New and Shotworthy

With apologies to Winston. I’d actually convinced myself that the glory days of glass collecting were pretty much done. Few interesting glasses were showing up on eBay and prices realized seemed to be rock bottom, with many glasses going unsold. This all changed a couple of months ago. eBay is awash with nice glass now and prices realized on some of the open auctions are jaw-dropping. And all of this before yesterday’s beer can and glass auction (Morean Auctions), which I’ll address in a separate post, along with some live-action video coverage (knock wood).

In the past four weeks, 201 glasses showed up for auction. 93 of these closed without a bidder, but the average price of those that sold was $46.64. Which is up quite a bit over previous weeks and months.

Chief among the “mandible action moments” was this Geo. T Stagg two-part metal slider that was listed by jupposfarm.

For reasons that escape me, the Stagg sliders have been steadily gaining ground over the past year or so. Sliders such as this would have covered the cap on a bottle of Stagg Whiskey and, when removed, could be opened to create a handy container that might be used to sample the whiskey inside. I doubt that many were used for that purpose, the bottle itself being a perfectly good container that could be used to sample the product.

I’ve come to the conclusion that sliders in general date to Prohibition years and have a Canadian origin, although I suppose it’s conceivable that this one was late pre-Pro – I’d love to see one in situ to better judge its age. Regardless, the one shown above sold on January 10 for a whopping $184.50 after a spirited bidding war. There’s a second such slider currently on eBay with the auction due to close today – the current bid price is $51.00.

*Update* The second slider sold on Jan 15 for $237.50! Huh???? Also – a mystery buyer took between 10 and 15 glasses off eBay yesterday in Best Offers and Buy-it-Nows. All very interesting…

A Cincinnati-area collector has been snapping up Cinci buy-it-nows in recent days, including an Index Whiskey for $150 and an Old Jug for $125. I hadn’t seen the Index Whiskey giving itself the finger before, so it’s a rare one.

Steal of the week goes to a Tollgate Rye from Pittsburgh. Rare picture glasses aren’t making what they sued to, so maybe it’s not much of a steal, but it’s an attractive glass and $56.89 seems like a bargain to me.

Yes, Etsy. eBay may be an auction giant and the main source of pre-pro shot glasses (and anything pre-pro related), but Etsy can be worth checking occasionally to see if they have any interesting “antiques” for sale. I was under the impression that eBay had acquired Etsy several years ago, but apparently they’re still independent companies, despite marketing similarities. I’ve picked up a few glasses from the site over the years, none of them bargains, but it’s worth checking in now and again to see what’s on offer.

Hopefully you’re all familiar with Ken Schwartz and his place in the collecting world. If not, you can find his glass collection here. Impressive at it was, it formed only a teensy portion of his collecting empire, which was housed in a custom-built addition to his modest home in Reading, CA.

Ken died in 2013, which left many of us wondering what would happen to his pre-pro glasses. The CA collecting community plundered most of the more interesting items, then many more were sold off via Facebook. I was deeply involved with a new, work related start-up at the time and remained oblivious to most of the machinations of the pre-pro world for a couple of years. ALl of this (mostly) went over my head, and I have no real sense of who the beneficiaries were.

When work pressures began to ease a little and I had a chance to drop in on Etsy, I happened to run across this glass that had sold recently:

This is a glass that I recognized immediately and that, until then, I’d only ever seen once. That was at the FOHBC’s 2006 Annual Show in Reno, Nevada. The glass was in the grasp of Ken Schwartz, who was trying to negotiate a better price with the dealer (without success). My suspicions now aroused, I compared this latest example with Ken’s (in the database) and it’s the exact same glass. Well dang. This is likely a George Truog glass and one I’d have paid dearly for: it had sold for just $40 on Etsy.

