Saturday, December 27, 2008

Crisp Beavers on Canadian Fruit Sealer Jars

So just before the holiday that Dumpdiggers calls Christmas started, Tim Braithwaite (stonebottles) bought a beautiful beaver jar at a local auction sale and posted this close-up photo of the crisp embossing in the Dumpdiggers discussion forum, and of course this caused me to wonder about fruit sealers and crisp beavers in general, and how they came to be so coveted? … and what about those ‘left facing beavers’? What’s the story behind those?

Early Food Preservation in Europe and the USA

Let’s start at the start… In France, in the early 1800s, the process of hermetically sealed cooked food was developed by François (Nicolas) Appert, who was by trade a pickler, an expert confectioner, a brewer, a distiller, and a chef. He established the principles for the preservation of certain foods in hermetically sealed glass containers, (which he himself designed for the experiment). Basically he was the first person in the history to prove that air tight containers could preserve food.

Appert really had no explanation for the success of his experiment. He believed the exclusion of air and the application of heat were the major factors in keeping the foods in his experiments from spoiling.

Across the channel, an Englishman named Peter Durand patented the idea of airtight tin-plated iron cans, instead of glass jars, for food preservation. Cooked meat, fruit, and vegetables could now be hermetically sealed in metal containers. The British had lots of tin on their island and were the world leaders of brass munitions, but their first tin cans were actually made out of iron and were terribly heavy and hard to open. Here's one found a few years ago that was made in 1837 and when opened was found to contain perfectly edible veal.

For some reason however the first tin cans were actually patented in the United States in 1825, and by 1839 tin cans were common in General Stores all over the continental US.

The Rise of Home Canning

US patent history records hundreds of successful fruit jar designs, but probably the most well known is the Mason jar. In 1858, John Landis Mason, a twenty six year old tin smith developed and patented a shoulder-seal jar with a zinc screw cap. The "Mason jar" had a threaded neck which fit with the threads in a metal cap to screw down to the shoulder of the jar and in this way form a seal. In 1869, a top seal above the threads and under a glass lid was introduced to the jar. The screw cap pressed tightly against the inverted lid, with rubber seal underneath, thus effecting an excellent seal. Preserving food in a glass home canning jar had now been taken a step further. A type of this closure still is in use today, although augmented with various other closure designs.

In 1861, Louis Pasteur used a microscope to show that microorganisms in un-sterilized food were responsible for food spoilage. Up until this time, even though people boiled the vessels in which they canned their food, nobody really knew why it worked. The common belief was that air caused spoilage and removing the air from vessels prevented spoilage. However, once Pasteur’s discovery was understood, scientists, manufacturers and home canners began developing better preservation methods usually by sterilizing the food as well as the container.

The manufacture of glass fruit jars for home canning accelerated after the US Civil War. Mason's patent expired in 1875 and many other companies began manufacturing fruit jars around that time. Many of these other glass manufacturers capitalized upon the familiarity of the Mason name (or brand) and used it liberally on their own product names and logos.

Fruit Sealer Jar Lids
A multitude of different closures were developed and used throughout the years, which included variations on the screw top lid as well as different designs of clamps, wire bails and wax devices to hold the lids in place. Dumpdiggers has kept a ‘Safety Seal’ brand jar of aromatic coffee beans above the stove for almost ten years – that vessel has a good hinge clamp closure device that sandwiches the lid and bottle together and locks in that delicious smell behind a rubber seal.

Why so many different colours?
While contemporary canning jars are made of clear glass, their ancestors are found in a variety of colors and shades: aqua, clear, amber, cobalt blue, green and occasionally even milk glass. Different colours appealed to different markets and shopkeepers would order exotic varieties based on the population’s economic affluence, the popularity of the brand, the growing season’s potential for a bumper crop, and the type of fruit in the region. Colors were used just like ‘fancy packaging’ is today. I suppose it’s similar to the great beer bottle debate we have today. Are beers packaged in clear bottles more susceptible to spoilage? Do amber coloured bottles better protect their contents from the adverse effects of sunlight? Some say it’s just a marketing gimmick.

And that brings us to the left facing beaver jars. Phil Murphy, an avid collector of fruit jars and host of The Fruit Jar Collector Web Site thinks maybe the left facing beaver jars are something of a marketing gimmick too.

