GUEST: I was given this doll by my parents.

They used to go to Europe and bring back foreign dolls.

And I was probably about eight or nine years old.

APPRAISER: And where did they purchase her in Europe, do you know?

GUEST: In Germany.

APPRAISER: What's her name?

GUEST: Her name is Lilli.

APPRAISER: Now, when you played with her, did your friends have Bild Lillis, too?

GUEST: No, they all had Barbies with dark hair and bathing suits.

And my Barbie had a black-and-white dress, and I couldn't take off the shoes and I couldn't change her earrings, and... (sighs) I was kinda disappointed in her, 'cause I wanted a real Barbie, but my parents wouldn't buy one.

APPRAISER: So what we have here today is a Bild Lilli made in Germany.

Bild Lilli was a doll made in the 1950s through 1964 by a company called Greiner and Hausser.

And she is actually fashioned after a cartoon character for the Bild-Zeitung magazine.

And it was sort of a gossip magazine.

Reinhard Beuthien did the cartoon, and she was, um, she used her good looks to her best advantage.

But she was fun and sassy and she was very fashionable.

She was sold to gentlemen, like, in smoke shops and so forth.

And they would put 'em on the dashboard of their car, or in the cockpit of their airplane.

She's all pretty and curvy.

GUEST: I don't think my parents knew that.

APPRAISER: They didn't, because what happened...

GUEST: (laughs) APPRAISER: ...German children, and even German women, started wanting this doll because she was pretty.

In the late '50s, Ruth Handler, who is of Mattel, one of the founders of Mattel, she was in Lucerne, Switzerland, with her daughter Barbara, and they see this doll in the shop window and they buy it.

You can see Barbie was fashioned a lot like her.

There actually ended up being a lawsuit between the makers of the Bild Lilli and Mattel...

GUEST: Uh-huh.

APPRAISER: ...for pretty obvious reasons.

They settled out of court.

And then in 1964, Mattel bought the rights to the doll.

Did she have other clothes?

GUEST: Nope, this was the only outfit she had.

APPRAISER: She has on this beautiful dress that you were wishing was a black-and-white-striped bathing suit, and you got a black-and-white cocktail dress.

But how do we know it's original to her?

One thing we can do is look at her snaps, and you will see that it has P-R-Y-M. All the original clothes will have that brand of snap on them.

And not only is it her dress, it is a rare dress to find.

I've been doing this show for 13 or 14 years.

GUEST: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

APPRAISER: And I have never seen a Bild Lilli.

GUEST: (inhales) Super!

APPRAISER: She came in two sizes.

There was a seven-inch model and a 12-inch model.

GUEST: Oh.

Oh, okay!

APPRAISER: And guess which one everybody wants if they collect Bild Lillis?

GUEST: Do they want this one?

APPRAISER: They want the bigger one.

GUEST: Ooh!

Cool!

So cool!

(laughs) APPRAISER: So the retail value on your doll in today's market, because of the rare dress, she would retail somewhere between $3,800 and $4,500.

GUEST: Mm.

Hm, I guess I'll take her rather than a Barbie.

(both laugh) APPRAISER: Yes.

GUEST: Insurance value?

APPRAISER: Insurance value, I would probably put around $5,000 to $5,200.

An early Barbie from the same period is going to probably sell for about double what a Bild Lilli will.