Attention All Geek Collectors

 

QUESTION: I’ve been what’s referred to as a “geek” since I was a teenager. Back then, my buddies and I played all sorts of games on what today would seem like ancient machinery—old computers. Recently, I was cleaning out my attic and ran across my old Altair 8800. I remember when it graced the cover of Popular Electronics Magazine back in 1975. I haven’t used it in years but today, I own a souped up PC with all the bells and whistles. Do old computers like this have any value? 

ANSWER: Before you give that old computer the heave-ho, you might want to read on. It’s been 46 years since your Altair 8800 rose to prominence in Popular Electronics. During that time, personal computers—better known as “PCs”—have turned the world upside down and inside out. In fact, most people do very little without computers today, and businesses, especially, couldn’t operate without them. And without computers, this pandemic would have been shear Hell for most people. 

Geeks, also known as “nerds,” grew up with computers and often seek out their first ones. And in the retro movement, those from the younger generation are also trying to discover the computers from before they were born. In fact, someone out there collects just about any pre-1990 computer, but it’s the ones from the 1970s that are hot. 

One of the real classics was the Commodore 64. With 17 million units sold during its long lifetime, there are probably more Commodore 64 computers stashed away in closets and attics than any other model. Some say the Commodore 64 was the best-selling single computer model of all time. Collectors can usually find one or two available on eBay for anywhere from $10 to $300, with some in their original box.

Cover-featured in a famous issue of Popular Electronics magazine as a do-it-yourself project, the Intel 8080-based Altair wasn't the first microcomputer, but it was the first one that truly caught on, spawning an entire industry of clones, add-ons, and software suppliers. Bill Gates, through his company Micro-Soft, developed the first operating system for that computer, launching a company that operates to the present day. And because the Altair was such a big seller, it isn’t as valuable as some of the other early computers, however, models in good condition do sell today for over $2,000. 

The first clone of the Altair was the IMSAI 8080 which sold for $600 in 1975 and has a value nearly that now. It’s main selling point was its compatibility with the Altair 8800. It’s probably most famous today as the computer that Matthew Broderick used in the 1983 movie “War Games.”

Two of the most popular computers to catch the eye of consumers and now collectors are Radio Shack’s Tandy TRS-80 Model 1, which hit the stores in 1977 for $599, and the TRS-80 Model 100, which appeared in 1983 for $799. The TRS-80 became the first computer sold in shopping malls while the second became the first popular notebook computer, with nearly 6 million sold, making Radio Shack the world's leading computer retailer for a while. Both sell today on eBay for $25 to $250.

The IBM PC, which first appeared on the computer scene in 1981 at a staggering price of $1,565, is now worth between $50 and $500. More formally known as the IBM 5150, it revolutionized computing for the average consumer, becoming the first to use hardware and software made by third-party companies. After it’s introduction, no computer company, except Apple, had a monopoly on their wares. And in its January 1983 issue, Time Magazine named it the “Machine of the Year.” And today, in all of its many forms, that machine still is. 

Finally, there are Unix computers. These are one of the rarer computers on the market. Many companies, such as Sun Microsystems, Silicon Graphics, and Hewlett Packard, developed variations of the Unix computer to run on their own custom hardware like SPARC and MIPS. For those who are interested in classic computing, it doesn't get more classic than Unix, and these were often workstation machines so they're usually a little bit better built than your typical Windows computer. You could easily run into Unix machines at commercial business liquidation sales.

What determines the value of an old computer? Just because it’s old doesn’t make it valuable. Companies flooded the market with their products. But what makes an older computer stand out is whether it was first on the market. 

What was the first desktop, the first laptop, the first tablet, or the first LCD screen? All these  firsts add value to otherwise old computer gear. It doesn't have to be a first if the computer has  technology on it that was unique but is no longer used, like plasma screen displays or ZIP drives. Even the first model of a long used series like the first Intel Pentium, or the first Intel Core processor can have a little extra value. In fact, some Intel Pentium's command a surprising price because they're known to contain a high quantity of gold. 

And as with toys, computers new in the box are worth more than used ones. There are a number of tech items that sell for hundreds if not thousands of dollars despite being essentially unusable for their original purpose. And while many computing items can be found new in the box, not all of them are valuable. However, the smart collector looks for those that are unique.

In February 2005, Christie’s held an “Origins of Cyberspace” auction which offered old documents detailing the foundations of computing. The auction drew a lot of attention to vintage technology and placed value on items once used only by geeks. Unfortunately, that attention caused vintage computer prices to skyrocket, thus pricing a lot of collectors out of the market.  

