While the Las Vegas show was one of the better ones that I've attended over the years, the best part, without any shadow of a doubt, was the opportunity to meet and chat with left-coast collectors. I had dinner and a couple of beers with Dick Bales, who had flown in from Chicago, and Ed and Alice Sipos from Scottsdale, Arizona. We had a great time talking collecting and hearing about latest finds at Ed & Alice's bottle club.
I also had the chance to meet Ken Schwartz in person. Ken is something of a phenomenon and I hope to feature him and his collection here at some point in the future. He's a pre-pro collector with a capital C-O-L-L-E-C-T-O-R. To give you some idea, he had to build a 1200 sq ft addition to his house in order to display his acquisitions.
This includes -- and you may want to sit down before reading further -- over 1,000 picture shots, mostly western. He has 12 or 13 label-unders in the base - including two Red Top Rye variants. In fact he has so many shots that he has to carry around a large binder containing renditions of glass inscriptions in order to know what he has and what he still needs!
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| Just a sampling of some of the glasses in Ken's collection. |
Unbelievable. Truly.
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I also spent some time chatting with Bob and Pam Hadley, two of the
nicest
folks you'd ever want to meet. You might know them through their sales of shots
on eBay - they trade under the id itsnfs8. They had two tables set up near the door and I had the pleasure of taking a chair
behind their
display and hearing about their shot collection when traffic was slow. The couple have a hundred or so picture glasses and an envious number of rare enamels and label-unders. Bob was feeling a little inadequate
after having just been exposed to Ken Schwartz' binder, but we were
all humbled to see what Ken has.
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| That's Bob above. I was having the photographic equivalent of a bad-hair day - sorry Bob! |
Bottom line was that a good time was had by all. Would it be worth making the trip west just to attend the show next year? To be honest, I'm not sure. Air fare to Vegas is cheap compared with other destinations (just under $200) but I could buy several shots on eBay with that kind of money, plus one has to figure in the added cost of accommodations for one or two nights. At least I have a year to mull it over, but I think the follow-on report by Dick Bales pretty much hits the nail on the head about the real value of attending shows - it's not so much the glass you find as it is the people you meet. Read it and see what you think.
Meanwhile, I'll leave you with a parting shot of the Plaza's casino floor. I felt obliged to drop a few quarters into one of the slots before setting off for the airport. My gambling is strictly limited to calculating bids to be entered into my snipers, but this was Vegas after all. The coins all disappeared, one by one, into the greedy heart of the machine, adding yet more dollars to the financing of the next gaudy behemoth to rise from the desert on S. Las Vegas Boulevard.
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