So, what started you off on the road to collecting pre-pro shot glasses?
I’ve been collecting for 16 or 17 years now. Mooching around antique malls has always been fun but I never found a lot back then because I had no real collecting interests and I was recently out of Grad. School and hence very broke. On one occasion, an old embossed Calvert glass from the 50’s caught my eye that started me on the slippery slope. A couple of months later I found a pre-pro Detrick glass at an antique fair . I picked it up for $15 knowing nothing about it except that it had a quality that the modern shots do not. And that was it. Just like that, I was hooked.

Where did you go from there?
I started out trawling every antique store within a two-hour radius of Madison. WI and picked up a couple more. One of the first ones I bought was probably my biggest coup – an enamel “Elk Club” for $2. It took me 15 years before I realized that it was a pre-pro and a valuable one at that. Once I discovered them, bottle shows turned out to be the best source. Both Madison and Milwaukee had great bottle shows back then – Madison still does but I think the Milwaukee “Red Lanes Bowling Alley” show eventually folded. I still visit all the local antique stores on a regular basis and attend 15 or so local bottle shows every year and I’ve found many real gems that way. But the internet has really revolutionized every aspect shot collecting and that’s where I pick up most .