My expectations for adding to the collection were actually fairly minimal given my experience at the last National and the general scarcity of west-coast glass, so I was more interested in connecting with people that I had long communicated with via e-mail yet never met in person. These included Rich Lucchesi (whose shots and other fine western trophies can be found in a series of showcase pages here at pre-pro) and Bruce Silva and Jim & Julie Dennis, two OR-based vendors whose quarterly glass sales lists can be viewed in the “Sales by Mail” section of the site. There was some confusion as to who was allowed into the show room and when, the consequence of which was the crowd surged forward at around 12:50 and the guard checking Early Admission passes at the entrance could do little but get out of the way.

FOHBC rules state that dealers can bring in boxes prior to the 1:00 pm show start but nothing gets put out on tables or sold prior to the opening. Thus, the general strategy at the start of a National is to race around the show floor as quickly and frequently as possible and grab glass as and when it gets extracted from its protective wraps. Given that attendance at this show was substantial, racing was not an option: indeed, gaining any headway through the clogged aisles became a real challenge during the first few hours.

My memories of what I stumbled across first are blurred by the chaos of the opening minutes, but one of the first glasses a found was a Bowlers Club from Stastny, Chicago. I suspect that this was the same over-priced glass that Dick and I had looked at and passed on in Grand Rapids, but I must have paused to look at it at least another 20 times during the course of the show. As the day wears on, one becomes disorientated by the sea of tables and so everything must be checked and double checked to ensure that it’s not a treasure newly pulled from a dealer’s stash (which does happen on a regular basis).

I believe my first buy was a Philly glass. Finding shots from back home was not unexpected given my experience in Las Vegas two years ago. The Vegas show was memorable for the sheer quantity of eastern whiskey-related material in general, and Philadelphia in particular. This was a tall flared glass and pricey, especially given that the text was all in Russian (I still have no idea what it says), but it did feature a nice picture of a bearded gentleman and I managed to get the price dropped by $15. I forked over the cash and moved on.

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