When I emailed him and asked about this, Phil returned this pearl of wisdom, ‘…according to fruit jar researcher Dick Roller, these jars were made after the newly designed Frank O'Neill machines had been installed in the Kingsville (Ontario) plant in the spring of 1901. By September 28, 1901, it was reported that D.A. Gordon, of Sydenham Glass Co., had dismantled the Kingsville plant and taken the tools and machinery to Wallaceburg (where the Sydenham Glass Co. existed). The short span of time that the machines were used at the Kingsville plant may account for the rarity of these jars. So far, all of the left-facing Beaver jars checked have been machine-made..."

Phil goes on to write, that he reckons the ratio of right facing beaver jars to left facing beaver jars to be about 100 to 1, respectively (in the Pint versions anyway) if not higher. They must be rare because I can't find a picture of one to include here in this post.

Fruit Jar Manufacterers
Dumpdiggers would be happy to find fruit sealers from any of these American (and Canadian) glass jar manufacturers. If you're a fruit jar collector, then this is your mission statement:

Acme
Adams & Company, Pittsburg, PA
Ball Brothers Glass Mfg. Co., Muncie, IN
Beaver
Boyd
Brookfield Glass Company, Brooklyn, NY
Brushwick Glass Company, Brooklyn, NY
A. & D. H. Chambers Company, Pittsburg, PA
Clyde Glass Works, Clyde, NY
Consolidated Fruit Jar Co., New Brunswick, NJ
Co-operative Flint Glass Co., Ltd., Beaver Falls, PA
Corning Glass Works
Crowleytown's Atlantic Glass Works, Crowleytown, NJ
Crystal Glass Co., Bridgeport, OH
Cumberland Glass Mfg. Co, Bridgeton, NJ
D. Cunningham Glass Co., Pittsburg, PA
Decker's Iowana, Mason City, IA
Edward H. Everett, Newark, OH
Flaccus Bros.
C. L. Flaccus Glass Company, Pittsburg, PA
A M Foster Co., Chicago, IL
Fowlers
Gayner Glass Works, Salem, NJ
S. George Co., Wellsburg, WV
Gilchrist Improved Jar Co., Philadelphia, PA & Elmer, NJ
Glass Containers Corp., Fullerton, CA (Golden Harvest)
W. Glenny Glass Co., Cincinnati, OH
Greenfield Fruit Jar & Bottle Co., Greenfield, IN
Hamilton
Hawley Glass Company, Hawley, PA
Hazel Glass, Washington, PA
Hazel-Atlas Glass Co., Wheeling, WV, & Washington, PA
Hemingray, Cincinnati, OH
Hemingway Glass Co., Covington, KY
Hero Fruit Jar Co., Philadelphia, PA
Hero Glass Works, Philadelphia, PA
Hermetic Fruit Jar Company, Portland, OR (Kerr)
Hermetical Closure Co., San Francisco, CA
Louis Hollweg, Indianapolis, IN
Illinois Glass Co., Alton, IL
Illinois Pacific Glass Company
Kearns-Gorsuch Bottle Co., Zanesville, OH
Kerr Glass Manufacturing Company, Sand Springs, OK
Keystone Glass Works, Philadelphia, PA
Knowlton
Knox Glass Bottle Co., Knox, PA
Lamb Glass Co., Vernon, OH
J. A. Landsberger Co., San Francisco, CA
Lynchburg Glass Corp.,
Lyndeboro Glass, Lyndeboro, NH
W. W. Lyman
Mannington Glass, Mannington, WV
Marion Fruit Jar & Bottle Co., Marion, IN
Millville
Mission Mason
Mom's
Monarch
Moore Brothers Glass Co., Clayton, NJ
Mountain Mason, Midvale, UT
National Glass Co., Pittsburg, PA
Ohio Container Co., Columbus, OH (Mom's)
Ohio Valley Glass Company
Owens-Illinois Glass Co. - Toledo, OH (Presto) & San Francisco, CA
Pacific Glass Works
F. H. Palmer, Brooklyn, NY
Penna Glass Co., Anderson, IN
Port Glass Works, Bellville, IL
Poughkeepsie Glass Works, Poughkeepsie, NY
Presto
Putnam, Bennington, VT
Putnam Glass Works, Zanesville, OH
Red Key Glass Co., Red Key, IN
Root Glass Company, Terre Haute, IN
Safe Glass Co., Upland, IN & Chicago, IL
San Francisco and Pacific Glass Works
Schram Glass Mfg. Co., St. Louis, MO
Simplex
Skillin-Goodin Glass Co., Yorktown, IN
A. G. Smalley & Co., Boston
Smalley-Kilvan-Onthank, Boston
J. P. Smith, Pittsburg, PA
Sneath Glass Co., Hartford City, IN
Swayzee Glass Co., Swayzee, IN
Terre Haute Glass Mfg. Co., Terre Haute, IN
Thames Glass Works Company, New London, CT
Upland Cooperative Glass Co., Upland, IN
Vacuum Jar & Fruit Package Co., San Francisco, CA
Victor Jar Co., Detroit, MI
Weightman Glass Co., Pittsburg, PA
Wellsburgh Glass and Mfg., Wellsburgh, WV
Western Flint Glass Co., Eaton, IN
Weston Glass Co., Weston, WV
Whitall Tatum
Whitney Glass Works, Glassboro, NJ
Woodbury Bottle Works, Woodbury, NJ
Wormser Glass Co., Pittsburg, PA
R. G. Wright & Co., Buffalo, NY

