Just when you think you've seen it all~
One of the fun things about having a seemingly endless revolving collection is the ability to compare and document subtle mold differences and discover the occasional "new bottle". Some time ago I had nearly three dozen Jesse Moore glop tops lined up like soldiers here. It's easy to get caught up in the color difference and sometime we can't see the forest through the trees. Heck a Jesse Sole Agent is a Jesse Sole Agent, right? Sure they come in a myriad of colors ranging from straight to dense amber, from yellow to green and every hue in between. But close examination shows that there are nearly as many molds as color variations. The differences are subtle, but they are there. Letter and punctuation placement and spacing are close, but still notably different.
Amber glop tops have always gotten top billing, due in large part to John Thomas's mindset that unless a bottle was amber and had a glop top, it wasn't worthy of mention. But things have changed and the clear glop's have begun to gain ground over the past few years. For the most part, they are infinitely rarer than the majority of their amber relatives and yet they remain comparatively affordable. Sure, they may not have the big gooey spillover that we take for granted on the earlier 80's globbys but what they lack on top, they often more than make up for in terms of overall character. Some of the favorites that I have on my shelves include the Henry Campe OK, William Cline Wholesale Grocer, Lois Taussig Wholesale, Boulevard OK, Kentucky Club, a Goldberg Bowen & Lebenbaum Wines & LiquoPs with original full labels, plus the obligatory clear picture glops including a Bear, Horse and Double Eagle to mention a few.
On rare occasions, a new example turns up. A few years ago a handful of clear glop top Roth & Co's were found in the Sierras. The half dozen or so that showed up were quickly snatched up by eager collectors (self included) and to date, no new examples have surfaced.
A couple of weeks ago UPS showed up with a nice selection of what I had been lead to believe were run of the mill to better t**l tops. I know, I'm straying toward the dark side by using the "t" word... But suddenly the clouds parted and bright sunshine filled the room when low and behold, a new western glop top whiskey was born! The seller mentioned that one of the more common pieces on the way was "kinda crude". What he failed to mention, or even notice, was that it was a member of the "German Connection" as TQ has termed the clear glops. Described as:
288.5 Bottled by / E. A. Fargo & Co. / Wholesale / Liquors / San Francisco / Cal.; glop top (yep - you read it right!), clear with that steel hue that we see in the German Bears, Boulevards, Gold Dusts, Roth's etc. ball neck brandy cylinder, BOLD strike, hammered whittle, ring lip with the typical German glop stippled appearance, the first glop we've seen or even heard of.
Looks like I'll need to make room on the shelf for a new member of the family~
Ky Gem,
ReplyDeleteGreat post ! That's cool you got a nice surprise in the mail. I had seen one of those yrs ago, and actually forgot to include/mention it in the German connection. I doubt there are more than a handful of those out there. No doubt, whiskey collectors who read your post will be checking their clear Fargo's closely and trying to make the "connection" ! I've always thought it was strange how E. A. Fargo and Co never put out any earlier embossed bottles or amber globs. They were one of the older S.F. liquor companies and were there from the 1860s all the way up to just before prohibition, and there are lots of early ads from them. So..... there may be another surprise in store for collectors sometime in the future. One can only hope they did put out a 70s fifth !