Seeking hidden but not so buried treasure

"Dealer Wanted", read the subject line of an email I received in September. The writer explained he had inherited some insulators from his father and wished to sell them, "I've got some that are embossed HEMINGRAY and some BROOKFIELD", the email continued.

Not too promising a start, I thought. After exchanging emails a couple of times, the man sent scanned images of his father's handwritten notes about the insulators. While the father listed each insulator, it was obvious he had never heard of CD numbers. He just listed the name embossed on the insulator and the color. 

Generally it was impossible to be sure what was included in the accumulation. But the notes captured my attention when I read, "Box containing 20 purple CALIFORNIA'S in the #20 style." 

Did he mean CD 133 CALIFORNIA'S in purple? They are listed in the price guide at $150 each and up. " Twenty of them?", I asked myself. Suddenly, driving 1,300 miles round trip to view the insulators didn't seem quite so bad. 

HEMINGRAY, MCLAUGHLIN, MAYDWELL and other companies identified their CD 164 shaped insulators as a #20 style. But the CD 164's CALIFORNIA made are not embossed, so the man would not have identified them as "No 20's".

The clincher seemed to be when the collector listed a number of insulators in aqua embossed only "No. 20". "Now those certainly are CD 133's", I told myself as I began planning for a long weekend drive. 

About "oh-dark-thirty" on October 11th, Tim Wood and I left our homes in Western Oregon for the long drive to the Spokane area of Eastern Washington State. Although I had scheduled my visit with the owner, I hadn't had contact with him for several days. And seven hours into our drive I still wasn't able to reach him by phone. But we traveled on, finally making phone contact just a few miles outside his home town. 

In preparation for us, the owner had set out some twenty tattered, old boxes stuffed full of insulators on table tops. The dirty, mouse infested, boxes had been 28 years in storage, based on the fact the insulators were wrapped in newspapers dated 1975.

The first insulator I unwrapped was a CALIFORNIA CD 161 in aqua. The second was also a CALIFORNIA, but one rarely seen. It was the insulator shown at the top of page 40 (below). CD 134 CALIFORNIA'S closely resemble CD 161 's, except they have no inner skirt. They have been recognized as a tough insulator to obtain for more than three decades. 

In 1970, I acquired one for resale. I ended up accepting $120 worth of insulators in trade, plus $60 in cash. By comparison, I sold a near mint CD 123 EC&M CO SF in cobalt blue that same spring for $180.

CALIFORNIA CD 134 
Overlooked and Rare

The CD 134 has no inner skirt, like a CD 133 shown on the right. However, with the broader shaped dome, the134 is often mistaken for a CD 161.

After a twenty year absence from the hobby, I began collecting again in 1997. I wasn't well versed on current prices, and didn't even own a price guide, when I started attending shows again. I remember seeing a CALIFORNIA CD 134 on a sales table priced at $25 and thought to myself, "Hmm... a bunch of these must have been found since I last collected". Just a few months later, at another show, I saw another CD 134 CALIFORNIA on a sales table for $30. After that, for a year or two, I was quite convinced a number of them had surfaced. 

Then, contributors to Insulator Collectors on the Net (ICON) conducted a census of the various tough CALIFORNIA CD's. The result, as I recall, was that only 42 CD 134's could be accounted for.

I then realized the two I had seen on sales tables had been priced low because their owners had not recognized what they were. If collectors noticed the lack of an inner skirt, they might have thought they were CD 133's. Or, if they didn't notice the lack of an inner skirt, the insulators were apt to have been considered CD 161's. Today, CALIFORNIA CD 134's are valued in the Price Guide at $200-$250.

Now, back to Washington State, You can imagine my excitement to find a CALIFORNIA 134 as the second insulator out of a box. "Wow, if only the purple CD 133's are among the hundreds of dirty insulators in all these boxes", I thought. But, they weren't. The 20 purple CALIFORNIA's turned out to be smokey colored CALIFORNIA CD 162's. 

However, we did make another good find in those boxes. While Tim was unwrapping insulators he came across a half dozen amber HG CO CD 162 signals. Two of them are "glowers". The bright orange amber specimens "scream" for attention. Needless to say, I bought the collection. Tim and I ate a late afternoon lunch, and headed for home. The long, long road to Spokane will be full of memories for years to come.

Tim Wood cleans one of the treasures from the "California hunt"