Random Shots, Summer 2005, page 23

The labels on these glasses are unmistakably modern but they do make interesting additions to a pre-pro collection. Note that while Tennessee Squire glasses are quite common, Jack Daniel's is such a desirable brand that they command prices that match and often exceed that of a generic pre-pro! No doubt someone enterprising soul will be making fakes of the Jack Daniel's reproductions in the near future.

The glasses shown in Figures 3 and 4 are pre-prohibition, or at least the vessels are. These art glasses were created by a pre-pro collector who applied new labels to vintage glass blanks. With glass in hand, it's easy for an experienced collector to identify the etching as new, but it would be impossible to make this determination from an auction photograph, for example. One could easily imagine the glass in Figure 4 fetching well in excess of $100 on eBay if a line of text that included the words "whiskey" or "San Francisco" were added.

These glasses were made as an artistic exercise and were not meant to defraud. Indeed, when one of them was sold online, it came with a clear disclaimer about its authenticity and origins. But over the past couple of years, at least one individual has been running auctions that feature contemporary shot glasses with home-cooked labels designed to look antique. The seller has been careful to make no claims regarding age but, by the same token, has never indicated their true lineage. Fortunately, the first few offerings were so clumsy that no-one was interested in buying them [Figures 5 and 6].


Figure 5	Figure 6

The inscriptions on the replicas mimic the ubiquitous acid-etching seen on the older glasses but they've been applied to heavy cheaters that are obviously contemporary. Also, while Old Crow is a brand name who's roots lie in pre-pro years, the inscriptions on both this glass and the Stony Ridge [Figure 6] could well be of recent design and hence one could easily dismiss both glasses as folk art.

The first indication that these shots were actually an attempt to deceive came in the form of a glass bearing the name Louis Taussig & Co., a company based in San Francisco from ca. 1873 - 1918. The same glass later appeared paired with an ashtray bearing an identical inscription. Since Taussig & Co. disappeared with Prohibition, there could be only one reason to offer this glass at auction without a disclaimer, and that was to defraud.

Figure 7

This and many of the subsequent reproduction glasses sported labels that might easily have been copied from standard reference texts, but others bore designs that were unlisted, suggesting that the creator had knowledge of, and access to, a number of genuinely old glasses. But since all of these "fantasy" shots listed with a starting price of a few dollars and still failed to attract bidders, their existence remained of academic interest only. [See examples illustrated in Figure 8 on the next page]

This all changed when the Foust glass shown in Figure 9 listed on eBay. Billy Foust's Distillery was located in Glen Rock, PA. and for unknown reasons has gathered a cult-like following over the years. Shot glasses produced by the company during its pre-pro operations have been well-documented and are highly sought-after, the rarest being a pair of shots featuring a label in the base under glass. The more common of the pair displays the distillery name in black text against a white enamel background and sells in the $250 - $350 range, whereas a rarer red-on-white version [Figure 10] sells for double or triple that amount.