I went to a garage sale yesterday that was advertising insulators. There were three wine boxes, two glass and one porcelain. The seller said he had previously turned down an offer of $350 for the lot so I'm thinkin' there must be some goodies in there, right?

Well the first box marked "Insulators" contained about 2 dozen drinking glasses. Two more boxes were found with insulators, stacked three deep in places. Most were wrapped in paper to boot. As I unwrapped them I found the usual clear Hemi 42's, Pyrex 128's and a bunch of similarly common pieces. However, in the bottom layer on one corner was a blue/aqua (I can't honestly tell the difference) California Keg, CD 112. That was the only piece out of about 100 glass and 50 porcelain that was worth more than $5.00. The seller said he used to have cobalts, purples, ambers, etc. but they were stolen from around his house a decade or so earlier.

In the porcelain box was a CD 183 No. 71 in irradiated amber with a brass thimble. The seller couldn't remember the provenance of the piece but speculated he bought it in an antique store. I bought it just for the novelty of it. I'll probably try to reverse the color just for kicks.

The moral of the story is simple...just because a collection looks worthless at first glance doesn't mean you shouldn't look at each piece, just in case there is a treasure among the trash.