To all you Dads and Dads-to-be (and you know who you are), Happy Fathers Day!  I just hope the young ones had the sense to show their gratitude for the many years of guidance and support with a shot glass rather than a tie, even if it had shot glasses on it.

This has been an interesting few weeks with over 200 auctions closing.  The big story has been the return of kdarius as seller after a three-year absence, even though gougin' -- er, sorry, -- smokinnetdeals vehemently denies any knowledge of the bidder from the underworld. Strange, therefore, that he recycled not only the original auction photos but also the original descriptions.  Call me suspicious.  (or "F**king suspicious whiner", as smokin' no doubt would say).

One of the missions of SOTW is to attempt to divine the current worth of glasses and the efficacy of different bidding strategies based on recent eBay auction results.  Thus the fact that the majority of glasses dumped into the fray by smokinnetdeals over the past couple of weeks were logged into the auction database as sales to kdarius at the beginning of 2003, offers a rare chance to see how much glass values have run up over the past three years.  It also gives us a chance to evaluate how kdarius' strategy of bidding big with little consideration to rarity or worth actually works out from an investment standpoint.  Unfortunately the analysis is tainted by the fact that many of the glasses were sold in back-door deals and also by the fact that many bidders shunned smokin's auctions because of his outrageous shipping costs, but it's still interesting to see how the numbers break down.  Of the 89 glasses logged into the database under the kdarius banner, 46 were resold in open auction.  Total cost of the 46 back in 2003 was $1,868.26.  If we factor in shipping at around $3 per glass, the total comes to, say $2,006 plus change. 

The hammer price in the 46 in 2006 was $1,122.19.  Factor in eBay listing and sales fees, and we're somewhere around $1,000, or about half what kdarius originally paid for them.  And you thought the tech crash on Wall Street looked bad!

If we're looking for lessons to be learned here, I would suggest that running up the prices on glasses by "irrationally exuberant" bids (we have one or more such bidders regularly logging into eBay at the moment) is fine as a way of growing a collection, but it's a dangerously flawed investment strategy.  It may take 10 years or more to break even, if ever.  But I would welcome additional thoughts and comments on the matter via the chat room: "it's not about the money" is an entirely valid counterpoint

We have two worthy SOTW contenders this time around and it took a toss of a coin to settle the issue.  The first is most definitely a "Steal of the Week": a once-in-a-collecting-lifetime event that occurs only when the planets align and/or storms take out power lines over large sections of the South East (read "Florida").

So here's the SOTW, and a heartbreaker it was too.   This is a glass I knew must exist but had yet to reveal itself.  It's one of the few glasses that has perfect provenance because it appears in Truog's scrapbook.  Truog also used the glass in his promotional materials, as seen in OASG and shown below.

Paul Van Vactor has a similar glass in his collection, but the man's hat is on his head rather than on his knee, and the fishing line shown in the sketch is gone.  Indeed, while it does have a Truog feel to it, it's sufficiently crude that I actually wondered if the design had been lifted for later use by another company, as we see in the case of his many religious and cherubic water glasses.   Then I noticed the GT signature at lower right (take a look at the larger image shown on the glass listing page).

Paul Van Vactor offered this one for auction after picking it up in an antique store in Ohio.   There's the hat on the knee and the fishing rod, exactly as shown in the sketchbook!

Predictably, bluroc settled in early and sat on it for a week despite efforts by glasshopper8 to unseat him, but ultimately it was duelling snipes from oldwhiskey and shotfaced that decided the issue, with Roger Roy winning the day.  It sold for $271.06

Congratulations Roger!  

Last updated: Friday July 21, 2006
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