A Primer on Fruit Jars is an interesting article by Dave Hinson with a good overview on the history of glass fruit jars that have been used for home food preservation in the past.

Saturday, December 13, 2008

Mike, Matt and Brian Go Digging in New Hampshire

Occasionally, Dumpdiggers dot blogspot will publish submissions from other enthusiasts, or those people kind enough to put images to anecdotes in the Digging Stories category of the discussion forum on Dumpdiggers.com

This is one of those occasions. DiggerMatty has uploaded some wonderful photos and prose concerning his most recent adventure in New Hampshire. Here are his images and text:

A Winter Dig
by DiggerMatty (every picture expands - just click)

Well, Mikey found us a dump to dig for the winter months. All the dumps up here are getting sketchy due to the police activity, so we had to improvise! Plus it is about time Mikey brought something to the table (Just kidding Mikey)! You know I love ya man! Believe it or not Mikey has invited me on SEVERAL excellent digs!

So back to the story...Mikey called me one day and told me he was on to a decent dump down his way.

A couple weeks passed and the opportunity came about for me to investigate it. Mike, Brian and I all met there for a dig. I came to the conclusion before long that this dump used to be a pond that was filled in with trash in the early 1900's. As you all know I research...

So we did some digging and came up with some pretty good stuff. I dug a fairly scarce jar and gave it to Brian...he collects them. It was a IMPROVED JAM with a monogram on the back.

We scored some Milks, some odd-ball meds, and I dug about 8 Duffy's Malt Whiskey's (6 intact).

It was a fun time. I also dug a NICE stone master ink that was encrusted with something? Wait till you see how that cleaned up!

Here are some pics from the dig! Click on pics to blow them up!

Went digging again down Mikey's way...I met the digger (Greg) who was generous enough to share the dump with us. He found the dump and then he and Mikey got permission from the land owner.

Greg is one hell of a avid digger as well. We had a great time.

So this is going to be our winter dump digging wonderland....at least until spring. I guess all that matters in these hard time is that we can get out as diggers and enjoy each others company...and maybe a few good finds......OR GREAT ONES!

Here are the photos from today’s lucrative dig. Thanks Greg & Mikey.........

I HAD A REAL BLAST...but that Burger King food that Mikey got us had me farting like a mental patient that lost his colostomy bag!

Mikey found a neat Whiskey from the UK.....

I dug an AWESOME mosquito cure.......

and Greg dug a BUNCH OF SWEET STUFF.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

Eddie the Bottle Viking Shares his Secrets

Eddie Brater the Bottle Viking, webmaster and administrator of Privydigger.com, has written the definitive How-To book on privy digging that’s destined to become a classic in our niche.

Attractively priced at $9.99, The Essentials of Privy Digging, the complete guide to locating and digging outhouse pits comes direct from his computer to yours as an Adobe PDF via some very sophisticated shopping cart software.