Although many old computers don't have a lot of redeeming features, that in itself is what makes them special when you find a classic one. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

Shave and a Haircut Two Bits

 

QUESTION: My grandfather loved to collect old shaving mugs. By the time he died, he had collected over 100 of them. One of them belonged to his father. As his grandson, I’ve now inherited his collection. As much as I admire it, I’m not sure what to do with all those mugs. What can you tell me about shaving mugs in particular? And what advice can you give me on caring for his collection?

ANSWER: Curating someone else’s collection is at best challenging and at worst a nightmare. What you have inherited is the result of years of searching for just the right mugs. Collecting is an emotional process but a collection is a just a group of objects. What you need to do is make his collection your own. And that means learning everything you can about shaving mugs to start. 

Only after you have become somewhat knowledgeable will you be able to curate his collection. Curation is the inventorying of the collection, as well as its improvement. To improve his collection, you’ll want to cull out any pieces that are chipped or damaged in any other way by selling them in order to purchase better mugs. 

There was a time when a man could stop at his neighborhood barbershop and get a shave and a haircut for two bits, 25 cents. Today, it’s nearly impossible to find a barber who still offers a shave with a haircut. That went out with the advent of the safety and electric razors.

Most homes had no hot running water, so one had to boil water in order to shave. The soap used to fit into a cup, and with the hot water and a brush, a man could get a good lather to shave with his straight razor. So men began going to barbershops to get a shave.

When a man went to the barber for a shave, the barber used soap and a brush in a mug to work up a lather which he then applied to the face. Many of the shaving mugs were personalized and kept in a rack at the barbershop for the barber to use when shaving the men who owned them. From 1870 to 1930, shaving mugs were both a necessity and a status symbol. Almost all men owned one.

Mugs that men used at home are came in various shapes and didn’t have the owner's name on them. Some were in the shape of a mug with floral designs while others were plain. Many grabbed a mug from the kitchen cupboard for their shave, but as they were able to afford to go to the barbershops for a shaves, mugs with names and other information on them became popular possessions.

Hygiene was another stimulus for the proliferation of personal shaving mugs. It was thought that a shaving rash that some customers developed came from the use of the same soap on different customers, so barbers started selling individual shaving mugs and soap to customers, keeping in a mug rack in the barbershop.

In 1890, these would have sold for 50 cents to $2.50 each. This service benefitted the barber’s business since customers would generally return to the shop where they had a mug rather than go to another where they didn’t. 

The mugs used in barbershops were of many designs, but all had one thing in common—they were hand painted and had the owner's name on the front of the mug.  Some had just the owner's name while others had floral and scenic designs on them, or symbols of fraternal affiliations and illustrations of the owner’s occupation. It seemed a natural progression from mugs that depicted a man's occupation to those advertising a service or product.

Men sitting around the barbershop could easily identify who delivered milk, repaired shoes, sold meat, or owned the livery stable. This exposure probably led to an increase in the advertised customer's business, since so many men who went to barbershops lived in the area.

Early manufacturers of barbershop products also desired to increase sales, especially shaving soap. The Knights Company gave a free glass shaving mug to anyone who bought their shaving soap, thus encouraging them to continue to buy more soap. There were a variety of glass shaving mugs that barber’s gave free to customers who purchased shaving soap. 

Wildroot had a double bowl advertising mug that it offered in the 1920's. One of the bowls held the lather while the other held hot water. Later, they offered a Fire King shaving mug with a barber pole and the words "Ask for Wildroot" on the mug face. In the 1930's, Shulton Old Spice sold sets that included a mug and soap. Several other companies followed with their own mug and soap. 

In the 1950's, the Sportsman Company went a step farther and offered hand painted occupational mugs that showed various occupations using the name of the occupation rather than the name of the owner, such as Policeman, Lawyer, Doctor, etc. 

Some collectors consider hand painted shaving mugs both advertising and occupational, a type of folk art.  Artists painted them in barber supply houses on blank mugs obtained from Europe, since the United States had a very limited ability to produce porcelain at the time. Koken Barber Supply and Kern Barber Supply in St. Louis, Volden Barber Supply in Cleveland, and Berninghouse Barber Supply in Cincinnati were some of the major producers of mugs, and generally have their marks on the bottom of the mug.

