Cherished Collectable's, Inc.,  Dolls By Mary Benner,was established in 1992.  We are a very small family business with myself, Mary Benner, being the artist & designer of all the lovely dolls you see in our gallery and many more which are not shown.  I started making porcelain dolls as a hobby in 1989, and started selling my dolls at craft shows in 1991 to in order to be able to continue on with my " hobby" as doll making is very expensive! I think I have made & sold hundreds of dolls over the past 19 years!  When I look back at pictures of my early dolls,  they look quite primitive compared to the award winning masterpieces I create now.  My husband of 38 years, Allen, is  retired from the Navy, he owns a realestate company, "Realty Professionals", here in Virginia Beach.  Although he has quite a busy schedule, Allen is an important part of Cherished Collectable's, besides being a fantastic photographer whose photos grace the gallery of this website,  he helps me with many aspects of this business including pouring & making molds and packing & shipping my dolls all over the world. It was Allen who came up with the name of our business, "Cherished Collectables'".  My daughter, Marlee, helps me with my books, which is a task that I am not very good at!! Marlee has five children and is a stay at home Mom.

I now specialize mostly in one of a kind handmade antique replicas and occassionally - time allowing - my all original (sculpted by me) artist dolls. I started sculpting dolls in 1996 and at that time Allen and I made all of our rough molds by hand,  a very tedious job.  However,  the past few years,  since the birth of our grandchildren, I have not had much time to sculpt & design original dolls.  My antique replicas are my true love and I never get tired of making them. Unfortunately though,  because my time is so limited now, I am only able to make a small number of handmade dolls a year.

Cherished Collectables has gone through a lot of changes over the years. We used to do Doll Shows up and down the east coast.  However we seldom do Doll Shows anymore as my dolls sell so quickly, it's too hard to put a collection together to make doing a doll show worthwhile. And since the internet, almost 100% of our sales are from the world wide web.  We sell our dolls all over Europe as well as in the United States!

A few years ago we were having some of the dolls in our collection manufactured in China. But because of problems with the factory overseas & the great cost and risks involved in dealing with a company that is not govern by the laws of the USA, we are no longer producing factory made dolls.  However,  we do have a few factory made Petite Dolls still in stock and available for sale. For more information on these dolls,  you can see them in the GALLERY on this website, go to the GALLERY menu on the left side of this page & click on "Dolls 4 Sale, Petite Dolls". 

Over the years my dolls have appeared in many publications, newspapers and magazine articles. My dolls have also been featured on the Home Shopping Network up until a few years ago when HSN closed their doll division. I also have designed dolls for other popular doll artist including Pat Loveless, Thelma Resch, Vincent De Phillipo, Jamie Englert & several other well known doll artists. In recent years I have been designing dolls for the Marie Osmond collection and I have several dolls that will be coming out in her collection on QVC in the near future. I have won numerous awards for my dolls including a Doty nomination for my original doll Naomi.  

Allen and I reside in Virginia Beach, Va. with our dog, Callie and the newest member of our family, Buddy, an orange and white tabby that showed up on our doorstep as a kitten this past February. We have 2 daughters, Marlee and Brandi, and 7 grandchildren who live not far from us.