VCRS to hold collectible doll sale

PALMER — After storing a collection of old-fashioned, porcelain dolls in several sizes and ages — and their furniture — for the last 10 years, Valley Community for Recycling Solutions will sell the more than 2,000-piece collection.

The two-day sale is from 3 to 5 p.m., March 17 and from noon to 4 p.m., March 18.

The recycling center agreed to help the dolls find new homes in 2009 after their owner could no longer house them.

Valley Arts Alliance’s “Dolls on Parade” project has helped find homes for 90 of the dolls and some of their furniture. Some of the dolls also have found permanent homes hanging in the Wasilla Senior Center Gift Shop.

But there are still hundreds of homeless dolls with their clothing and furnishings for sale this weekend.

“What came to us as 1,600 cubic feet of new dolls and furniture previously boxed and stored in a basement for over 10 years are finding homes and families, rather than having to become landfill waifs,” said VCRS Executive Director Mollie Boyer. “The money from the sale of the … collectibles will be used to keep other precious resources out of the landfill.”

VCRS Education Specialist Elaine Albertson and the VCRS Public Information and Education Committee are the organizers of the doll sale.

“We are anxious for these dolls to go to local homes,” Albertson said. “They would be so much happier with families than in stacked boxes in a corner here.”

VCRS has offered recycling in the Mat-Su since 1998. The new facility is the first commercial/industrial building in Alaska to receive Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold Certification and is the third recycling center in the nation to earn that designation.