Mugs from 1870 to 1930 are highly collectible, and while occupational shaving mugs are the most sought after, mugs showing advertising are also popular with collectors. The shaving mugs collected today come primarily from that boom period, and their popularity has risen dramatically. Prices range from $20 o $10,000, so there's plenty of opportunity for beginners as well as advanced collectors. 

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

In a Cats Eye

 

QUESTION: As a kid, I played marbles with my buddies. I started playing with marbles when I was in third grade and by the fifth grade, I was our school’s marble champion. At the time, I liked the way the marbles looked but knew nothing about how they were made. I’ve seen some old marbles online and would like to start a collection. What advice can you give me?

ANSWER: Marbles are a good item to collect because of their size. But don’t let their small size fool you. Some of the older handmade marbles can go as high as $700 for a 2½-inch end-of-day one. 

For those who have never played marbles, the goal of each shot is to hit one of the marbles in the center and knock it out of the circle. If the player knocks a marble out, then they get to keep the marble for the rest of the game, they also get to take another turn. If the first player doesn’t knock a marble out of the circle, the next player then gets a turn.

Aggies, cats eyes, popeyes, red devils, pearls, turtles, bumblebees—these were all nicknames for marbles. A cat's eye marble, for instance, had central eye-shaped colored inserts or cores injected inside the marble. A devil's eye was red with yellow eye.

Many marble players grew up to be marble collectors. Many treasure the handmade glass marbles produced in Germany between 1865 and 1910. These represented a golden age of marbles---a time when artisans made them one at a time.

Although glass marbles date from Roman times, the invention of the marble scissors in 1846 advanced the technique considerably. An unknown glass-worker in Lausche, a town in the porcelain-making province of Thruingen, Germany, forged a pair of tongs with a cup on one end and a knife blade on the other. He attached the cup with a screw which could be made larger or smaller depending an the size of the marble needed. This invention made it possible to produce round glass marbles in quantity.

For years, collectors have referred to the scar or break mark left by the marble scissors as a "pontil mark.”' However, this isn’t correct. Glassmakers used a pontil rod for making blown glass, not marbles. Depending on the production technique, all antique handmade glass marbles have either one or two pontil marks.

German glass marbles came in a dazzling array of colors, types, and sizes in two large and distinguishable categories—antique cane-cut and individually made. Despite their differences, glassmakers cut marbles in each category with marble scissors.

Antique Cane-Cut Marbles
“Glass cane” has at least two meanings. It refers both to thin, individual threads of transparent opaque or colored glass and to the glass rod produced when combining threads. The Germans performed a similar creative transformation when they produced marbles from glass cane. The result was the "German Swirl."

When the core or cooler portion of a marble was an open network of opaque or colored glass threads, collectors refer to it as a glass latticinio core The number of threads in the delicate interior lattice varied vary from 8 to 40. Cores in red, blue or green are rare today. Close to the surface of the marble and distinct from the core were additional ribbons and swirls of complementary or contrasting colored glass. More than half the German Swirls had latticinio cores.

Solid cores looked like a column of tightly packed and consecutive colored glass threads. There was no clear glass at the core. The core, itself, was a solid color or colors. Divided and ribbon core marbles were subtly different. Most antique divided core swirls resembled a DNA molecule, but with three strands instead of two. Clear glass separated or divided the strands of color. In contrast, ribbon cores had only one or two somewhat wider divisions. Ribbon cores took considerable skill to produce and were rare compared to divided cores. 

Artisans created some German Swirls around a ball of colored glass. The swirl markings had to be bright and near or on the surface in order to be seen. A variation on this theme was the use of opaque glass as the core. Confusion results when the same style name is applied to marbles in both of these categories.  For example, clambroths, gooseberries, and Indians were names given to certain types of colored and opaque glass marbles. Glassmakers usually made the clambroth and gooseberry marbles with two subdued, delicate colors—one color forming the background and the other gently curving around the surface of the marble. Indians were typically black with bright contrasting rainbow colors close to the surface.

Individually Made Marbles 
Although artisans handmade cane-cut marbles, they didn’t make them individually. The marbles cut from the same, elongated, glass cane would certainly share some of the same color, style and core features. But each was not completely one of a kind. Individually made marbles were all unique creations.

Before they left work for the day, glassmakers often fashioned marbles from scraps and chips of canes left behind at the end of production. These marbles were usually large—at least one inch in diameter—then gave them to children in the neighborhood on their way home. "End-of-day" marbles belong to one of the rarest and most sentimental marble categories with prices ranging from $125 for a 1-inch to between $500 and $700 for a 2½  inch. These marbles have a single pontil mark, rather large spots and what looks like a balloon floating just below the marble's surface.