Despite being over 65 pages long, and absolutely packed with precious tips and full colour photos, Dumpdiggers digested the manual in one sitting. Yes it’s just that good. This is a big chocolate cake full of ideas, insights and some pretty funny stories. Did I mention there's pictures?

As an example of his refreshingly informal writing style, here’s how Eddie describes the process of liberating spring steel rods needed for privy probes from the trunks of old cars in scrap yards,

To remove them [spring steel rods], the trunk lid should be all the way up. All you need is a pair of vice grips and a pry bar, tire iron, or large flat tipped screwdriver, and also the foresight to squint like hell and turn your face 180 degrees away from the rod as it pops loose. Certain curses, or indeed, long strings of them, are handy for when the pry bar slips violently from behind a stubborn rod, and are often looked upon by any junk yard employees within ear shot as a sure sign of manliness.”

Eddie’s book has well written answers to hard questions like What does a privy feel like with the probe? and How to deal with water? Chapters like Reading the land, and Things to look for nicely communicate his years of experience. Priced to sell, this guide should help both noobs and veterans be more productive as they progress along the path of the privy digger.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Twindmills Antiques opens in Colborne Ontario

Twindmills Antiques opened its doors today in the small town of Colborne Ontario, just in time for Christmas. This Dumpdiggers blog post, published minutes before either Ed van Egmond, a local counselor , or Lou Rinaldi the MP cuts the ribbon, celebrates the event, and marks the location as the new home of theappraiser.ca and Marshall Gummer Antiques.

One hour east of Toronto on Hwy 401 at exit #497 there's a big red plywood apple attraction. Although I don't wish to be negative about anything in Colborne, there is so much to be positive about. I must warn readers that the pies are not worth the price. Dumpdiggers advises all readers to ignore the landmark, and continue south into Colborne proper. The small city is famous for a rigid foam insulation forming plant that employs hundreds of people.

Explore the countryside. History abounds all through Cramahe township; there’s a dozen historic villages all along the top of Lake Ontario that date back to the early 1800s. A relic hunting road trip here might include stops in Castleton, Grafton, Dundonald, Edville, Greenleys Corners, Griffis Corners, Loughbreeze, Morganston, Purdy Corners, Salem, Shiloh, Tubbs Corners and Victoria Park. Not to mention the larger centers Brighton, Cobourg and Port Hope.

Originally named Keeler's Creek, the Town of Colborne was named after Sir John Colborne, Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, by Joseph Abbott Keeler in 1829. The new Twindmills Antiques and Collectibles Market is Canada's first green energy self-sustaining market powered by twin windmills. Thirty independent dealers offer a wide variety of items for sale from the 1800s to the 20th century including vintage clothing and accessories, old fashion business phones jewelry, fine furnishings, ceramics, crystal, carnival glass, silverware, toys, records, postcards, books, lamps, art vintage tools and signs and even a rare working salesman’s model of an 1800s threshing machine. The miniature was imported from England to give Canadians their first glimpse at mechanized farm equipment. Now it’s a wonderful showpiece and something of an attraction inside the complex.

Twindmills Stain Glass Studio and Shop
While antique hunting, seek out Heather Watt and sign up for classes in the Twindmills Stain Glass studio. Her shop includes many colourful items for sale, such as Christmas pieces, lamps, candle holders, sun catchers, panels (small to large-abstracts, portraits, wildlife, florals and landscapes) and other stained glass works; gift certificates for lessons and supplies are available as well. Her facility does church restorations and creates wonderful window art in a very creative corner of the building.

Larry in the Chip Truck
Another popular attraction exists out front, in the parking lot. Larry is a friendly guy that sells the best poutine in Ontario. This is real cheese curd with fresh cut French Fries smothered in real beef gravy - its delicious. But best of all, even though he’s almost famous now, Larry still serves up a generous medium size portion for only $4.75 a plate. That price is unbeatable. see also Larry in Chip Truck by luscious web on Posterous.

