The Heisey Trophy

In 2001, my husband was in the military, had served four years and was getting ready to get out. Then 9/11 happened. Things changed for us and he stayed. Two years later, he finally separated.

We moved across the country to a new home, new job and no family. We were literally a twenty-two-hour drive from the nearest family. We were broke, new parents and crammed into a tiny ant infested duplex. eBay was a new thing, and I knew I wanted to cash in on it.

This was back in the day that I ran a phone line from my computer to our house phone and sat on the couch, patiently waiting for the pages to load. I tried listing old clothes, housewares, and wedding gifts that we never used. I made a few bucks but nothing to substantially help our household. I decided I needed a niche.

I settled on glassware. 2004 was a boom year for knickknacks and other unnecessary pretty things and eBay was the perfect platform to sell them on. I went to the public library and checked out books on glassware identification in an attempt to educate myself. What I found was that this was a massive category. I decided to specialize and limited my “expertise” to depression glassware through the fifties. Limiting my knowledge base to thirty years made it more manageable.

I learned about mold marks and makers marks. I learned how to identify fakes. I went to a few local auctions where a group of old men took great joy in giving me grief and imparting knowledge during the three hours that the auctioneer was talking. I scoured the local Goodwill and Salvation Army looking for hidden treasures. I went to antique malls, hoping someone mismarked a piece I could flip for a deal. And I went to garage sales.

Saturday morning was the time I hunted local garage sales. We loaded up a toddler and a newborn in the back of an old Ford Taurus. My husband drove and would drop me off, circle the block a time or two, and then pick me back up. This kept the fussy newborn sleeping and the toddler preoccupied dipping his Sonic French toast sticks into the sticky syrup cup. Most Saturdays I would come home with one or two things that I would painstakingly clean, photograph with my camera, run the film to WalMart one-hour and have them put it on a disc so that I could upload it to my computer. A digital camera was out of the question; our budget was so tight that I could barely afford the three dollars for the film and the seven dollars it took to develop it. I was making a profit, but it was small. It was so small.

One morning we were doing our garage sale rounds and I hadn’t found anything that I wanted. It didn’t help that rent was due and we had gotten our first electric bill after turning on the air conditioner. We couldn’t live in the 100-degree heat without an AC, but we couldn’t afford to run it either. I was being careful about what I spent our few dollars on and hadn’t found anything.

I called it quits around 11:00, several hours earlier than I would normally do so. It was hot and I was sticky with perspiration. My husband was weaving through old neighborhoods on our way home and braked when he spotted another garage sale and talked me into one last one for the day. I reluctantly hopped out and went into a small breezeway where the sale was set up. It was hot and humid and very dirty. I looked halfheartedly at old pottery, housewares and the trinkets that were popular with a particular generation. I eavesdropped and found out that the garage sale was actually an estate sale; a recently deceased person’s belongings were being sold off by her daughter who had come in from out of state. The well-dressed woman was urging people to make offers as she was going to donate what was left. She wanted the house cleaned out and she wanted to go home.

Towards the back, covered in dust, I spotted a bright yellow glass bar set; the decanter and eight shot glasses a little filthy but still worth looking at. I flipped one of the glasses over and looked at the maker’s mark. I recognized it as a Heisey maker mark, but I did not recognize the pattern nor did I recognize the color. There was also a set of matching water goblets and a pitcher. I called the woman over and asked her how much she wanted for the set.

“Fifty bucks. It’s a rare pattern.” I had heard that before; everyone thinks they have the holy grail of all glassware when in reality it’s usually a reproduction or currently being sold for ten cents at Goodwill because they have so many.

I looked again and then walked away from the set. Fifty dollars was too much for me to be spending on something that I wasn’t sure would net me a profit. I had rent to pay and an electric company to call and ask for more time because I couldn’t pay them. Fifty dollars was out of the question.

It nagged me, though. I knew that the maker was pretty popular and the color was rare.

I was still mulling it over when my husband pulled away from the curb. He asked what I had found and, when I told him, asked why I hadn’t purchased it. I told him the price.

He stopped and pulled out his wallet. “How much cash do you have? I have $32.” Between the both of us and four quarters we found on the floor of the Taurus we managed to come up with fifty dollars. He dropped me off at the driveway and I reentered the breezeway and turned over the cash. I was given a box and a stack of newspapers to bundle up my new treasure on my own.

On the way home I asked my husband to stop at the library. I needed a different book that I hoped would help me identify the pattern.

I found the pattern. It was in a book titled Rare and Elegant Depression Glass. I was starting to get excited, but I still had cleaning to do and I had to find each and every flaw before listing them.

I washed the glassware, set them up in the yard and photographed them with the sun sparkling on them. Two weeks after the purchase we made using found quarters, I deposited over $2500 into our bank account. The decanter alone sold for over $700 and each shot glass went for $150 each. The pitcher was close to $500 and the water goblets were about $50 each.

The money came at an opportune time. We were able to pay our outstanding electric bill and we put the rest into savings for the rest of the summers’ electric bills. It also taught me to be a little more confident in my gut feelings and to take a risk every now and again.

The recession of 2008 pretty much killed the knickknack boom. People no longer had the money for things that weren’t necessary. Even now, when things are better – economy wise – people are not spending the money they once used to. Pieces I would have once gotten $100 for I am lucky to get $20. With the kids grown, I work a full-time job and don’t need to find creative ways to supplement our income. I still garage sale but do so for my pleasure, not for profit. However, I still occasionally come across a piece I know is worth something and, on those occasions, I buy it, clean it up and post it on eBay.