Not quite a lump of coal, but I’m sure some may view it that way. Mini-mugs are shot-glass size, standing about 2-1/4″ tall, and they date to the same pre-Prohibition era. Mini-mugs are collectible in their own right and there are hundreds, if not thousands of variants to chase after, but mini-mugs advertising a whiskey brand or a distiller are exceptionally rare. Offhand, I can only think of one, and that advertises Bellwood Rye Whiskey from McCarthy & Co. of Haverhill, MA.
Mini-mugs don’t get much respect from purist glass collectors, but they do make for an interesting and colorful addition to the display case. The Bellwood mug is actually quite rare, showing up for sale about once every 4 or 5 years on average.
whatilove00listed one for sale mid-December with an initial bid price of $49.99. Unfortunately it had a significant chunk missing from the rim and the auction closed a week later without a buyer. In good condition, this mug can sell for in the region of $125, so the asking price was not unreasonable.
If you’re interested, the mug relisted at the same asking price and the auction was still running as of writing, no bidders.
Believe it or not, “trotting”, aka “harness racing” is actually a thing. Wikipedia helpfully explains that “harness racing is a form of horse racing in which the horses race at a specific gait (a trot or a pace). They usually pull a two-wheeled cart called a sulky, or spider, or chariot occupied by a driver.”
Harness racing or “Trotting”
Quite how Samuel P Haller Co. of Pittsburgh, PA. was connected to trotting, we may never know, but his business did leave us with two nice picture glasses featuring a trotting horse and sulky to advertise their Trotter whiskey brand. Both are relatively rare, showing up for sale roughly once every 5-7 years or so.
The database contains a rare variant of one of the two that lists the company as “Samuel P Haller Co.“; the more common version of this glass omits the “Co.” The other glass in the database is the “Sole Owner” variant, and it was one of these that listed for sale on eBay in the past couple of weeks.
The seller, milksrme1960, wanted $100 for it and the auction closed on Dec. 17 without a bidder. I would have bid on it if I didn’t already have one in the display case, but I understand why there were no takers.
Wash me!!!
Luckily, the seller relisted for $65 and, as of typing, there’s only one interested party. I wouldn’t be surprised if a bidding war pushed it over $100 this go-around. Happy eBaying!
Legal disclaimer – it’s a dove, but it’s not a turtle dove, and there’s only one, but we live in an age where reality is routinely redefined by group thinking and the interwebs, so free to use your imagination on this one.
A turtle dove. Really.
Despres was a Chicago firm notable for two glasses with an inscription that incorporated blue in the design. The first, an example of which is featured here, shows up for sale once every 5 years or so. A white-etched dove is enclosed within a blue circle outline that spells out the wholesaler’s name. I’ve seen the second only once, and that was in Bob Mraz’ collection. The dove appears on a black circle within the blue circle outline with black etching. I had a chance to visit Bob and photograph his collection while out West for an FOHBC national. Bob is no longer with us and I’m not certain where the glass ended up, but it’s a rare one for sure.
Glasses with blue/white labels are very uncommon. Offhand, I can only think of the Blue Bell from Barth & Co. in WI, the Old Ironsides from Magullion in MA, and the TPA from Kayser & Hegner Co. in OH. They make for an interesting addition to the display case.
Technically the first day of Christmas is still a week away, but I thought there’s be a better chance of making it through 12 postings on time if I started early.
It’s been an interesting year, pre-pro wise. Relatively few glasses of note have been offered for sale on eBay and even fewer of those have been selling. There’s been a flurry of activity in the past couple of weeks, but most of the glasses that have sold have been run-of-the-mill, low-end glasses (O! So Goods and Hayners) that have been circling the eBay drain for months before finally finding a home. I suspect that most of these are going to end up being gift wrapped and stuffed into stockings.
In the past 4 weeks, 163 glasses listed for sale, 60 auctions closed without a buyer, and the average price of glasses that did sell was $35.13, which is down by a couple of $$ from the typical average sales price for pre-pro glasses. Again, this reflects a lot of low-end sales ahead of the holiday. Average sales price for the year is $38.73.