Scrolling through other current and past sales, I found a few more that had clearly come from Ken’s collection. I got talking to the Etsy store owner that had listed these glasses – the store is TraditionsVintageCo. and the owner (Lori) is based in MI. All told, around 200 of Ken’s glasses have passed through her store, most of which have already been sold. She relates that she and her husband had been in the auction business and purchased the entire contents of Ken’s Temple of Glass, boxed it up and stored it, and had been selling it at various venues for the past 4 years. My mind is still boggling – Ken had amassed an impressive collection of pre-pro stuff, and, as mentioned the shots were just a minor component of his overall collection.

There’s still a few glasses left for sale – if you want to own a part of a legendary collection, it’s still worth a look at her site.

Here’s a few of the sold glasses that caught my eye:

A Black Cat Whiskey from Ullman Bros. & Co. of Cleveland, OH. – a steal at $50.

A Gilt Edge Shipping House from St. Louis – how many times have you seen this? It’s appeared on eBay only once and sold for around $150. Mine came from Bob Snyder and is cracked – this one sold for $65.

This is a Monteagle Pure Rye from O’Keefe in Oswego, NY. It’s a classic pre-pro glass to die for. It sold for $50.

And last but not least, a Coon Hollow LUG that sold for $65, which is at least 10 times less than what it’s actually worth. I’m still crying in my beer over that one…

eBay seller brew508 has been around since the auction site’s inception and I’ve brought a couple of glasses from him over the years. In recent weeks, he’s been listing glasses that are notable for their condition and also for a “Best Offer” option, something that is increasingly gaining favor and that I’ve taken advantage of many times to get a better deal on an eBay glass. Sometimes sellers accept, sometimes they don’t, but it’s always worth a try.

The glass with the highest opening bid price ($150) was a Badger Club Whiskey from John Thielen of Oshkosh, WI.

You’d be correct in raising one or both eyebrows over this auction given that it’s essentially just a plain text glass with panels and a partial gold rim. It is on the rare side – I’ve logged just 6 of them into the sales database over the years. The first of these (below) was back in February 2004 and was won by texas1869 for just $26.99.

I guess texas1869 didn’t like what he saw on arrival, because it relisted with a note that “it had a crack” in April. Yours truly ended up buying it for $20 and, on pulling it out of the box, a large chunk amounting to about 10% of the wall fell out onto the benchtop. The “crack” formed a giant U-shape that ran from rim to rim and the chunk of wall that it described had been (weakly) held in place with glue. Caveat emptor, as always.

I still have the glass even though I’ve since replaced it with a much less “cracked” example. The cracked version sits alongside a really neat sign I picked up off eBay that features the same glass alongside a bottle of the product. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that the pre-pro glasses we treasure so much actually show up featured with other advertising giveaways, so the sign is a much treasured addition to the collection.

brew508’s glass sold following submission of a “Best Offer“, price undisclosed.

brew508 also listed a couple of Old Tom Bentons a couple of months apart.

The opening bid for both was $55, which was tempting given how clean the glasses were. Again, plain-text glasses, and from David Wise & Co. of Chicago, IL (not a collector’s favorite city), but an attractive design none the less with a nice gold rim. Both sold following submission of “Best Offers.”

Lastly, brew508 appears to have lucked out with a cache of Fuldner glasses. It was one of these that got me hooked on pre-pro glass collecting back in the day (I found mine at a Milwaukee bottle show back in 1989 – the seller was asking $22 for it but took $16; it’s still in one of my top 2% display cases). It’s a classic pre-pro design and I adapted the Fuldner trademark design to serve as the banner on the pre-pro.com home page. For reasons that are not clear to me, they fail to attract much attention when they show up on eBay; the most I’ve seen one sell for is $76 and change.

brew508 has been listing them for a $45 opening bid with a “Best Offer” option. Three have sold so far, the most recent being a couple of days ago. If he has more and you don’t have one in the collection already, you should grab one – it will outlive most others you may acquire for the display case.

If I had to name one US State to focus a collecting interest on if my collecting budget were limited, it would be New York .

NY gets zero respect, pre-pro collecting-wise, for reasons I don’t really understand. NYC is particularly hard done by. There’s well over 100 known NYC glasses and that number includes some of pre-pro’s best picture glasses, including the Old Valleys, Seminole Clubs, Auto Ryes, Salzman Nightcaps and Eye Openers, and a Rip Van Winkle. Despite this, NYC glasses typically have difficulty attracting buyers when offered for sale and, when they do sell, prices are typically bargain basement.

