the number picking line over and over to try and get a good number. That gets real expensive real fast, but if you're desperate enough it's an option you can try to up your chances.

 

Buying dolls at the after-event

The doll lottery in the Japanese stores is held during Dolpa After Event, which is a few weeks after the actual Dolls Party itself. Each Japanese store has their own specific rules and times to follow, which are announced on the After Event webpage (Japanese only).

 

The overall idea is the same as Dolpa, where you draw numbers from a box, line up in that order, then tickets get passed out starting from the front of the line. There's also a redemption counter for after you pay, very similar to Dolpa. Please see the previous question for more details. The biggest difference, however, is that drawing a number is free at the After Event; you don't need a guidebook.

 

One useful strategy is to bring a group of friends to all draw numbers, then give you the best one as you all congregate around waiting. There is an opportunity for people who didn't like their number to give that number back and go home, so the only cost to the group is a little time. The Japanese use this strategy frequently.

 

Late in the afternoon on the same day of the After Event, you can go back to the same store for a rock-paper-scissors game (janken taikai) to win the right to buy extra copies of things that were sold out during the day. This is where Volks sells the display items that were set out during the day as models for the event. Look for signs in the store and / or announcements from the staff about the time for this taikai.

 

It is permissible to go through the line multiple times in order to buy multiple copies of things. It's one per person at first, but once everyone has had their first go, it's opened up to as many as you want. Of course many things are sold out by the time the line's first pass is done, but on the off chance something isn't, it's worth a second look.

 

Sumika Items at JP Stores

The limited dolls and the Sumika Items are both sold at the same time in the physical stores, so if you're there for one you'll be there for the other. The general process of what happens is described above in the lotteries section. Where the Sumika Items come in is in what happens to the line.

 

After the lottery tickets are handed out, the line will be led up to the shop front. You'll have an opportunity to get out of line with your Limited Item ticket if you don't want any Sumika Items, but only a few people actually do that. [...]

 

It is one copy per person per item at first. Once the line has made its first pass through the store, it is permissible to go back and get seconds if you want to.

 

Volks physical stores closed: Ikebukuro, Shinjuku ALTA

Would like to say that this helped me a lot

Maybe it was just me but I feel Volks didn't explain all the things properly or sometimes at all, so thank you very much ^^

Little question, after the lottery is over will the order status update or will the image of no winning the lottery haunt me forever (?) xD

Thank you so much for posting this article! I've been out of the hobby for a while it seems - the last time I entered a lottery for a doll it was through VolksUSA site. Helpful to know things have changed a bit.

I need help. I think volks screwed up my lottery win and I have no idea what to do.
I was sent two emails, I noticed (just now) that the second email is noted as "corrected link"
But when I click the link it takes me not to my lottery winning but to seemingly the after-sale of anything that didn't sell out during the lottery.
https://volksusastore.com/webstores/dollfie/index.php?dispatch=categories.view&category_id=1727
and is called "HTD Kyoto 16 After Event Limited Items"
I had my friend, who has never been on the volks site in his life and lives on the other side of the world, go to the link and add the shirt to his cart to see what happens, and it lets him, so this isn't a unique to me link.

The first email I got (that supposedly had a bad link [?]) opens to nothing in stock, but the section is called: "HTD Kyoto16 Outfit Collection Lottery"

I was already logged in and I also tried logging out, clicking the link, and then logging in once on the page. 


The lottery rules say they won't answer questions about the lottery if you don't understand. I'm scared I'm not going to pay properly or that emailing them will just make them angry and I'll get banned from further lotteries 😭

Note: I won a black camisole. I ordered it together with Sakura miku which I seemingly didn't win. My order in my order history is still "pending" with both items.

My shirt I won is one of the items in stock in the "HTD Kyoto 16 After Event Limited Items", but why is it letting me put all items (that are not sold out) in my cart not just my camisole? I want to make sure that if I purchase my camisol from that listing and check out, that it will be considered that I did honor my lottery entry and pay on time. But it looks like this is not where I'm supposed to be buying my winning from. 

Edited June 15, 2019 by knibitz

I would ask them about that. I think by not answering questions, what they really mean is ‘please don’t ask us if you won or lost if you didn’t receive an email’ as I imagine they get a lot of those. (EDIT: And also stuff like asking 'how many winners are there? how are the lottery results decided?' etc.)

