Limited Signature Edition LE23
The Wedding of
Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco
(Grace Kelly was never issued)
7500 Sets were to have been issued in 1983
Although intended for production, the Grace Kelly doll was withdrawn from the Nisbet range, at the request of Prince Rainier.
Here is the story behind the never issued wedding set, as told by Jack Wilson. It has been taken from an article written by Karen B Kurtz, in the American “Doll World” Magazine, in October 1996, and is reproduced below
A special lot of 17 sets of very rare dolls also captured the attention of auction-goers: wedding models of Prince Rainier III and Princess Grace. Sets brought $30, which was the bargain of the day, as astute dealers and collectors cabbaged onto these never-released dolls.
“The Monaco project actually turned into an embarrassment for Nisbet,” Wilson confided after the auction, retelling the dolls’ incredible provenance. “After our tremendous success with the Prince and Princess of Wales’ Wedding Set in 1981, we decided to produce a Royal Wedding series. We had produced 20 sets of the Rainier-Grace dolls when, lo and behold, our New York lawyer received a call from Prince Rainier’s lawyer, requesting us to halt production at whatever cost, to protect his privacy”.
“What we said to ourselves was that we just couldn’t even afford to get up in the morning against that kind of power, you know”, Wilson said. “So we had to abort the whole thing. It was very costly, obviously, but it was the only project in Nisbet’s history that needed to be aborted for lack of permission”
The article was reporting on Jack and Alison’s February 1996 auction of the Nisbet Archive, and the dolls from Peggy Nisbet’s private collection. More than 1500 dolls were sold, and raised $50,000.
All of the Grace Kelly dolls were supposed to have been destroyed - but obviously weren't, as they surfaced at the Nisbet auction in February 1996.
The doll in our collection, (and shown below), is Sample no.5. This suggests that there are at least 24 of these very rare dolls potentially in circulation, besides the one we have.
Prince Rainier had no objections to his own doll being sold, and his model was issued.
- P/1040 was to have been the Grace Kelly doll
- P/1041 is Prince Rainier of Monaco
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