Before all the Sumikas, before the websites, and before the international presence, Volks was quite a small company. The company was basically formed from sculptors that worked on resin model kits. With this small, tight knit, family of collectors in mind, the primary way that Volks sold their dolls other than their one brick and mortar store was via mail order.

The above image is from one of Volks' newsletters from circa 2000. The heads and bodies and hands could all be purchased separately. As shown above, a head alone was 12,800yen.
Hands and feet were a little different too. Rather than having the modern "S" hooks that hook onto the elastic, closed loop strings were attached to the loops of elastic at the end via a "square knot". The above pictures shows one of these early heads complete with papers. One thing to note is the rougher edges than we see contemporarily on Volks dolls. While this is partly because the skills of those within the company have increased over time, it is also because of their resin model roots. It was expected at the time for the hobbyist to work on finishing the dolls and resin model kits themselves. So something like rough edges around a headache would not be seen as egregious as it would be today.

In addition, this was before the introduction of head plates circa 2001-2002. The head plates had been added as a measure of anti-piracy because of recasters. Click here to learn more about headplates. In the first image, you can see the nice, clear markings that were included in the molds to mark the dolls. This included the model number, usually within the head itself.

By September of 2001, MSD standard kits had been released. By December, the standard SD13 girls and the MSD fairy were released. This same month, the first Tenshi no Sumika "Shinjuku Alta" was opened. With it, "One Offs" and the Super Dollfie Full Choice System was released. It was likely that the piece by piece mail order option was discontinued at this time. Volks was moving away from providing kits for their larger dolls, and more towards providing finished pieces for collectors. However, it wasn't until the introduction of the Super Dollfie Midi as a standard model that the Mini Super Dollfie standard kits were discontinued.