Recently a new girl arrived who’d been low-key on my wishlist for a long time. I guess that’s a bit of a theme recently since it also took me a while to finally pick up Asuna, too. Anyway, I’d been thinking about FCS or somehow getting hold of a special SD girl for myself, and after a lot of hemming and hawing decided that Saki/F-59 was my fave. Saki was a standard model release but somehow she was a bit tricky to track down now that she’s out of rotation. Fortunately I was able to pick up a really lovely older one-off Saki complete with student outfit.
I spotted the cute one-off Saki with a faceup by Haru on second-hand shop Mandarake and quickly snagged her. After a couple days of waiting for Mandarake to confirm my order, I received a cancellation email- Saki was sold out. I returned to my low-key Saki stalking online. But only a few days later, what looked like the same Saki reappeared on Mandarake! There were some new photos of blushing damage on the chin, but it was clearly the same doll so I rapid-fire snagged her again. This time, I got a quick invoice from Mandarake (and some rather hefty shipping fees, thanks Covid) and then Saki was on her way home. As far as I can tell, Mandarake either discovered the damage or accidentally damaged Saki when they were preparing to fulfill my first order. Instead of contacting me about it, they just cancelled the whole thing and relisted when they had new Saki damage photos to include. Her price was still reasonable to me considering the damage was minor and mostly invisible, so I guess it all works out in the end. I’m mainly writing about the experience in case someone else has the same – I feel really lucky I spotted her quickly enough the second time around! Plus the non-confrontational solution of just cancelling the original order felt very Japanese to me :D
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Trawling around on Volks instagram, I think I spotted my Saki’s original debut! This is from 2016 so it makes sense that she’s yellowed a bit.
I fussed around with various styles for her since the set that she arrived with didn’t really suit my style and the eyes seemed to big and dark (I didn’t take a photo of them here but she had dark burgundy urethane eyes and a brown bob wig). I’m more into fantasical and vibrant styles, so I gave her some bright green glass eyes, a custom dyed lavender wig, and this cute Volks set that’s dark enough I’m nervous for my vinyl dolls to wear it :D
I’m going to continue pondering what Saki’s style will end up being, and see how I feel about the SD13 body after trying it for a bit longer. Maybe she’ll end up as a Dear SD? Stay tuned!
