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Pre-pro whiskey signage for sale for a premium price (above), and a Bank of Napa giveaway (left).
Show Sunday was predictably relaxed.  I picked up a couple of straggler shots that I had looked at the previous day, including the Bank of Napa thimbleful shown at left above and a fairly common Los Angeles Capitol Liquor Co. glass.

Today was a day to pick through old letterheads, peer at bottles for useful brand info, take in the displays, and catch up with friends, old and new.

Los Angeles Bottle Club members had put together several displays, three of which are shown at right.

The topmost image shows a sampling of the hundreds of bottles that had once sat in a NYC hotel bar that had operated from the pre-Prohibition years until the 1940's.  All were in near mint condition and there were many familiar brand names among the grouping.  Empty examples of these same bottles show up with regularity on eBay, but it was gratifying to see them in person with their contents and seals still intact.

At center right is a display of bottles recovered from privvies that were in less than mint condition.  Just to the left of the gravestone is The Genuine - a bottle worth tens of thousands in good condition.  This example shown here is worth about 2 cents of recyclable glass!

At lower right is my favorite display, one that showcases carboys.  The vessels were blown by hand, were crude, and most were huge.  They were probably used to hold chemicals rather than wine or whiskey.  A carboy collector needs plenty of space to devote to their hobby - as in an entire basement!  Think I'll stick to shots...

 

I had also arranged to meet with Bob Mraz to take a look at a box of trader glasses that he wished to dispose of as a group. I met him in the parking lot and I sat in the back seat of his car so that I could pick through the box while I listened to him tell me about his collection and collecting history.

Bob is a shot purist - no bottles, no jugs, just shots.  He's apparently amassed a collection of well over a thousand which he displays throughout the house. 

His first wife, Rita, was an antique dealer and it was through her that his interest in shots had developed.  Barb Edmonson visited him while assembling information for OASG, but if you look at the acknowledgements at the front of OASG, it's his wife who gets the credit, much to Bob's annoyance! 

After losing his first wife, he remarried (another antique dealer) and his shot collecting activities were sidelined for a while, but he's now back out hunting with a vengeance.  It's probably lucky that he cant be bothered with eBay, because I suspect he'd feature regularly in the pages of SOTW as having stomped on collecting regulars!

 

The box of traders was less promising than I had hoped, with a handfull of post-Repeal glasses, many pre-pro glasses with faded labels (e.g. the Milton Whiskey and Silver Sheaf and shown below), and three or four that might be keepers.  I made Bob an offer based on the worth of the keepers and promised to help sell the rest of them for him via the sales page here at www.pre-pro.com.

I headed back across the city toward LAX around noon.  It was a Sunday, but traffic on the freeway was almost as heavy as I'd encountered during rush hour on Friday: I couldn't imagine having to deal with this on a daily basis.  As I crawled down the final hill toward the airport, I watched a huge baby-blue plane settle impossibly slowly into the thick haze over the runway and reflected on the trip.  Although the show had fallen far short of expectations, I did have a couple of nice glasses to take back home with me.  As usual, the greatest reward had been in the social interactions - time spent with Paul & Pat Van Vactor, Ken Schwartz, Bob Mraz and many others.  I was glad that I'd made the effort to attend.  The 2010 show will take place in Wilmington, Ohio - maybe I'll see some or all of you there? 

 

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