Here's where Sandy Shibley is now!
Dumpdiggers remembers Sandy Shibley from ten years ago - she was the more attractive and polite proprietor / managing partner of the Showcase Antique Mall at Bathurst and Queen St in downtown Toronto. Dumpdiggers had a display case there in 1998 to sell the pretty blue poisons and amber sodas we found digging hard in downtown dumps - that was back when I collected anything and everything glass.

Marshall Gummer has some fine art attractions too - check out the Appraisers Treasure Blog for great pictures and stories of his stuff. Other pages detail recent appraisals which include a Frankart Lamp $2,700 or Sherman Bracelet $1,000 and some amazing Harlander pottery. Marshall's stall is rather central, and as usual Marshall will consult, do appraisals and offer excellent advice better than most experts on the Antiques Roadshow - he's generally the kindest and most helpful contact any Dumpdigger or home stager could ever have in the fine arts / antiques world outside of Toronto, Ontario

So take a trip east to Colborne, visit Twindmills Antiques, say hello to Marshall Gummer and Sandy Shipley, eat Larry's amazing poutine and go shopping. The place is chock full of paintings, art deco tableware, early Canadian primitives, beds and tables, and patio furniture. There's also collectible china, enamelware and Bakelite. Prices are affordable and shoppers will be delighted to find one-of-a-kind Christmas gifts.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Best Coin Battle in the Dumpdiggers ARENA

Visit the Dumpdiggers Arena to submit photos and vote in Battle #3 for the Best Coin.

Starting Nov 23rd and running all week until Saturday night Nov 29th the Best Coin battle is really heating up... which coin will win?

One member, stonebottles has posted several photos of the best coins in his collection, but he has neglected to provide viewers any information about any of them?

Now Dumpdiggers are manufacturing software and must fill in those info cards to make the battle more relevant to users... Can you hep me?

There's a thread on the Dumpdiggers discussion forum where you can write the names of any coins and ID them, and I will eagerly add any information deposited there to the individual images card to improve the 'infotainment' quality of this spectacle.

Readers, won't you please share your expertise, visit the site and help me ID these coins?

Saturday, November 15, 2008

Dumpdiggers Arena: Best Bullet Battle

It's almost midnight and the Best Bullet Battle inside the Dumpdiggers Arena is about to end. The winning photo will be prominently displayed in the Dumpdiggers Hall of Fame for the rest of time... But who will win? This is what the final hours of the first real battle looked like:


The Arena photo battle, inside the new Dumpdiggers.com antiques and collectibles social networking community website, has been the subject of some criticism. The question, 'Who needs it?" and the complaint, 'Its too competitive' are the most common bits of negative feedback that I encounter, but also there is controversy, and confusion on the part of the developers. Its true the battles have grown from a murky lagoon of confusion and doubt, right up until this point when I can declare... Eureka! It works.

Vindicated, I believe the Best Bullet Battle proves my silly notion works, and diggers and eBay collectors deep inside their niches, perhaps even deeper and more obsessed than I, will find this to be a pleasant distraction and healthy competition.


This is what the administrator sees on the other side of the battles. The check box marked Chose This As Winner is present under every photo in case there's a tie. Using the check box the Admin can choose and make final decisions. If all boxes are left unchecked, the winning photo (the one with the most votes) will automatically be transferred to the Hall of Fame, and the winning member will be rewarded with 25 shovels and have his or her photo displayed in the uppermost section of his or her own mydiggerspace as a 'Blue Ribbon Photo'. In a perfect world, this honour would pay that member a stipend of 1 green shovel per week per blue ribbon photo, but that's something the developers seem to be having a real hard with...

In this battle you can see that eleven people have voted and four of the images have received votes - that means that eleven green shovels were dispensed to voters, and eleven shovels were issued to four members that submitted these 'Grey Ribbon Photos'. CORRECTION That's what it should mean, but when I check my own shovel bank account I can see that I, BobbyC did not get rewarded for voting, this time... But with more beta testing and notes to developers, I'm sure it will be corrected for next week's battles.

Next week's battles will include 'Freshly Dug Prizes' and I hope members will write stories about the recovery of their prizes in the allotted space on the image cards. I also hope the developers will fix the bug that enables the image cards to be viewed before voting occurs.

Arob's Blue Ribbon Photo:

Unless there is a sudden rush of votes for another contender, this is the image that will win the Best Bullet Battle in a few short hours.

