If you are a baby boomer, you certainly know who Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy are.  They were conceived when your grandparents were adolescents and have survived the test of time for over 100 years.  Other characters have joined their “family” but they are not as popular.  There is something about these two redheads that keeps them in everyone’s thoughts.  When I am asked what drew me to collecting them, my answer is “I just like them”.  They were created as dolls. If they were human one could say they have genetically changed over time, i.e. hair color, skin color, height, clothing and sock patterns, and facial expressions.  While there are 800+ dolls in my collection, dolls aren’t the only item this sister and brother team have come to in realization.  Manufacturers in industries such as bedding, kitchenware, clothing, toys, printing, home décor, crafts, furniture, jewelry, et al. have been involved in using Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy as either marketing tools or adornments in their products.  If you would like to see the many products produced, glance through my volumes.  Perhaps you always wanted a redhead or two in your life.  The items pictured are not for sale, nor are values shown.  There are plenty of places to start your own collection and it’s what you want to pay that sets the value.

I wish to thank my parents, my late husband, Brian, who never stopped me from purchasing “another one for my collection”, my boyfriend, Douglas, who has become an expert spotter in just four years and other Raggedy collectors who always said “you should write a book, your collection is so organized”.  Although I had pictures already of every item in my collection when I started this project, not every picture was clear.  Thanks to Google, Facebook, eBay and other websites, I was able to obtain better pictures, a lot coming from pictures other collectors had posted, namely Raggedy Land, Nancy Nelson, Andrew Tabbat, Patricia Hall, Raggedys and Teddys, Ron and Sherry Rasmussen, Gordon Nichols, and Raggedy John.

As in the medical field, there are words non-medical people may not recognize.  There are words in the Raggedy field, some may not recognize.  One that comes to mind is Happies.  This denotes a trinket created by a Raggedy collector and distributed at the gatherings.  Everyone who attends a gathering receives a Happy (some are signed by their creator) so they go home with many different items.

When I attended the Raggedy Rally in 2018, there was a scrapbook created from newspaper clippings and pictures on one of the tables in the Arcola Center.   I took a picture of each page and incorporated those pictures in the Book section of Volume 2 in this series.  The Arcola Chamber of Commerce produced a scrapbook highlighting ten years of Raggedy Ann and Andy Festivals.  Many of the pictures are the same in both books, but in different arrangements.  The Chamber had a thank you notation in their scrapbook to the following:  Robin Hess, Pam Wyrick, Tony and Phyllis Nestor, Shirley Heisler, Lynn Dowdy, Hiromi Tokuda, Hiromi Nishizawa, and Diane and Jed Ashton.   I wish to thank these individuals also because they added to my collection.