Edited June 15, 2019 by Monty

Glad I bought my girl on the second hand market and that I am not after any Anime character dolls.

Hello! I'd like to ask if anybody here has won in the recent VolksUSA lottery (just this September)?

I fortunately won and paid recently. If they say they will sequentially ship out starting Winter, they really strictly start shipping only by then?

3 hours ago, ateliervanilla said:

If they say they will sequentially ship out starting Winter, they really strictly start shipping only by then?

The dolls come over from Japan by ship, presumably a large container ship, so they won’t have the dolls in hand for another 6 to 8 weeks.

In the past Volks USA has inspected the dolls on arrival at their shop in order to make sure everything arrived intact. I say in the past only because they haven’t formally mentioned doing that lately, but they haven’t given any reason to believe they’ve stopped either. Inspecting all the boxes would take a bit of time too. 

Expect that customs at the Port of Los Angeles may have substantial delays starting in late November too.

VERY informative post! I learned a lot about how this system works now. I was always curious about the lotteries when I saw them, but didn't know anything about them.

Very helpful!

Thank you for creating one place for all this valuable info to reside

It answered all the questions I had and filled in all the gaps

If I receive any questions about the Dollfie Dream Lottery or how to purchase one I’m sending them here 🙂
 

Since more people are attending Dolpa in Japan from overseas lately, I think the Dolpa section is in need of a long overdue update to reflect how it works currently.

Dolls have been available for purchase on the day at Dolpa again for a while now (turns out the limited order at/enter for at dolpa and receive later, no dolls on the day thing was pretty short lived) but it’s still not the same as it used to be - there is no longer a lottery conducted on the day to determine the line order for the sumika shop as since Covid, the line position is determined by what random number you get inside your Guide Book.

This means you will know how likely it is that you can get a doll well before the actual Dolpa and whether it’s worth bothering with the sumika line (although sadly it also means that people scalp the hell out of the guidebook tickets and buy a whole lot hoping to get at least a few good numbers - which is a factor in them selling out earlier. It’s the major drawback of this system and part of why I hope it goes back to the on-the-day line lottery system, which is what IDoll has done)

I won’t go into too much detail about it because I think @SakuraSylph may have attended one of these ‘guidebook number Dolpa’ (correct me if I’m wrong) events himself and can probably explain it better anyway.

On 5/11/2024 at 1:46 AM, Monty said:

Since more people are attending Dolpa in Japan from overseas lately, I think the Dolpa section is in need of a long overdue update to reflect how it works currently.

Hoo boy, you're so right about that. Procedures had changed so much since I last updated it in 2016 (where does the time go?) that the previous information had gone from outdated to just-not-even-close when I went back and re-read it.

Fully revised the first two OPs (general terms and lotteries) with a current brain dump and a lot of new text. As always, please let me know if you notice anything missing or unclear.

The third OP (other sales methods) I'll work on bringing up to date shortly.

2 hours ago, SakuraSylph said:

The third OP (other sales methods) I'll work on bringing up to date shortly.

Thanks for the update! While reading it was thinking that the other methods (clickwar in particular) may be more relevant to how it’s done nowadays because I don’t think any DD have been lottery on the international store for quite a while (other than the weird ‘Schrödingers lottery’ that Miku NT was, where it’s preorder unless they go over the quota, and then will switch to lottery - this is a method used more often with SDs, but it becomes lottery almost every single time so I don’t really know why they don’t just make it lottery to begin with). Those exceptions aside, for the past couple of years it seems like every DD has been either preorder or clickwar, while SDs are almost always lottery (with the rare preorder).

VolksUS seems to still do lottery for both types of doll although I heard they no longer do for clothing items (maybe still for character specific ones though?)

6 minutes ago, Monty said:

maybe still for character specific ones though?

The Sakura Miku set was lottery, but the regular clothes are now clickwar.