This image was uploaded by Arob - the image card reveals that the items actually belong to stonebottles but they were photographed by Arob with his own camera, on his own hand. The dynamic composition and quality of ther image alongside the accompanying text is probably why it was chosen as the winner by five members.

This image will be visible in the Hall of Fame and indexed as Best Bullet Nov 9-15, 2008 for the rest of time. Arob will have this Blue Ribbon image displayed in his mydiggerspace and (hopefully) will earn one green shovel per week, forevermore.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

We Collect Tobacciana

Dumpdiggers often find little bits of American tobacciana in century old trash, and such pieces are highly prized by antiques collectors all over the world. Tobacco tins are the very best metal packages to collect because these boxes are the canvas on which the World's best 'box art' is painted.

Tobacco tins are generally superior to all other containers because they are more frequently adorned with fancy designs and presented in multiple colors - as many as nine different colors! Antique tobacco tins were sometimes made in unusual shapes as the art of making tin cans became more and more sophisticated.

Tobacco tins were never more popular than they were in the early 1900s; in the years before and after WWI there were thousands of different brands sold all over the world. The Dutch had a massive global tobacco industry, followed in scale by UK conglomerates, French and American syndicates. Veteran Dumpdiggers who find tobacco tins in their holes today can learn a great deal about the people who dumped there by finding and researching the recovered tobacco packaging tax stamps and patent dates. This info can also be used to help 'date your dump'.

A Brief History of Tobacco Containers

In colonial America and other parts of the world cigars were first sold in leather pouches, or canvas or cloth envelopes to which a tin plate was sometimes affixed. As time went on the product evolved to wooden boxes and then tax laws were changed to allow the industry to pack product in tin boxes of various sizes.

The tins started out with paper labels, then in the 1870's attempts were made to use stone lithography to print color labels directly onto the shiny metal. Tins can be found with paper labels before 1870, and lithography after that date. Some of the best examples display both types of decals.

Just as antique soda pop bottles evolved through a variety of shapes sizes and closures, so too did tobacco evolve through various containers until manifesting itself in beautifully decorated tin boxes. Today collectors index an assortment of lid closures and Dumpdiggers can use this information to date their excavations - all different patent information and registration data can be used to pinpoint the exact age of certain knobed lids, snap-down closures, hinged lids with armatures and all manner of screw top canisters.

The 20th century saw two developments that greatly impacted the tin box industry. The 1910 legalization of small boxes of 5 and 10 cigars gave a big push to the industry as tin was highly suitable for small containers. Only 4 years later, improvements in drying tech-niques sped the manufacturing process, reduced loss, and led to affordable boxes and cans. After 1915, tin containers could truly be mass produced. This Tobacciana Museum is amazing.

Dumpdiggers collect All Different Types of Tobacco Tins:

CANISTERS in round, pie-shaped, square and rectangular sizes.
LUNCH BOX produced with variety of single handle styles, but also made with double handles similar to picnic baskets.
FIGURAL TINS mark the height of innovation and are sometimes the most prized collectibles ex. the Mayo brand Roly Polys, a TOP, one shaped like a casket (very appropriate), the milk can (from Union Leader).
STORE BINS are larger and although not always as attractive as their smaller siblings, they are usually more desirable to collectors.
POCKET PACKS were designed to fit inside a gentleman's pocket. They came in flat, vertical, and round styles. Isotopes include oval vertical, and vertical with a flat back but rounded front. Cardboard replaced tin in the 1940's and of course this has evolved into the cigarette packs that manufacturers use today.
CIGARETTE TINS usually came in pocket sized packages, these are often collected as a separate category and indexed by brand or manufacturer.
PAILS medium sized vessels with a pail-like handle.
TESTERS were usually just smaller facsimiles of the original tins.


Tobacciana is Culturally Rich Art

Early tobacco advertising had so many different and fascinating themes; there were Christmas tins, and cans and boxes decorated with Indians and mountains, ships, horses, trains and Presidents, and everything else you can imagine.

Tin tags are little pieces of metal art that come in various shapes and sizes and have been collected since the 1870's. There's an estimated 12,000 different tags available.

