What a difference a year makes!  After seemingly endless months of drought, the river of pre-pro glass that empties into the 'Bay once again began flowing.  January 2011 was marked by several notable auctions.  The Poo-Bah was wrenched out of his burrow by a family emergency, blinked a couple of times at seeing his shadow, and missed snagging several NICE glasses.  The better of them are featured below. 

Sadly, the Pre-pro collecting community lost yet another giant in recent months.  Bob Snyder finally gave up his unending quest for Whiskey Brands and miniature bottles and passed away in December, 2010.  He was 86.  Bob's work lives on in the Robert E Snyder whiskey brand database, which is used daily by collectors, historians, and eBay sellers.

As you can see from the stats above, the HEC Index* showed a sharp uptick last month, climbing back to near $30.  Six glasses sold for >$100, although none of these auctions in any way compares with a listing fielded by Kevin Wade (bluroc) last month.

This past month has been dominated by eBay regulars.  Bluroc's Alaskan windfall was used to pay off the bills on two pretty but pricey picks.  The Pride of North Carolina (below left) consistently sells in the three figure range, even though it shows up regularly on eBay.  This one was a relist with a price drop from $200 to $185; bluroc was the only taker. 

Father Time glasses rank among pre-pro's most desirables, even in the more common form that lists the brand owner and city of origin (Elgin, IL).  The example shown below is a rare variant, which is why it was bid up to > $200.   Verrrrrry pretty...

There were many bargains to be had this past month, mostly on more common glasses, but three rare ones sold for a fraction of what they should be worth.  xxxtruk took two of them; atakeda grabbed the third.  The Quaker City Monogram listed in a auction format.  As a Denver glass, it might have been expected to attract several bidders,  but  bluroc was the only competition and Kurt took it home for $36.  The Commodores Royal (center) listed in a prime example of a stupid seller trick.   If one has no idea of worth, then listing pre-pro glasses as bins is usually a bad idea.  Either they get priced too high and no-one ever buys them, even after multiple re-lists, or they sell below what they're actually worth.  xxxtruk is probably still laughing after grabbing a Portland, OR glass for $40.  Finally, Kurt just missed taking the Globe Wine Co. glass shown at right - it was one of the >$100 glasses mentioned above. 

The last bargain went to atakeda, who was the only taker for the saloon glass from San Francisco shown below, left.    Twomey & Miholovich glasses show up on eBay on a regular basis, but they still typically sell for $80 to $100.  Not this one - it went for only $24.99.   Akiro also nabbed the Union Wine Association glass (below right), an unusual, unlisted example from Los Angeles, CA.  Barb Edmonson was very thorough in her coverage of California glasses in HSG and OASG, so the fact that new, unknown ones still keep showing up on a regular basis goes to show how many different pre-pro glasses there must be out there.  I've been maintaining the sales database here at pre-pro for almost ten years now and for every known glass that gets added, an unknown glass gets added also.  The total number of unique glasses in this database now stands at 5,462.  There are another 2,700 or so unique glasses in the free-access database, while OASG and HSG together add another 2,000 to 3,000.   There's no sign that we've even come close to reaching the ceiling on total known examples of pre-pro glasses, a sobering thought if you're one of those collectors intent on "completing the set".