Herman Braunschweiger - a fresh look

A series of articles for both glop and tool top collectors.

http://www.westernwhiskeytooltopgazette.com/2012/02/herman-braunschweiger-fresh-look.html

Under the radar.

Finances being what they are these days, I'm not as diligent about watching ebay as I once was. Sure, I still scan the offerings once in a while but I'm not focused like I was a few years back. Once in a while if something catches my eye, I'll bookmark it to see what it does.

About a week ago a listing "for an early amber wine bottle" appeared. Much to my surprise, a photo of a red whittled glop top J. Gundlach appeared. Now that's my idea of an old wine bottle!

The photo was lousy at best, but a little fiddling with Photoshop revealed what appeared to be a decent example. And the proportion of the shoulders sure seemed to vary from the fifth that we're accustomed to seeing. Could it be a quart?

Sure, it had a flash in the neck (actually the top) according to the description but still, how many have you seen in any condition? Thomas listed the mint value as about $2500~ back in 2002. One of the auction houses sold one for $3200~ plus fees around three years ago. Verrry interesting...

What would it go for, I wondered. I got my answer this morning when I remembered about the listing. Huh? $567.77~ Seems like someone got a buy!

This bottle sure seemed to slip under the radar.

S. Adolph & Co.

I have posted photo's of the pint size examples of this extremely rare Oregon flask...both the applied, and tooled top version. To date there are three known examples of the pint, while this half pint size remains unique. I acquired this flask directly from Anna Rose Adolph herself in the 1990s. It was found under a house next to a foundation in 1959. The flask was given to Anna Rose shortly thereafter and remained in the Adolph family until I was able to add it to my collection.

Anna Rose is the great, great Granddaughter of Sam Adolph himself, so the history of this particular flask is very meaningful to me. Sam had a saloon and brewery in Salem, from 1873-1886. It was blown about 1883 and while not air vented, has a tooled top. I actually feel these little half pint union oval western flasks are more attractive in many instances, and for some reason more rare than their pint size counterparts. Other than the Fleckenstein and Mayer half pints from Portland, the smaller size western amber flasks seem to typically be harder to come by. Possibly they were small enough to actually fit in a pocket, and therefore were carried everywhere until they were lost or broken. In any case this little piece of Oregon history is the only example to ever turn up in many decades of digging in the Northwest.