Limited Signature Edition 21
Birth of a Royal Baby Boy
Limited to 5000 sets - Issued in 1982
This depiction of the Prince of Wales is based upon how Alison Nisbet imagined he might dress, to welcome his wife and firstborn son, Prince William, back to Buckingham Palace
The Princess Diana doll has a more traditional (for Nisbet) mohair wig - (see Limited Signature Edition 19 for Diana with a moulded plastic wig).
The Royal Baby, Prince William, was sold with his mother, and the two shared a catalogue number, but were distinguished by the addition of a letter "a" for Diana, and "b" for Prince William
The complete set consisted of the following three dolls :
- P/1007 - H R H Prince Charles (Royal Birth Model)
- P/1008a - H R H Princess of Wales (Royal Birth Model)
- P/1008b - The Royal Baby (Royal Birth Model
The boxed set of three dolls came with a single certificate
The slideshow below displays the entire "Royal Birth" doll collection
The doll pictures will auto run as a slide show in the window above.
Press F5 (function key 5 on your keyboard), to re-start the slide show.
Alternatively, you may control the slideshow manually – follow the steps below :
- Place the cursor at the bottom of the window to access thumbnail and navigation control bar
- Click on the “?” (question mark) symbol (bottom left hand side of the control bar) for a detailed explanation of the controls
- See a full screen slideshow by clicking on the “Square with Arrow” symbol (2nd from right on the control bar)
- Use the keyboard arrow keys to move forward and back through the slideshow, as desired
- Use the “ESC” key to leave full screen mode
Correspondent Paul L and his sister both purchased the LE.21 "Birth of a Royal Baby Boy" set, some years ago. They noticed, when the sets were compared recently, that there were differences, and wondered if both dolls were genuine. Here is our response to Paul's question :
Although described as a "Limited Edition", 5000 sets of dolls was a large production run, and although all broadly
similar, dolls from various points through the life of the production run could show some costume variances - as seen in a comparison of Paul's dolls with his sister's set. It's quite
likely that if the lace used for Diana's collar ran out, the pearls were substituted, in order to allow completion of the batch - and this same reason might have required an alteration to the
neckline of the dress, too.
Diana's short "bob" hairstyle caused a lot of problems to the House of Nisbet, as it is not so easy to make a short mohair wig that looks right - and certainly not quickly, in a high output
production situation - so they experimented with the moulded plastic "helmet" wig, (as seen on Paul's doll). This was the cause of a lot of controversy here in the UK, and the wig did not
find universal approval.
So both dolls are the "real thing", and show the sort of variation that occurs from time to time. Many collectors wouldn't be aware of any variations, (only having the one doll to look
at), so Paul's two sets reunited tell a very interesting story.
Thank you, Paul!