Shot of the Week

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		Shot of the Week	Item number: 6274906454

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I've spent the past couple of weeks mentally fondling Ken Schwartz' pre-pro glass collection: some 700 rare or unique western shots and about 200 eastern picture glasses. I'd read about most of them in HSG but rarely seen pictures of any of the 900.

To date, I have about 15% of the collection processed, but eventually they'll all be logged into the database and a mini-web for Ken. Until then, you can see some of them on a teaser page that will give you a taste of what's to come.

But after this total glass immersion for such a prolonged period, you'll understand that the Poobah's perspective of the offerings on eBay is a little jaded: most of it looks like junk. Actually, much of it is junk, and here's the saddest example of a once-great glass:

Had this been mint, the hammer would have fallen at around $400, maybe more.

But this is a mere ghost of a cat and the glass sold for just $21 and change -- about what it's worth as a place-holder.

Sad indeed.

But we did have several great glasses on offer these past few weeks and a couple of clear contenders for SOTW. My favorite was also one that I ended up winning which excludes it from the race, but glasshopper8 hinted at the threat of verbal abuse unless I mention it here.

It's a label-on-the-bottom glass, a "PROTECTION RYE" from Louis Stern of Chicago. Technically it's a lug because the label is on the exterior of the base, but it's a regular etched label rather than the more usual colored enamel. Barb Edmonson shows a drawing of it in OASG, although she fails to mention the fact that the glass was a lug: I suspect the notation was accidentally omitted when the glass was cataloged.

In a series of ironies, I'd never seen one of these etched-on-the-bottom glasses photographed (let alone in person) until Ken Schwartz sent me the CD filled with jpegs cataloging his glasses. Ken has several western "eobs", some of which are pictured on the teaser page mentioned above. The only other such glass I'd seen pictured is a "GILT EDGE SHIPPING HOUSE" glass from St. Louis. The glass appeared in Old Bottle Magazine in 1974, part of an article on whiskey brands written Bob Snyder. Surprisingly, it never made it into HSG or OASG, even though Barb Edmonson must have had access to it.

The irony here was that when I first ran across the "PROTECTION RYE" among Dan Pawlak's listings, I was in a motel in Texas, only hours away from visiting Bob Snyder and seeing the Gilt Edge in person.

In fact, Bob not only allowed me to handle this rare glass, he made me a gift of it. If your mouth is now hanging open in astonishment at his largesse, I have to tell you that the glass is a cylinder, the size and shape of a Hayner. It has a perfect gold rim and the label is mint.

But..........

scrape yourself off the floor and/or cancel the hate-mail message tinged with green.....

it has a huge crack that runs all the way down from the rim to within a centimeter or so of the base, then loops round and up in an ugly "J" configuration. This is a story sadder even than that of the black kitty above. Fair Market Value: less than that of the cost of lead needed to put it out of its misery. Value mint: $150? $200? Who knows, sob, sob.......

But you'll understand now why I placed a nasty bid on the "Protection", even though it has a piece missing from the rim. xxxtruk and I sniped our way firmly into MMTS territory ($371 - ouch) but it's now in PA rather than OH. Sorry Kurt.

So how about a SOTW??

This one really surprised me because if I hadn't been betting the ranch on the pooch, I'd have pushed this one much higher. It's a bitters glass, which alone adds a significant value given the competition from the bottle-collecting brigade. But it's also a great picture glass with a Truogesque image of a gent with a pipe and nightcap:

"HERE IS A VERY INTERESTING LITTLE SHOT GLASS, MADE OF VERY THIN DELICATE GLASS & ETCHED. IT APPEARS TO BE QUITE OLD. IT IS ETCHED WITH THE WORDS "DER WHARE JACOB, L HAAS & CO, SOLE PROP'S TOLEDO, OHIO"IT HAS A PICTURE OF A MAN SMOKING A PIPE WITH A TASSLED HAT ON & THE WORD "BITTERS" ON HIS LEFT SHOULDER. THERRE IS A SAMLL CHIP ON THE EDGE OF THE GLASS, BUT THE GLASS IS SO DELICATE, IT'S NOT SURPRISING."

It hails from Haas & Co. of Toledo, one of the city's more prominent liquor dealers and wholesalers. There is a bottle that goes with the glass, reported in Richard Watson's "Supplement" to his earlier Bitters Bottles treatise, but he doesn't provide a translation for the German text. Apparently it translates as "The True Jacob bitters".

The glass has significant rim damage, but that didn't stop bluroc claiming it for $221.02, despite efforts by junkmoney and shotfaced to wrestle it home.

Congratulations (yet again) Kevin!

Note that you can browse many previous
choices for SOTW in the Archives.

Last updated: Sunday June 18, 2006
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