Just Back From The Best Annual Insulator Show

Sorry, I obviously clicked on the wrong topic!
I got my Muncies from a guy on ebay that used to sell them - Can't remember. Used to start buying them at 99$ then it got ridiculous at 135$
These are the other 2 I have completely - plus I bought at post for 12$ they didn't know what it was!

@Spruett


I know of two collectors currently who offer display cases such as this. In the original pic I posted, the one on the floor is from a feiend of mine in Kansas. He makes some quality cases - all oak, heavy duty polished glass shelves, 5000K CRI 86 bulbs, and quality diffusion plastic. It was gifted to me by several collectors for my holding a seminar at a large show a few years back.

Aside from the diffusion plastic and bulbs (now people are going to LEDS), I think a budget model could be made from less expensive wood.



LOL! There were a few pics before the link I posted before.

Here...
http://www.insulators.info/pictures/?id=514472548

I am the one behind the table with the long name tag and attached badges.

I was selling my reference book (which can be seen in front of me) so was sharing a table with a friend. I also had an idea which seems to have caught on. On the table you can see my "Brookfield Bucks." These are my own design on "currency" featuring the Brookfield Glass Company people/insulators. They look and feel like real bills, and people seem to like them. I am planning on other manufacturers in the future.

Thanks McShilling


@TNG



You are correct. Although there are Canadian pieces people think were made on royal purple.

Glass made from scratch is typically aqua. Manganese was added to make the glass clear. other elements were added for different colors (such as cobalt makes cobalt blue glass).

Sunlight's ultraviolet rays excites the manganese atoms and results in a light purple color normally called SCA for sun colored amethyst.

The royal purple color is like the one on the left posted above in the "Now Why Do You Think I Collect Insulators." It is a CD145 in royal purple and books for about 85.00 while an aqua of same is 2.00.

The one on the right in same pic, a CD161 CALIFORNIA, was also turned its color from sunlight and was originally alight yellow.

@ArrowsAndRays - thanks!

@coinlover
An interesting thing about the hobby is that it is just the right size. Its large enough to support an expensive market for are pieces while small enough that they are still out there to be found when you know what you are looking for.

Every collector I know, within the first five years of being in the hobby and keeping an eye open at garage sales,flea markets, etc., has found at least one piece booking at several hundred dollars. A lot of friends have thousand dollar pieces and above.

A retired lineman fried of mine goes to every yards sale, flea market, antique store, and auctions he can. He also frequents ebay and Craigslist. Within the last year he has found/shown me at least three pieces that can sell for $2-3k. It is a lot of footwork - but he does it for the fun. He keeps them. The market for better pieces is such that its not hard to sell them.

There were several items I could have easily flipped at the last show, but I don't really deal as much anymore b/c of other things. One of the dealers at the show had a piece marked for 300.00. I told him he had better re-evaluate. He did not know what he had as it was a rare color that even a lot of seasoned collectors have not seen before. They just know its some sort of blue. Having had experience with the twin of that piece before (I sold mine), I let him know it was light sapphire blue and books for around 1500.00!

I did see the Brookfield Bucks in another pic. It's no surprise, I suppose, that they instantly jumped out at me.

Well done! Especially for making a $2 version.

Hobby crossovers can be important, I think. I'm not into stamps but, this could be my "gateway":



and then...

@RoyCoinBoy
It is ironic that insualtors were so vital to the development of communications and yet so few people (relatively speaking) know what they are/were.

Simply put, when a communications wire, first telegraph and later telephone, were put onto the crossarms of poles, the electricity would leak to the ground and short out when the wood was moist from rain, dew etc. In other words, no communication could be had.

Glass, not being a conductor of electricity was formed into these units to insulate the wires from grounding... hence we cal them insulators.

Voltages being transferred increased as the electrification of the the world began, and it was found porcelain was a better insulator. Being porcelain was more difficult to make, the US kept making glass insulators for lower voltage lines and porcelain for high voltage.

You can still see porcelain pieces on poles today - carrying power - since communications transferred by single, large cable is so well insulated this type of protection on a pole is no longer needed.