Tobacciana also includes other tobacco related advertising products and point of sale items like posters, plates, humidors, pipes, cigar/cigarette packs and cartons, lighters, signs, tin tags, wooden caddies, ashtrays, and other merchandise.

TOBACCO BOOK BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tobacco and Americans by Robert K. Hermann, 1960.
Tobacco Tins and Their Prices by Al Bergevin, 1986.
Tobacco Tins: A Collector's Guide by Douglas Congdon-Martin, 1992 with price guide insert.


Observe the ARENA Photo Battle for Best Tobacciana on Dumpdiggers.com

I read here in the history of tin cigar boxes that the Bayuk Co of Philadelphia was a market driver and home to some degree of advanced technological innovation. In 1926 Bayuk Cigars of Philadelphia built what was at the time the largest completely air-conditioned cigar factory in the world. Today this is the most recognizable brand of cigars from America's Great Depression era.

PERFECTO BAYUK CIGAR "Makers of Fine Cigars since 1897!"

Here's my own Vintage Philadelphia Phillies 5-cent PERFECTO BAYUK CIGAR lithographed tin on eBay.

Tin measures 7 1/4" wide, 51/2" deep and 3" tall. It is in fair condition (includes original wood divider). This item is being sold as is, so please refer to the photos. It is rusty, and there are scratches and dents in the exterior, but the interior is clean and still has the cardboard insert (which I think is quite remarkable considering the age of the item) and lid is held up by metal arm that "locks" into a slit on the lid. Manufactured in Factory No. 650 - 1st Dist. PA. On the back panel and inside the lid the Bayuk Co. boasts a guarantee of "1929" being a "peak sales year". The "5-cent" cigars were made with a "Sumatra wrapper - the same fine ripe Domestic and Havana long filler".

Here's my Tobacciana Table in the Underground Show and Sale on Dumpdiggers.com

Thursday, November 6, 2008

First Table in Dumpdiggers Underground


Arob's Table
is the first merchant ship in this exciting new social networking site for low tech treasure hunters.

The Underground Show and Sale on Dumpdiggers.com is a place where antiques collectors can display those unique items in their possession they'd most like to trade away.

The speech bubble windows on the left side of the table allow the seller to pitch products to buyers, and to specify which items he or she seeks in exchange for proffered goods. There is a comment box on the right side of the table for viewer feedback.

Arob's Table hosts all the antiques that I found in Bert Dalmage's workshop and its worth noting that I've already sold that gorgeous Red 1960 Rotary Dial Phone on Ebay for only $9.99 plus $10 shipping. The sale ended yesterday - it broke my heart as it will probably cost twice that much to ship it east to the buyer in NFLD, but that gentlemen wrote me an email this afternoon and told me he was a fan of Dumpdiggers blog, and so I'm thrilled to do business with him. LOOK HERE at this 1900s FLOOR SHINE Mop Polish tin on eBay is worth $100 but is listed for $12, and that sale ends this week !

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Vintage Telephone on eBay


Dumpdiggers,

I'm selling this red plastic Vintage Telephone on eBay. I started the sale of at $9.99, but I hope the item fetches ten times that amount. It should. Everyone knows the red phone is the hot line. This item was the center of conversation at the office
where each business phone system is such an important part of modern communication and can seriously impact your firm's overall profitability. The pattern has been established by the success of highly communicative companies that use erp software to integrate various components into a well oiled machine - the red phone is part of that struggle!


Once again, I've used Blabble to insert a modicum of story. Forgive me.

Red phones look great when placed on wooden desks and the look especially good when the sunlight hits them and makes a room's occupants aware on a subconscious level of the importance of someone with a red phone. For this reason they are highly sought after props by home staging companies. I have seen more than one Toronto condo well decorated by a handsome red phone.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Fisher Price Family Fun Jet


This is a very cool, very vintage Fisher Price collectible toy. These plastic toys were extremely well made, and every kid knows the airplane and the house boat were the best models.

This is product #183 Family Fun Jet

With the Family Fun Jet, your child can fly the Little People to any vacation spot in the house.
After recovering and cleaning this relic, I placed the whole lot for sale.
 The Fisher Price FAMILY FUN JET sold for just under $50 USD in the winter of 2008.