Hello Ragnar,
Your first doll will be a massive learning curve and you will make mistakes with her, those mistakes may damage her, that may happen whether she is TPE or Silicone. You may also find that doll life is not for you, dolls are heavy and difficult to handle at first.
I am currently away on holiday this week with a group of friends, they all have several dolls, most of us have both silicone and TPE dolls, however there are two my friends that don't, one is totally into TPE he does not like the feel of silicone and would never have one. The other friend, one of his is first dolls was TPE, he couldn't get use to the smell of the TPE, he would never have another one, he's only had silicone dolls since.
There are a lot of scam sites that offer cheap dolls, do not buy from them, you may end up with nothing and losing all your money. You need to go through a recommend vendors, there are plenty listed in this thread by other members.
What I am getting at is, if was in your situation l would buy a decently priced TPE doll from a recommend vendor for my first doll and see if doll live works for you.
Most of my dolls are in very good condition, my eldest TPE dolls were made 2017 (2xYL Dolls and 2 WM). Oldest silicone dolls are from 2011-2012 they are not Chinese though, they are from US, Japan and Russia. My oldest Chinese silicone is 2018. My dolls that can stand, permanently stand, I clean them when they need it, those that stand around looking nice, about once a year if they are lucky. I have two TPE dolls that continuously share my bed, they are both from 2019, they get cleaned more frequently, they often have full body stockings on so they keep pretty clean.
