Vintage Cherished Teddies Blaire Figurine – Charter Symbol of Membearship CT110, Club Exclusive, Pearls Bell, Enesco Hillman, 2004

This bear was never for sale. The base reads 2004 Charter Symbol of Membearship — Blaire came only in the annual kit mailed to paid-up members of the Cherished Teddies Collector's Club, and the number underneath, CT110, carries the detail most sellers miss: CT010 was the ordinary member's bear that year; CT110 was the Charter member's. Charter status belonged only to collectors who had renewed every single year without a lapse since the club's founding — and once lapsed, it could never be regained. Fewer members held it each passing year, so fewer of these were ever posted out.

She arrived in the club's tenth-anniversary season, and she is dressed for the occasion: mint ruffled gown edged in hand-dotted white, pearls at her ear, shoulder and skirt — the club's symbol for weddings and anniversaries — and a silver bell in her paw, ringing the news in. Club pieces got an extra pass at the paint bench that retail issues didn't, and it shows in the fineness of the ruffle dots and the pearl finishing.

Marked Blaire, 2004 Charter Symbol of Membearship, ©2003 Priscilla Hillman, Licensee Enesco Group Inc., CT110, with the club's tenth-anniversary double-bear seal, all three felt pads and the factory label intact.

For the club-piece collector who reads numbers before pictures, anyone filling the 2004 gap, or a pearl-and-bell bear with a genuinely uncommon backstory.