On to the floozy. This is one of my favorite glasses, one I’ve seen only once before, and that was back in 2002. Back then I got into a bidding war with Bill Armstrong (junkmoney for those of you who were active when bidder id’s were visible) and the glass ended up costing me $150. This latest one looks to be a tad beaten up or maybe it just needs a good wash, but the etching is obviously clean. It sold for $215.50.
So what is a “Grass Widow”. The term dates back to the 1500’s. Although the original meaning remains speculative, a grass widow is said to to be a woman who is separated, divorced, or lives apart from her spouse, or whose spouse is away from home frequently or for a long time, or even a discarded mistress.
I’ve been so distracted by work this past couple of years that I completely missed the fact that, as of 2022, pre-pro.com has been live for over two decades now. I need to check to see when our 21st birthday is – I think it’s somewhere toward the end of August.
I’ve always been appreciative of the artistry that went into the design of pre-pro glasses and my main reason for wanting to grow the collection has always been to add another prime example to the display case.
The goal of the website is a little different. Twenty-one years ago, the internet was still in its infancy and learning more about the origins of pre-pro glasses meant contacting Barb Edmonson to buy one of her books. Opportunities to buy pre-pro glasses were few and far between and usually meant weekly visits to local antique stores and hitting the local bottle shows to see if the diggers had found any interesting go-withs.
eBay was a game-changer in so many ways. It now became possible to put together a respectable pre-pro collection in a matter of just a few weeks. But eBay also became an information goldmine because each day brought a fresh selection of bottles, jugs, trays, corkscrews letterheads, flyers etc, all of which made it possible to start building databases to help figure out where liquor dealers operated, under what name, and what brands they used. That’s been an ongoing project and likely will never end.
But eBay offerings have also helped us begin to provide an answer to that most elusive of questions – who made the shot glasses and how were they distributed? We assume that they were handed out to saloons and then to customers by the distillers, but I’m not sure that we have a very definitive answer to this yet. Snippets of information continue to surface. I included some of these in the newbie’s guide to shot glasses on the site. I’ve also picked up a couple of boxes of glasses that showed up for sale on eBay over the years. I wrote about the box of I.W. Harper glasses addressed to a hotel in PA in a previous post, but I also won a 12-count box containing 7 glasses in mint condition: two Owl Hollows, two more I.W. Harpers, two Old Rockwells, and an an Old Hickory. The box had no address on it, so I can only guess about its destination. Owl Hollow and Harper were Bernheim brands, so maybe the Old Rockwells and Old Hickory came from them also.
Just recently, I ran across this neat little find – a small box addressed to Henry Doerr of Saxonburg, Penna. from Birchwood Distilling Co., of Newport, KY.
Inside was a personalized shot glass advertising Birchwood:
This is clearly a hand-engraved premium of some kind. Who was Henry Doerr and how he came by the glass is a mystery – maybe he collected and sent in coupons, or maybe it was a reward for buying so many jugs of Birchwood. I have no idea, but it’s an interesting piece of history.
Here’s a couple of premium picture glass auctions to keep an eye on. As of writing, both are currently live on eBay and due to close on May 8th (Monday). They’re offered for sale by long-time collector Ed Sipos, better known as azsaloon.
The first is a Adam Mickiewicz from Weiskopf & Co. in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago glasses tend to be less desirable than others, but this is a nice one. I’ve only ever seen two of these. This was the first, which I believe was pulled off eBay back in 2003 for a princely sum of $87.99 (if the sales database is accurate), which was a lot to pay for a pre-pro glass back then.
The second is a highly-desirable Hennessey Shoemaker’s shop from Lynn, MA. It makes for a great display glass, especially if you already have an Egg Rock Light glass to go with it.
This one came off eBay in 2004 ($59.65) but should sell for several times that this time around. Lovely glasses both!
Here’s a couple of wedding-related internet items that caught my eye this past week – A Wedding March from Ullman-Einstein Co. of Black Cat fame and the magazine cover below. The shot glass was original offered for $125, but sold after a better offer of $106.25. Not bad for a plain text glass from OH…
Nope, the rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated, I didn’t succumb to Covid 19 or the experimental treatment that it spawned. I took a new job at the beginning of 2021 and it became so demanding of my time that I’ve literally done nothing else for a couple of years now. The workload is finally easing up a little and I hope to get back to chasing glass and updating the site on a regular basis.
