Hearing of Barb Edmonson's passing this week (see What's New) has left us all with such a profound sense of sadness that it's difficult to summon the enthusiasm to write about the latest slicing and dicing on eBay.  But then, ignoring for the moment how much she gave to the hobby,  she was also one of the Collecting Greats, so what better way to celebrate her life than to revel in some spectacularly gorgeous glasses that we've seen pass before our eyes this past week.  (Ever wonder what sort of competitor she'd have made on eBay?  Probably would have kicked our posteriors all over the place!).

        Your glassmaster has been busy, busy, busy, and I apologize for letting some true beauties go by without comment.  But there's still much to talk about and making a pick for this week's SOTW is wonderfully difficult.  Before I do that though, I want to show you an auction in the "hee hee hee" category.  Very occasionally we get a seller who has no clue about what they have and start the auction at an absurdly high price.  I recall that once there was a Hayner offered for $500 or so - I've long regretted not saving that listing page for amusement value alone.  Well, here's another - a 1950's rare old embossed Calvert glass for a penny shy of $150.00.  The seller did eventually bring the price down to double digits but it's now in re-list territory and still dropping.   Ha!

So how about the SOTW?

Well, there was a pristine glass from the Mentrum Briggs Co., Wine & Liquor Merchants, Missoula, Mont.  MT glasses always fetch a premium because of their scarcity but this one went for $148.50, felled by The Genuine.  Ed Sipos tried to snatch it away at the last moment but he came up $70 short.  Nice one Ralph! 

But the main story this week has been a collection of 30 or so pristine glasses offered for sale by kmtnhi.  This is actually the second batch, so someone must be liquidating a sizable collection.  It may be worth keeping and eye out for a possible third wave - though the strain on the pocketbooks is starting to tell!  There were two gorgeous glasses among the 30, although most were worth bidding on and I had difficulty keeping the urge to enter bids into the sniper under control.  I ultimately narrowed the choices down to 11 or 12 then pulled back on a couple so as to not tread on the toes of a couple of old friends.   The two that really got the juices flowing were a Belle of Anderson and the one featured here as SOTW.  Ultimately I won neither!

My pick for SOTW is shown below.  It's a classic pre-pro picture glass, finely rendered and mint with nicely antiqued gold rim.  Barb E has it listed in both HSG and OASG.  It's a Seattle glass, advertising the wares of Summit Liquor Co.  Barb notes that they are listed at the address shown on the glass from 1909 to 1914. 

Several collectors were interested in the glass, including eBay regulars jokermom34 and 2hotjazz, and oldwhiskey of course, but yours truly was shut out of the action by sammiv and, utlimately, the winner amocatone.  It sold for $163.51 - congratulations on carrying off a spectacular glass!