Miss Jaye's video unboxing an original, still in the box Palace of Gems is almost here! We wanted to create a companion post here on The World of Champagne to include photos of the various pieces so that people have a reference to what comes with the Palace when evaluating potential sale items, looking for replacement pieces, etc.
I've been collecting Golden Girl toys and merchandise for a while, and I always thought of the Palace of Gems as a bit of a unicorn. I don't see it come up for sale that often, and especially not in the box. When I saw it the first time, there was an open but in the box and supposedly complete, and a "low" starting bid of only $500. I was the high bidder for a while, but my budget of $650 got blown out of the water when the price jumped up over $1100 in the final seconds of the auction.
I was very excited when I saw that another in the box Palace was listed. I knew that I was getting a bonus at work in a couple of months, and like that kid on TikTok says, "I make poor financial decisions" so I decided to purchase it if it was still available. I stalked that listing for almost two full months, and the minute I saw that my bonus hit my account, I hopped on Ebay and picked it up!
There is a long, complicated story about how the Palace actually arrived to me, taking almost a full months, accusations of fraud from both sides, and a brief time where I had both the Palace and a full refund - I might share that story at some point, it's a wild ride! But a little less than $1800 later, I finally had my Palace of Gems! I know how hard these are to find, and I know that sometimes pictures aren't very clear, so I wanted to create a video Unboxing and assembling the Palace and also documenting it here! I've never been the sort of collector that keeps things in the box - I don't open everything, of course, but this is one product I had to touch and see and put together!
I hope you enjoy these pictures, that they are entertaining (and useful, if you are a collector trying to make sure your Palace of Gems is complete!), and that you check out the video to see all of the pieces coming together.
XOXO - Miss Jaye
Instructions/Paper Goods
As you'll see in the video, the stickers had become so old, they had lost all of their stick and we had to glue them onto their intended surfaces! The silver mirror stickers, however, weren't affected and we were able to apply those right out of the box.
Gold Plastic Items
Much has been said about the quality of the plastic for this playset, and I have to agree. The gold plastic accessory items for the most part feel very delicate; in fact the hinge on the vanity table and several pegs on the weapons rack were broken when the product was unboxed, having broken just from being moved around over the years. The throne also has a pink plastic seat that doesn't quite hit right, and the place where you slide it in immediately started to break upon assembly. If you handle them carefully, though, they are very well designed. The statue is the thickest piece and feels much more sturdy than the smaller pieces.
Here you can see the broken hinge on the fold down vanity table. I also wanted to highlight the attention to detail on this playset, including a version of the combs that came with the dolls being molded onto the vanity table surface.
Here is the damaged to the weapons rack. All of the pegs were in the bag and we reattached them with E6000. Four pegs on the top and one on the bottom were affected.
This is the water trough without the sticker added. You can watch us add all of the stickers in the video!
Throne and Desk
There is also a small, round sticker that goes on the throne that isn't pictured here. We applied it in the video using a thin coat of E6000.
Brown Plastic Accessories
The accessories in the dark brown plastic feel much more sturdy than the gold! These are able to be handled easily and even the joints don't feel prone to breakage. The front door of the Palace is also made in this plastic, but was already installed when the palace was in the box, as were the gold plastic window frames and the gold shield emblem on the door.
The Skylight and Torch
The promo photos on the box art show colored panels in the skylight, but my skylight and most that I've seen in photos "in the wild" are just clear plastic. This was a common occurrence in this line: the packaging would often show a more detailed prototype, and the design would be simplified in the actual production model. In the prototype, there are also additional colored accents on the main body of the Palace that are not found on the final production model.
As you can see in the photo above, I didn't snap the canopy poles into the body of the Palace as the pink plastic of the walls is actually the thinnest and most brittle plastic of the entire playset. It was still able to stand and support the skylight and so I could see the way it would look, but I didn't want to do anything that would be hard to take apart for storage.
Also, as a fun little bonus to the auction, I also received this letter of authenticity from David Galoob! His wife turned out to be the seller of the auction, and he was including personalized letters with all of the items purchased!
I hope you've enjoyed this little photo collection, and please check out the video once it arrives. If you have any Golden Girl merch shots or stories you'd like to share, please reach out to me via Instagram!
XOXO - Miss Jaye
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