Each edition of SOTW will begin with some stats on sales in the past 28 days to give us all a sense of where the hobby is going.  In the past four weeks, 180 pre-pro glass auctions closed, 30 closed with no bidder, average price of the glasses that sold was $22.99.   Seven glasses sold for >$100, none sold for >$1,000. 

Since the drive for anonymity on eBay makes it difficult to know who's bidding on glass these days, I thought it might also be helpful to identify any new faces that are picking glasses off eBay on a regular basis.  This past month saw a handful sell to crab131 and another half-dozen or so to whiskeyminis66.  The latter has been a good friend of http://www.pre-pro.com/ for some time now: more on the face behind the trigger finger in a moment.

The Pooh-Bah had to venture back across The Pond to visit with family this past month.  Originally scheduled to fly at the beginning of March, a freak snow and sleet storm essentially closed Atlanta's sprawling airport and caused my flight to be bumped by a week.  I was gone for nine days and my access to the internet was so limited it meant that I completely missed sifting eBay for two full days.  By some bizarre coincidence, this period coincided with several listings for glasses that were all shoe-ins for SOTW; clearly some form of message for the Poo-Bah from the Glass Gods.  Maybe I need to go out and drop a couple of minty CA glasses into the wood chipper to appease them.

Before talking about the good stuff, here's two examples of high prices paid for "questionable" glass.

The first was offered by  aquabluecreations (eBay regular William Tomz): a Four Roses glass with a black label and a silver rim and fill line.  There are several telling features that allow one to identify it as being "modern" rather than pre-pro.  First - it's not thin walled, not in itself a clincher, but already pointing you in the right direction.  Second, pre-pro glasses with black labels are VERY rare.  Third, the fill-line: I can think of only one pre-pro glass with this feature (a Jesse Moore), although there may be others out there.  Finally, there are VERY few pre-Pro glasses with silver labels or rims.  The only glass I've ever seen with a silver label is Fraternal and from Philly.  The only glasses that I know of with a silver rim are bar glasses from Friedman, Keiler & Co. of Paducah, KY.  So we can be pretty certain that the glass dates to the 30's or 40's and comes from the same stable as the "Paul Jones" and "Antique" branded glasses.   There are also gold-label and white-label versions of this Four Roses glass: they're fairly easy to come by and there's little competition for them if you're interested in starting an early post-Repeal collection.  The example above was picked up by bottle-and-shot dealer Bruce Silva (jeffstateglass).

The Rieger's Whiskey at right above was the subject of discussion in the chat room while I was away.  It's an example of one of the top-ten most common glasses, an Oh! So Good, that has been chipped and dinged and worn to within an inch of its monogram.  You can still see the remnants of the missing top line, so there's little question that this is a worthless junker rather than something rare or unique.  However, the promise of an unknown variant triggered a bidding war between kcwhiskey and whiskeyminis66 that drove the price up to $36.99.  kcwhiskey, aka KC-collector Paul Gronquist, really should have known better: whiskeyminis66 only recently dipped his feet in pre-pro waters and hence perhaps his zeal is more understandable.  The bidder behind the minis id is Bas van de Groep, a pre-pro friend based in the Netherlands.    He maintains his own website if you're interested in stopping by, and he did actually discover a rare variant of the common "Harvest King, Kansas City" glass: you can see the glass featured on his site.

I suspect that every seasoned collector has found themselves not-so-proud owners of glasses that, at the time, seemed like rare treasures: hopefully featuring these glasses here will help future collectors avoid similar mistakes.

On to the good stuff. 

I couldn't believe that the rabid pack of collecting regulars let bluroc make off with the little gem shown at right  -- a  Spruance, Stanley & Co. from San Francisco -- for only (only!) $82.01!  Not exactly a Steal of the Week, but a VERY enviable catch nonetheless. 

It was mistakenly listed under category "Collectibles > Transportation > Other": perhaps that's why there was so little competition?

What's the good word, folks?

I had the following glass pegged as the featured "Steal" until Brad Allin ( aka nuffie) dropped me a line:

The Steal of the Week -- in fact 18 Steals in all -- were probably missed by everyone except nuffbarn, because they were felled in a series of $1.99 bins by atcoins.  Maybe we should start a new award -- for "Stupid Seller Tricks", to recognize the fact that venture413 gave away $500 or $600 in prime pre-pro glass for $35.82.  Some of the 18 bins were common glasses and one was a dose, but there were two in the mix that would have caused a bloodbath in open auction.  The lesser of the two was an "Old Celebrated The 400 Rye" glass from Goldman-Hartman of NY, but the prize was a red/white-etched Golden Gross from Patrick Gillon of Millford, MA.  atcoins should remember March 11, 2009 for a looooong time!

So what of a SOTW? 

I think it has to be the possum-on-a-log shown below, not just because it's a CO glass, but because it's one of the best examples of a pre-pro picture glass.  It's  also in mint condition apparently.  There are several know examples of this glass and all seem to have survived with perfect labels, which is encouraging for those of us who have yet to land one.  

This particular little beauty was felled for $266.00 by -- my goodness, none other than xxxtruk!!!!  Very nice Kurt, very nice.