The leaves are finally starting to fall here in Hotlanta, in large part because the trees haven't seen water in about 3 years.  However, it is getting decidedly chilly which usually signals great things in pre-pro glass land.  Not so, at least not yet, this year.  My daily searches are retrieving just a handful of listings rather than buckets of glass, and most of what does turn up is junk.  Perhaps it's a reflection of the economy, or perhaps due to the changes in eBay policy that I mentioned in the last edition of SOTW.  

Here's the latest and hopefully last nuggets from the jeffstateglass files: Bruce will start to feel persecuted if this continues, but then a story's a story and he can always call xxxtruk for the name of a good therapist if smoke begins to pour out of his ears. 

Bruce recently sent me his latest sales list to post on the "shots by mail" page here at pre-pro.com.  Three glasses on his Autumn 2008 list jumped out at me because they recently appeared on eBay.    The first two, items #43 and #44, were part of a multi-glass auction that closed back in August for $390.  The big attraction in the group of 12 was a glass from W C Peacock & Co. of Hawaii, and it was a Hawaii collector, uradaigo, that won the auction. 

The runners up included jeffstateglass and, er,  oldwhiskey, the latter of whom later enquired about the condition and manufacture of the weird project glass that featured a photographic  image in its base.  He reported that it was crude and unfinished and as you can see from the pic at left below an unconventional "shot", but also that all he'd sold all except the Hawaii glass to an "interested party" for a grand total of $100! 

Guess we know who the interested party was now! 

The Normandex, it should be noted, is a post-Repeal dose glass that appears regularly on eBay.  Retail value = recycling, but you have to admit that $100 was sweet deal for someone!

Last item in the jeffstateglass files is glass #67 on the sales list, which is described as follows:

"TREICH & LOUSTANOU / (picture of pinwheel like design) / 1543 EDDY ST. / SAN FRANCISCO; internally fluted, exceptionally crisp and bold etch, the 1899 Sanborn Fire Ins. map for S.F. clearly depicts this saloon located on the SW corner of Steiner, this is a flawless example of a nearly unique saloon private label picture glass, we know of only one other."

Asking price: a cool $325.

This glass is in the database.  The photo was submitted by Ken Schwartz, who owns the glass that you see documented and must be the glass to which Bruce refers in his listing.  A quick check of the sales database shows that jeffstateglass picked this glass up from bigalstore on August 12, 2008 for $300 -- oh wait, no, $41.66. 

bigalstore actually had several of these glasses, all in mint condition.  The first that we know of sold to lakerdude33 on July 20 for $46.58.  Second in line was, um, oldwhiskey, who received a second chance offer and picked one up for $45.58 two days later.  Maybe there were more: second-chance offers are hard to track down.  No doubt jeffstateglass missed the first two so the "know of one other" statement is not unrealistic, but the 800% mark-up is kinda ballsy, don't you think?!

In terms of rarity, we now know of four, plus I have a picture of another on my desktop in the collection of Tom Lawrence, a CA collector.  I'd be interested to know of any others out there.....

While there was junk, there was also some fine glasses on offer.  Probably my favorite was the Black Cat: apparently in fine condition and adding it to my own herd of cats-in-glass would have made me purrrrr with delight, but the fur was already flying by the time oldwhiskey stretched out a claw and it didn't even register on the bidder list.  The cat hopped a train to Arkyville for a mind-numbing $335.00.   

   So if not the cat, what does the Poo-Bah have in mind as SOTW? 

If you check into the chat-room on a regular basis, you may have noticed a question regarding a prime glass from CA being offered by eBay seller fun-treasure.  The person behind the id is Suzy Figuera, who has been helping an elderly couple sell an estate out of Grass Valley, CA.   The family owned a pre-Pro bakery and saloon, the latter of which yielded a dozen or so shots that have listed on eBay during the past month.  Suzy -- or her clients -- saved the best until last: a minty mint Ebner & Co. glass from Sacramento (right) and a very rare Tom Taylor (below).  I had a chance to see one of the Tom Taylor's when I visited Ken Schwartz.  Although there is no signature, the glass appears to be a George Truog original and so this auction promised to be a memorable one.

The listings inexplicably disappeared a few days later with only a cryptic "the seller has chosen to end the auction early" error message as evidence that that they had ever appeared for sale, and naturally there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the pre-pro glasslands as collectors assumed that some scurrilous weasel had worked a behind-the-scenes deal and made off with them all on the cheap.  Not so, and a message to the seller confirmed that she had had to postpone the auctions and that the glasses would relist in a couple of weeks.

Ultimately the auctions turned out to be non-events.  xxxtruk landed the Ebner without much of a fight for $81, and Tom toddled off to Arkyville for $335 - or about half what I had initiated it eventually selling for. 

Which just goes to show you how much faith you can put the Poo-Bah's judgment. 

Since lakerdude33 has various SOTW awards sitting on his mantelpiece already, his willingness to drop $728 on just three glasses in the past month will not come as a surprise to our faithful readers.  I suspect this is only the beginning, however, because Arky Joe recently made a stunning discovery while out in his back yard shooting skeet.  A wayward slug (there was copious amounts of Crown Royal involved, I guess) left a hole that started bubbling crude and it seems he has enough oil and gas beneath his feet to supply the annual demands of Rhode Island and Connecticut.  No doubt John McCain will work this into one of his stump speeches - "Joe the Glassman brings us independence from foreign oil in five years!" (or something like that). 

Congratulations to the winner!  Several times over! We need a "MOTMTS" award I think....