10,000 Glasses

Late last month I added a few more glasses to my collection and now have over 10,000 glasses in my collection! Of these, more than 7,000 are unique, which means that about 1/4 of my collection is duplicates. I think that I have more duplicates in my collection than the average collector, but there is a reason for this. First, I like to find sets in their original boxes. Although many sets are made up of glasses with different but related designs, other sets are multiple glasses of the same design. When you have a boxed set of these, you have 2, 4, 6 or 8 glasses with the same design (depending on the size of the box). Even with sets made up of glasses with different designs, I might have two or more boxes, because the box that they came in changed. I have about 300 sets in their original boxes.

Another reason why I have duplicates of some glasses is research. I like to find "varieties" of glasses, glasses with differences between designs that look similar. While some of these differences, such as a change in color, are obvious, other differences are only evident when you have two glasses that you can put next to each other. The most common type of variety that I find this way is a change in the size of the design, or a change in size of a design element. One example of this is the "Coca-Cola Refreshes You Best" glass where the words are surrounded by a square. The width of the line that makes the square varies, as does the shape of the square -- on some glasses the bottom side is noticeably shorter than the top line. I believe some of these differences are because some of the glasses are unofficial reproductions.

Back To The Articles Page