Two nice examples of NY glasses showed up on eBay in the past week or so, both in really nice condition by the looks of them. The first was a glass from Troy, NY – A Herman Carl Co. Inc., “The Reliable Wine and Liquor Dealer.” It’s lost its gold rim (not unusual given how weakly the rims were adhered), but the label is strong – the closing bid was $72.00.

The second was a Storm King Whiskey, from J C Childs of NYC. One would have thought that this would have sold for around $95 or more, but the auction closed at $34.50. As I said, no respect.

Bottles of Storm King Whiskey were richly illustrated – here’s a couple of examples of paper labels:

If you want to start a bidding war on eBay, then list a Westheimer glass, preferably a Red Top Rye.

Ferd. Westheimer was a major player in the pre-pro years, with Red Top Rye being his leading brand. Jack Sullivan put together a comprehensive history on his blog site, in case you’re interested in the details. Other Westheimer brands included Boston League, C. C. Bond, Clover Brook, Manhattan Reserve, McAllister, Number One, Old Hutch, Old Planet, Pullman Pure Rye, Top, and White House Club. The company also owned the Old Times distillery and brand name.

The Red Top Rye brand was the most heavily advertised and they gave away many promotional items bearing the name. Few of the other brands they used appear on shot glasses (Old Times being the main exception), and such glasses are very rare. Prior to these past few weeks, I’d seen an “Old Planet” show up for sale only once. The more recent listing was nice example of this glass but failed to mention the Westheimer connection, so the closing price was a meager $60.01.

Many of the Red Top Rye glasses these are etched with a red label, which makes them extra desirable to purist pre-pro glass collectors and is the reason they command sales prices in the $300+ range, but there are many more common white-frosted variants also. Two different white-etched Red Top Rye glasses showed up in recent days. The first was the speckled label variant shown below. The auction closed with a final bid price of $189.46.

The second to list was a plain script variant, shown below. The opening bid price is $149.99. As of writing the auction is less than a day old and has yet to attract a bid.

Time is ticking!

Not everything shot-glass related that comes my way is via eBay, although it sometimes seems that way. I’m always interested to see other people’s collections, especially when they’re in a display case.

Most of you will have at least one glass in your collection that was purchased from Paul Van Vactor, better known as stilz on eBay. Paul is something of a legend in the collecting world. In the pre-internet days, he was one of the few reliable sources of pre-pro shot glasses and the latest version of his snail-mail sales lists were eagerly awaited by all. He was one of the collectors that contributed to Barbara Edmonson’s Historic Shot Glasses and Old Advertising Spirits Glasses, the Old and New testaments of the pre-pro shot glass Bible.

Paul shifted his sales activities to eBay after the internet became a force to be reckoned with. The sales database has logged over 41,000 auctions since 2001, roughly 1,300 of which are attributable to stilz.

Paul is based in Lousiville, KY. His collecting interests focus primarily on KY bottles and glasses (he has a lot to choose from!), although his shot glass collection includes some rare examples from other States. His eBay wares include bottle, glasses, and souvenir china pieces from all over the US, picked up during his travels around the country.

I had a chance to catalog Paul’s glass collection as it was over a decade ago now: You can click through the listing pages here. However, Paul was kind enough to recently send me a couple of pics of his new display cases that I’m excited to share with you here:

I have to say, those squat enameled back-bar bottles make for an impressive display. If I weren’t already overrun with shot glasses, I might be tempted to start yet another collection….

The first week of December brought us this rare Conway’s Famous Shakeup glass:

It listed with a $49 opening bid with a $129 buy-it-now, which is a hefty price to ask of a new collector who may be unsure of the background or authenticity, so it ran without attracting a bidder for almost a week.

