National Insulator Association Show and Sale

Greetings from the show floor at Long Beach. Looking over the room there are 75 tables of insulators for sale or trade. In an adjacent room, there are 16 displays. It has been a very active morning with a lot of collectors adding new pieces to their collections. The photo here shows the combined "My Favorite Trio" exhibit.

Elton Gish, Jeff Kaminski, Jerry Turner and Bill Rohde are literally holding down one corner of the room with some beautiful multipart porcelains. Grant Salzman and Frank Feher add to the hefty merchandise with some neat looking windmill weights sprinkled amongst some great looking insulators and weathervane arrows.

Orders for Mark Lauckner's Canadian commemoratives are being handled by Tom and Lynda Katonak. They have been extremely well received by the collectors and the colors are breathtaking.

Marilyn Albers has a new book available -- a price guide for foreign glass insulators. This is of particular interest for me since that is one of my specialties. Also on an international note, are the insulators that Bernie Warren brought home with him from a recent trip to France. Returning to the United States for the third straight year are Faye and Warren Forester from Australia and Marco Schmitz-Lehanne from Germany are in attendance.

There is a good variety of middle range glass and porcelain for sale. Adding to the variety of items for sale at the show are about 10 tables of mixed antique/table top collectibles.

Attendance today (for NIA members only) was about 250 collectors. Advertising for the show locally has been extensive and more updates will come your way 7/20.

Good collecting,

Carol McDougald, editor
Crown Jewels of the Wire

Greetings from Long Beach... the heartbeat of the insulator world for the three days in July.

As we had breakfast with Grant and Dona Salzman this a.m., it was evident from the travels that Dona made yesterday to local antique stores that the show hosts Dwayne and Dave had gotten the message out to the collecting community. Every store Dona visited had flyers and when asked where she was from, what she collected and why she was in Long Beach and surrounding area the store owners were well aware of the insulator show! This kind of advance publicity is essential for the success of a three day event.

Dave Hall had also great success in obtaining terrific front page local newspaper coverage. There was Dave's great big grin showing off insulators in full color right next to a reeeaaal small picture of "The Shaq!" Probably is a first for insulator show coverage to out shine the world's most high paid athlete!

We were not disappointed by the effort made at publicity, for the hall was hopping all day long! Happy customers/collectors, happy dealers, happy displayers.

Highlights of the day:

• The two sons of William McLaughlin attended today and brought along a beautiful McLaughlin manufactured glass cooler/dispenser. The canister had two chambers which were designed to hold ice and were submerged into the container to cool the beverage and avoid dilution. The chambers of ice were connected to a rod to help rotate them within the canister which was fitted with a dispensing spigot.

   

• Of course, we got a picture of the brothers with Fred Padgett, author of Dreams of Glass--The Story of William McLaughlin's Glass Manufacturing. The sales of this new book has been brisk here in "McLaughlin Land."

   

• The 20 plus year collection of Lenny Philbrook sold. It is one of the most complete California collections. His display was set up late yesterday and was sold as a unit today.

   

• The surprise purchase of the day was an Emminger. This classic piece moved from it's long time residence into a new home!

   

• As happy as the new owner above is to have a primo piece in his collection was the new collector who excitedly purchased 15 insulators with 12 inch long sections of their original wire installation still intact for only $25.00. Although the 15 insulators were fairly common, several had some nice amber swirls and definitely showed they had been well wired.

   

• A very uncommon CD 174 Brookfield was sold at the show yesterday and I overheard Elton Gish cozying up to "old buddy, old pal, dearest friend, best friend" Jim Bates (who, by the way, DROVE to the show from Texas). This could only mean one thing... Elton had purchased that neat gray multipart from Larrin Wanechek which needed a ride by car back to the Lone Star state!

   

• Your Webmaster also acquired a very rare CD 301.5 HEMINGRAY-515 in Amber in excellent condition, as well as a very unusual "What's it?"

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