On 5/13/2024 at 3:28 AM, Monty said:

Thanks for the update! While reading it was thinking that the other methods (clickwar in particular) may be more relevant to how it’s done nowadays because I don’t think any DD have been lottery on the international store for quite a while

Sure thing. I subsequently made some further new additions to the first two portions and over the course of this week finished up revising the clickwar / Sumika third OP. So much has changed over the years, but I think we're back up to an accurate accounting. To reflect this I also added a year into the thread title in hopes that folks don't see the 2013 original posting date in the forum thread listing and skip over information that could help them.

The conclusion I went with for explaining the sales methodologies was that the old patterns of Limited and Sumika items being sold by lotteries and clickwars respectively simply no longer applies no matter what Volks store we're looking at, so just let Volks tell us the sales method individually for each new item.

Hi

I'm pretty new to the doll hobby so please bare with me. I'm also very sorry if this isn't the right place to ask this question. :’)

I ended up foolishly entering for two of the dollfie icons because I think their head sculpt is beautiful, but afterwards I started overthinking my decision a bit. So if by the off chance I win both of them, then how would I go about selling one of them? I just want one of them and can't exactly afford to get both of them. I did read that failure to pay for a lottery entry meant that your account would be terminated so if that did happen then what do you think would happen to my pre-order I purchased earlier this year for Alisaie? Sorry for the weird questions I just tend to overthink and worry a lot.

On 10/4/2024 at 2:23 PM, SpookySugarCubes said:

I ended up foolishly entering for two of the dollfie icons because I think their head sculpt is beautiful, but afterwards I started overthinking my decision a bit. So if by the off chance I win both of them, then how would I go about selling one of them? I just want one of them and can't exactly afford to get both of them. I did read that failure to pay for a lottery entry meant that your account would be terminated so if that did happen then what do you think would happen to my pre-order I purchased earlier this year for Alisaie? Sorry for the weird questions I just tend to overthink and worry a lot.

The best option in the case of dual wins would be to do whatever you need to financially in order to purchase both Icons upfront from Volks, and then later resell one of them in one of the many places where you can sell DD items (these forums is one). This preserves your account and any preorders you may have.

5 hours ago, SakuraSylph said:

The best option in the case of dual wins would be to do whatever you need to financially in order to purchase both Icons upfront from Volks, and then later resell one of them in one of the many places where you can sell DD items (these forums is one).

Seconded, you should have no trouble selling an Icon here. 
 

On 10/4/2024 at 12:23 PM, SpookySugarCubes said:

what do you think would happen to my pre-order I purchased earlier this year for Alisaie?

They could cancel the order, and if you paid a deposit, pretty sure you lose that deposit. 

On the website for Doll's Party 52, it says one per person under the New Dollfie section or "Purchases are limited to one item per person." according to google translate. Does this mean you can only select one doll to buy out of all 6 (given that it's still in stock) or 1 of each doll?

Same goes for the new clothing section lower on the page. Does that mean you can only buy one thing when it's your turn? Or just one of each?

New Dollfie Exhibition and Sales | Dolls Party 52 | Volks Official Dollfie General Site

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows  

1 hour ago, cheerycherry said:

On the website for Doll's Party 52, it says one per person under the New Dollfie section or "Purchases are limited to one item per person." according to google translate. Does this mean you can only select one doll to buy out of all 6 (given that it's still in stock) or 1 of each doll?

Same goes for the new clothing section lower on the page. Does that mean you can only buy one thing when it's your turn? Or just one of each?

New Dollfie Exhibition and Sales | Dolls Party 52 | Volks Official Dollfie General Site

Thanks in advance to anyone who knows  

It means one of each item per person. You could buy every doll if you wanted, but you can’t go and buy 5 of one doll, out of fairness to others.

The dolls themselves aren’t there, you ask the staff for purchase tickets for the dolls you want and they will only hand out one for each doll anyway, so one person getting multiples isn’t really possible. (After a certain time, I think after 12? You take the purchase ticket/receipt to a booth to collect the doll/s. I’ve gotten 3 different ones at once before, although 2 were for my friend who had a much worse ticket number than I had, so I got their dolls while they headed straight to dealers.)

(I think that after the main queue for the store has ended it’s possible to go back and get more dolls if there are any purchase tickets left, but this doesn’t happen often)

Just to be clear, that information is for the in-person sales at Dolpa itself.
Occassionally the online sales have item limits in place too, but they also mean you can only get one (or 3, or whatever the limit is) of that specific item.