We don’t actually know much about the origins of this glass. It was given away by Henry E Dowd, of Toledo, OH., about whom we know next to nothing. We know that he applied for a patent covering his name and his face (we can safely assume that it’s Henry’s face that appears on the glass) back in 1981, the patent listing as a “Medicinal Beverage.” Beyond that, I have no idea.

The glass shown above is clearly old. It’s a heavier glass and the label is acid-etched and, although unsigned, clearly the work of George Truog of the Maryland Glass Etching Works of Cumberland, MD. I’ve seen this glass twice now, so it’s a rare one and most likely early 1890’s. There’s a sister glass that’s equally rare. Both are in the database, but perhaps there’s another variant out there that we don’t know about (Toledo collectors please get in touch if you can provide more information).

The auction finally closed on December 8th with a buy-it-now at the asking price, which is a bargain if you’re interested in the older pre-pro glasses.

While I was noodling around on the internet, I happened to notice that an “identical” glass was still listed on a Russian scammer site at 50% off — with 11 still in stock! Yay! Caveat emptor…

This was one of the more interesting offerings on eBay over the past few weeks and an easy one to miss if one were not familiar with the heavier, pressed and embossed/debossed pre-pro glasses.

In addition to a handful of more common thin-walled shots, Stulz Brothers of Kansas City, MO. produced several unconventional glasses, ranging from tall wine glasses to squat shots with their name embossed in the base. One such glass looks like a dose or bitters glass with a short stem, with the Stulz Bros. name appearing as debossed text in the base.

This glass is notable for the reversed “Z” in “Stulz.” It’s a relatively uncommon glass that shows up for sale every 4 or 5 years, with a couple of them selling in the $100 range.

So I was interested to see a set of six of them show up on eBay for an opening bid of $50, offered for sale by carnival96. What made this grouping notable is that the glasses have been decorated with a colorful flower design:

The auction closed without a bidder, but was immediately relisted and sold for a best offer price of $25.

I would have to assume that this was a professionally-decorated set and some kind of premium giveaway; it would be interesting to know what the true history was. Regardless, it’s a fascinating find!

This was the glass that achieved the highest sales price during the past couple of weeks and it’s a rare old beauty:

It was listed for sale by miketaylor100 with a start price of $29.99. It was soon bid up to around $49, but then sat there for a week with no further bidding activity. The auction finally closed with a volley of sniper shots that drove it up to a final sale price of $259.55.

What made this a $260 glass? The Mette & Kanne Distilling Co. were based St. Louis, MO. They listed in city directories from around 1893, and I would guess that this glass dates back to somewhere around there given that it’s acid etched and the design was a creation of George Truog of the Maryland Glass Etching Works of Cumberland, MD. We know this because the glass is signed by the Master himself: see the tiny transparent “GT” signature to the right of the crown.

I’ve seen the glass once before – it was one of those that made up Ken Schwartz’ collection. There is a sister glass that advertises Carmen Kentucky Bourbon, which I first logged into the database as a part of Paul Van Vactor’s collection. It’s also signed by Truog and is almost as rare.

Congratulations to the collector that snagged the Crown Jewels!

Not quite a lump of coal, but I’m sure some may view it that way. Mini-mugs are shot-glass size, standing about 2-1/4″ tall, and they date to the same pre-Prohibition era. Mini-mugs are collectible in their own right and there are hundreds, if not thousands of variants to chase after, but mini-mugs advertising a whiskey brand or a distiller are exceptionally rare. Offhand, I can only think of one, and that advertises Bellwood Rye Whiskey from McCarthy & Co. of Haverhill, MA.

Mini-mugs don’t get much respect from purist glass collectors, but they do make for an interesting and colorful addition to the display case. The Bellwood mug is actually quite rare, showing up for sale about once every 4 or 5 years on average.

whatilove00 listed one for sale mid-December with an initial bid price of $49.99. Unfortunately it had a significant chunk missing from the rim and the auction closed a week later without a buyer. In good condition, this mug can sell for in the region of $125, so the asking price was not unreasonable.

If you’re interested, the mug relisted at the same asking price and the auction was still running as of writing, no bidders.