The golden age of German handmade glass marbles began to close as Germany entered World War I. Men and machinery used to produce toys were pressed into service for the war effort. Following the war and up until 1926, American toy catalogs continued to carry "imported glass" German marbles-Production most likely didn’t continue after 1910 primarily because of the perfect symmetry, availability, brilliance and competition of machine made marbles.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.

A Memento of Antarctic Exploration

 

QUESTION: I’m a watch repair person. Recently, a rather unique 24-hour watch came across my counter for a new band. I’ve never seen one like it before and wandered if you could tell me more about it. The dial has what looks like a map of Antarctica on it and all the lettering seems to be in the Russian Cyrillic alphabet. Also, the dial has some writing in red on it.

ANSWER: What you have is what’s known as Russian Raketa Polar Watch.  They’re often described as Raketa watches.

The Petrodvorets Watch Factory, the one that produces Raketa watches, is the oldest in Russia, founded by Peter the Great in 1721. The Nazis destroyed it during the Siege of Leningrad, but the Soviets rebuilt it in 1944. Since 1961, the factory has been producing watches under the brand “Raketa,” meaning “rocket,” in honor of Yuri Gagarin, Russia’s first astronaut and the first person in Space. 

Today, the Petrodvorets Watch Factory, still located in its historic building, is one of the rare watch factories in the world that makes its own movements, including the hair spring, balance wheel, and escapement. In 2009, the company modernized its production with equipment purchased from the Swatch Group in Switzerland.

Often these watches don’t look like Petrodvorets produced them. However, they were often assembled from Raketa parts—probably everything except the dial. Most of the online auction listings say they were "handmade" in Russia. And, for the most part, that’s true. But being part of "Old stock" refers more to the parts than to the complete watch. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, it was common for smaller workshops to produce these watches using Raketa parts. Different Polar, Arctic, and Antarctic models originated from this time. These “fakes” were essentially assembled from whatever parts the makers could find. Supposedly Petrodvorets’ workers during the Soviet Era would produce Raketa watches with modified dials on their own after hours. This continued until 2009, when new owners took over the company.

The majority of Raketa watches were actually produced in the original Petrodvorets factory by original Raketa masters using original Raketa parts. What they modified, if needed, was the dial. These Raketa masters had the tools and knowledge to produce special dial watches.

This watch is one of those special dial watches. It commemorates the first Soviet research  expedition to Antarctica in 1956. But must have been produced after the fact since Yuri Gagarin didn’t go into space until April 12, 1961, if in fact it is a Raketa watch. 

Russian explorers Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev, sailing on the ships Vostok and Mirny, first sighted a continental ice shelf in Antarctica in 1820. The continent, however, remained largely neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its hostile environment, lack of resources, and isolation.

The first Soviet contact with Antarctica came in January 1947 when the Slava whaling flotilla began whaling in Antarctic waters. But it wasn’t until The Soviet Antarctic Expedition, or Sovyetskaya Antarkticheskaya Ekspeditziya, part of the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute of the Soviet Committee on Antarctic Research of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, that the Russians explored the interior of the continent to the South Pole. 

The Soviets established their first Antarctic research station, Mirny, near the coast on February 13, 1956. In December 1957, they built another station, Vostok, inland near the south geomagnetic pole. The Fourth Soviet Antarctic Expedition used three large tractors and four sledges on the journey from Vostok to the South Pole, and it’s this expedition that this watch commemorates. The words in red on the dial state “The Soviet Antarctic Expedition,” or “Sovyetskaya Antarkticheskaya Ekspeditziya” in Russian.

In 1959, twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty, prohibiting military activities and mineral mining, prohibits nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal, supports scientific research, and protects the continent's ecozone. As of today, forty-nine nations have signed the treaty. More than 4,000 scientists from many nations now conduct ongoing experiments in Antarctic life and climate change.

To read more articles on antiques, please visit the Antiques Articles section of my Web site.  And to stay up to the minute on antiques and collectibles, please join the over 30,000 readers by following my free online magazine, #TheAntiquesAlmanac. Learn more about "The Sparkling World of Glass" in the 2021 Winter Edition, online now. And to read daily posts about unique objects from the past and their histories, like the #Antiques and More Collection on Facebook.