Grace's French Bakery SOLD OUT

French Bakery - Gone!

The sell out date for Grace's French Bakery has been on my mind every week now for over a month and I honestly felt a bit sheepish for voicing my doom and gloom predictions, but even I was shocked to see confirmation this morning from American Girl on Facebook that indeed the French Bakery would no longer be available.

Today American Girl confirmed via Facebook that “Grace’s French Bakery has sold out and is no longer available.” They later added that “The popularity exceeded our expectations and sold out more quickly than anticipated.”

While confirmation of the sell out was not until this morning, I am recording the online sell out date as October 3rd as the French Bakery changed from its online backorder status to its final "No longer available" status sometime on Saturday.

Note that as of 12 pm (noon) today a few of the AGP stores have the bakery in stock, but I anticipate these will be gone in a matter of days.

Charlotte – Available
Minneapolis – Limited (Unavailable as of 1:30 pm Monday)
Nashville – Available
Orlando - Available

Call and jump into your cars now, because once these last few French Bakeries are gone from the physical AG stores the only place left to find the bakery will be on the secondary market--but even there the inventory is low and the prices are high.

Since this *morning* alone on Ebay 5 French Bakeries have already been sold (completed auctions) with the selling prices ranging between $750 - $815. Before this morning, only one or two a week or less were being sold on Ebay and generally for $650 or less. I now expect the prices on Ebay for the French Bakery to jump upwards and exceed $1000 from here on until the supply on the secondary market is depleted or the Christmas season passes.

The early sell out certainly is a game changer for GOTY collectors. Last year I waited until the last minute to purchase Isabelle's Studio (I bought it within one or two days of both online and in store sell out dates). Amazingly, a year later one can still purchase Isabelle's Studio on Ebay for approximately original retail price, so one can hope waiting out the secondary market holiday frenzy on Grace's Bakery could yield a better deal.

But my new rule of thumb for GOTY is if I want something from the collection, assuming no budgeting issues, that I better not wait too long--AG is running a much leaner ship in terms of supply chain management and "while supplies last" is not merely advisory, it is simply reality.

I realize many collectors were never considering purchasing the bakery, but if you were thinking about it...Are you relieved to have this item preemptively taken off your list knowing the temptation is gone? Turning to the secondary market? Changing how you collect for GOTY and other limited edition items?

The next big question about Grace's Wonderful World will be how long her doll stays in production--will she survive until mid-December? It seems like in order for Grace's clothing and accessories to sell that AG needs to keep Grace the doll in stock--so I imagine AG will try to keep her available until at least December 20th. But Grace has certainly broke the expected patterns already. Also, William Sonoma has another cross promotion with American Girl Grace Thomas rolling out this week so stay tuned for some talk about that here as well.

Looking forward: It seems time to begin a proper welcome for GOTY 2016 Lea Clark! There have been many leaked pictures of prototypes over the past two months, so we can start filling in the gaps here at Poppets & Posies with our own speculations.

Additionally, while I passed over blogging about the stunning debut of Beforever Maryellen, I am definitely interested in taking a look at what we know so far about Beforever 2016 and to ask the tantalizing question (based on rumors and early cues) if if BF 2016 will debut side-by-side with GOTY 2016 Lea Clark on January 1st, 2016.