There’s an abundance of high-quality glass on offer at the moment. One of the nicer ones was this Magnet Rye. It has a rim flake, but the old girl’s gold curlicues are beautifully intact and the hand enamel label looks pristine. It doesn’t seem that long ago (okay, maybe it was a decade or so) that enamels were selling for over $400, but this one was snapped up for $130.29.
There have been some spectacular glasses on offer “away from the ‘Bay”. For example, this is a super-rare Horting’s Safe that sold at a PA bricks-and-mortar auction in deppen76’s stomping grounds close to Lancaster, PA. John Horting was based in Lancaster.
Horting’s Safe glasses come up for sale on a regular basis, but this one is a signed George Truog original (note the teeny GT at far right of the inscription). It sold for only $70 plus buyer’s premium. I believe I’ve seen this glass only once before, although I’m not sure where, exactly.
That’s all for now. For the number crunchers, 188 glasses listed for auction over the past 4 weeks. 76 went unsold. The average price on the glasses that did sell was $38.73.
Here we are again, one year older and the world becoming increasingly more bizarre. Speaking of which, here’s an email that I received recently:
“Are you the manufacturers of J Bavet Brandy? I have bought this brand for years. Lately the J Bavet lists a Carmel coloring or flavor on the bottle. It has totally made the taste of this liquor awful. I bought 2 1.75 liters which apparently have this flavoring. I am again out $18.75 per bottle. I want refunds since this is not the original Brandy you used to make. Why have you changed the formula to this bad tasting Brandy? Please respond.“
Anyone want to respond? Please leave a comment below.
I also received a special offer from eBay – you probably did too if you have this one bookmarked. The Springdale glass shown below orginally listed for $600 and I was “surprised” noone grabbed it there and then. The special offer is a $200 discount. At $400 how can one resist?!
In case you’re wondering, these glasses are not that common and they usually sell in the $30-$50 range. The one above appears to be a minor variant of the example in the database (the brand name appears as a single word rather than SPRING and DALE).
Here’s one I’ve not seen before – a Lebanon Club from Detweiler & Co. of Lebanon, PA.
As you can see, the glass is badly damaged, although I appreciate the listing’s creative description:
“The shot glass has a frosted or etched text that reads “Lebanon Club, Detweiler & Co., Lebanon, PA.” It measures 2-1/8″ tall with an opening diameter of just under 2″. It is very thin glass and as you can see has quite a few fractures. There is only one little chip on the rim and that is the culprit that caused all the fractures. One of the pieces has been glued back on (whoever did it did a very good job). Yes, it’s badly cracked, but still a great displayable piece. “
Only “one little chip in the rim” but the chip caused the entire left side of the glass to break out and has been glued back together! That makes it a placeholder with curiosity value only, which is a shame because it’s a rare and probably old Truog glass. Current bidding stands at $14.50.
There’s been little worth writing home about on the eBay front these past few weeks. As the stats show, eBay has dropped into its usual summer lull: in the past month, 121 glasses listed for sale but 63 of these failed to attract a bidder. The average price of glasses sold was $32.55.
I had a couple of interesting emails that I’d like to share with you. Steven wrote in regarding Casper Whiskey glasses: “I was wonderin wheres the top for your casper shot glass? If you would like to see a picture let me know. The shot glass top has raised tobacco leaves and peanuts on it .” He was kind enough to follow up with photos showing a Casper glass wearing a heavy, molded lid.
I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a pre-pro glass paired with a lid before and even though it looks to be a good fit, I doubt that it was intended to serve this function. Maybe someone from the depression glass collecting world knows where the lid comes from originally.
John and Margie B. of Donnels Creek Antiques, North Hampton, OH. recently sent me a photo of a rare Kayser, Hegner & Co. glass with a note “I was helping a friend get ready for an auction in Urbana, Ohio July 18th and ran across this shot varient I had not seen before. Thought I’d share…“
I haven’t seen one of these glasses previously, but the design is familiar from HSG. A beautiful glass, many thanks for sharing it with us !