You might still see some glass insulators in the air, but as of Y2K, much has been being torn down b/c of people suing insurance companies, and - sadly - winning, when these people get hurt while trespassing and climbing poles to get the glass without permission.

The larger RR lines have been removing the stuff as quick as they can. Its sad no colorful strings of glass sparkle in the sunlight anymore along tracks.

Their history is amazing, just like our coins. And it amazes me even more I can hold a piece of glass in my hands that no doubt helped transfer news of all major events from just a decade after the civil war through Kitty Hawk, presidential assassinations (Garfield, MckKinley, and Kennedy), changing of all British monarchs since Queen Victoria, all news of WWI and WWII (and all the others) and even up to Neil Armstrong first walking on the moon.

And some can be had on free tables at shows!

Following is one old soldier. It is one of my favorites types b/c of the decorative embossing (researched and wrote my reference book about them and the factory history). This insulator likely did It likely did handle all those historic events above until this being taken out of service sometime in the 70s or 80s. Some of its type are still on abandoned poles in remote areas.



They all have a number (called a Shop Number or SN) on the top. Here is the first pic ever taken of all the numbers lined up at one time - 130 years after the SN1 would have been made (1882). The "sapphire" listing is now officially "Windex Blue" in the price guide.

Another reason why I love the insulator hobby is there are some areas still that can be pioneered. The following is my complete sequential set of CREB 145 insulators (CRown Embossed Brookfield - the 145 is the number assigned to this type of profile). Most of these I have duplicates for in differing colors although pretty much they were made in aquas or green shades. The earliest here are 1882-1885 (1 through 9), most 1885-1895 (10-23, double numbers, and lastly 00 and 11), and the A&B are 1900 possibly up to 1905.

Finding the dates was part of the mystery!

Actually I have quite a few Canadian friends in the hobby - from one coast to the other. They regularly travel down here each year to attend US shows, and they host other shows up there. Just off the top of my head I know of one in Perth that has been regular for years and also one in Mnt. Bridges - annual for 10-15 years(?) maybe. There are several shows on the West coast as well.

insultors as a whole are nowhere near as big a hobby as coins having started about 1970 or so when the first lines were being taken down.

Those insulators show in the pic are, indeed, a dying sight to see down here. Liability has made it such that in the last 10 years there has been a concentrated effort to take down all the old poles along tracks. Its sad really. Seeing these jewels sparkle in the sun was something I enjoyed since I was a kid. Up there has been no massive push to get rid of them.

BTW - actually have hunted the CN line before. All the insulators in your Pic are US made, as a lot of our stuff was used up there. But when hunting the CN line in the past I came upon some really nice Canadian made pieces.


Up there people have the advantage though of being able to find threadless (no threads molded into the pinholes) which are a lot older, more rare, and have a lot higher values than most glass. Poles with threadless (the only tech of the day) were much closer to the tracks. When the glass was upgraded to pieces that screwed onto pins, the threadless ones were simply dropped to the ground.

Down here in the States we put much wider and higher piles of rock ballast by our RR lines, and so most of our threadless is unobtainable as it would require massive equipment to move all the ballast and then dig (which the RR would never allow anyway for obvious reasons).

But I have several friends up there who go into a farmer's fields abutting the RR right of way after the ground is plowed. They might only get one (maybe two or three if hunting is good) or two whole pieces a year, but when you are talking hundreds+ per piece, its not a bad hobby to go out looking.

And all of my friends who do so up there have found thousand dollar pieces at least once. My one friend, the FIRST time they went out pulled a $10,000 cobalt blue one out of the ground! They could see the bottom sticking out of the dirt! After doing this for around 15 years, they had amasses quite a collection of threadless including several more with a very high price tag.

I could relate many, many stories of frinds finding pieces up there in the wild. Likewise some stories of going finding better pieces at garage sales/antique stores etc b/c there are just enough collectors to make pieces valuable, but not yet enough collectors to make insulators well known by the general public.

In fact every collector I know of has, within the first five years of being in the hobby and looking at shows/sales/antique malls, had found at least one multi-hundred dollar piece within the first five years.

But to me, it is actually more about the history now - akin to my love of coins.