Dear Jack:                             

I found this interesting porcelain insulator in an antique shop here in New England and could not find a U- number for it.                           

It's similar to the U-344A but is a Skirt Rest type instead of extended petticoat.                                                      

The crown is more flat and also larger. It has a heavy MLOD, and the indentation in top of the pin hole as on many Pittsburg High Voltage insulators. Very fine brown glaze. Would be interested in learning more on this insulator.
John DeSousa, 
Bloomfield, CT

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Dear John:

A great find. All the other "wide hats" as made by PHV and all other companies are extended-petticoat types, so we're adding this new one to the Universal Style Chart as U-344B. I made the above drawing (1/2 size here) from your dimensional data and on the assumption this was made in the same forming molds as their standard #58 but with a different petticoat jiggering file. I have specimens of the Pittsburg No. 58 (Sim U-344A), and their contour is as shown above.

Would be interesting to find out if any other readers have ever turned up one of these. Anyone specializing in Pittsburg insulators would sure love to land one of these.

Jack

Dear Jack:

We would like some info concerning a marking on an insulator. Our youngest daughter has gotten interested in collecting and in two short weeks has accumulated some that have taken us two years to acquire, Ah, blond youth!

She stopped by today with a U-705 Locke which has the Locke #7 marking in your book but also with a P aside the normal marking. We went thru mine hurriedly and found a larger cable, but it has a B by the normal trademark. What do the letters P and B on these mean?

Borrowed a book on porcelains by Gerald Brown and found it real interesting. Have many illustrated in his book. Can't believe the prices on them. Are they for real or just a guide?

I would like foreign insulators. Any place you could suggest we might acquire them?
Pauline Ingersoll, 
St. Petersburg, Fla.

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Dear Pauline:

Yes, Locke Insulator Mfg. Co. did occasionally use factory code letters with these #7 markings (1922-1928) and also with the earlier "VICTOR" markings. The "B" is the one most commonly seen with the #7 marking. Similarly, other companies used various types of code markings for different reasons. From factory records and talking with older plant employees, we've decoded about half these scribbles; the other half will probably remain mysteries.

All the evidence seems to indicate these Locke codes on skirts of small pin types are for trimmer operator identification. Pinco and Lapp also used skirt letters for the same purpose.

Yes, Gerald's various books are excellent for general reference, and I know of no collector who would be caught without them. However, the prices in them are definitely not for real. I suggest you ignore them and just use the books for their other benefits. (See separate article on pricing porcelains, end of this month's column.)

To get some foreign porcelains, discover the fantastic pulling power of CJ classifieds. I'm sure many collectors have them to swap or sell.

Jack

Dear Jack:

... Also I would like the address of where I can order patent copies, plus information they need. You printed this about a year ago, but I couldn't find it.
Michael Johnson, 
Geneva, Ill.

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This was in the January 1975 Crown Jewels page 20. For the benefit of newer subscribers, we'll repeat it.

Address: Commissioner of Patents, Washington, DC 20231

Send either (1) the patent number, or (2) the full name of the inventor, approximate date the patent was issued and a description or name of the patented item. The price is $.50 for each patent copy ordered.

Don't hold your breath waiting to receive them. It takes from one to three months to receive copies.

PRICING PORCELAIN INSULATORS

Pricing glass insulators is relatively straight forward, since there are only about 3,000+ different ones counting the collectable unipart and multipart pin types, foreign and U.S., threadless, guy strains and miscellaneous. That includes all known combinations of style, color and marking variations!

Porcelains are a different kettle of fish. We have approximately 950 uniparts (so far) in the Universal Style Chart. If you consider all the possible combinations of style (shape), color and marking, there could be 50,000 different porcelain uniparts (U.S. only).

If you wanted to add all the multiparts, the small ones to gigantic ones, the very old to the very modern, that's another 50,000 possible combinations.

It would be impossible to print, much less lift, a book which attempted to price all the known porcelain insulators, not to mention the endless stream of new ones that turn up every day as collectors search all the back corners. And there is no person, or even a committee of people, who could arrive at prices which would approach the median of all parties buying or selling insulators.

There must be some good way to approach the pricing of porcelains, but thus far we haven't been able to get our hands on it. From studying the failings of our past attempts, I have some ideas to a new approach, and work is being done on that at this time. The following paragraphs describe some of the approaches attempted thus far.

In my book, "Porcelain Insulators Guide Book for Collectors", I attempted to offer a method which would allow any unipart pin type to be priced by considering the only four factors which make insulators of interest to the collector -- the style (shape), the color, condition, the rarity or desirability of the marking.

The method involved setting a base value for any given style (U- number) on the assumption of it being a mint specimen of the most common color and most common marking. Then charts were given to indicate just how much better the insulator was if it had a more desirable color or a rarer marking.

The system worked beautifully -- in principle! Even an inexperienced collector could take any given pile of pin types and compute prices for each that were always right on the button.

But there was a flaw. It was too complicated for the average person. Even dedicated porcelain buffs who gave it a good try threw in the towel when they came to the place requiring some addition or multiplication. People with a more casual need for pricing specimens took one look at the pricing in my book and never even attempted to understand it.

I have had no end of criticism of the pricing method in my book, and I'm sure most of this criticism is just. I tried to be idealistic with a system which gives perfect results, but the problem is some collectors would not make an effort to understand the basically simple system.

What we really need then is a book about 20 feet thick where, with a suitable index, a collector could ultimately turn to a page with a full size, color photo of his particular insulator specimen, same color, same marking, same condition, etc. Under this photo should be a price printed in 30-point type, preferably at least $50 for any insulator in the book.

I still believe my approach was correct in that any insulator could be priced considering the three factors of importance (assuming mint) -- style, color, marking.

But it would have to be done on a much more simple method than I set forth in my book.

Frances M. Terrill in her book, "Porcelain Insulators Photographed & Priced", did come up with the best approach thus far. Each item is shown with super-clear photos and with a word description. A price followed. The prices throughout are fairly realistic, but a number of the more common items (not all of them) tend to be priced a little on the high side. Of lesser consequence, several of the more rare items are priced too low; hopefully Frances sold this book to a number of antique stores we frequent!

But I still highly recommend this book to anyone who has a casual interest in porcelains. It is especially suitable to people who have no knowledge of or interest in porcelains and just need a book to guide them in what are the goodies and what are the nogoodniks. Even though the book lists only several hundred different porcelains of all types, it is possible to relate given specimens to similar ones illustrated and arrive at a ballpark guess in value.

The book has limited value as a pricing tool for active or advanced porcelain collectors because it illustrates a relatively small percentage of the rarer insulators -- the many -unusual insulator styles, the many rarer markings. It is well worth its $3 price on all other counts.

Gerald Brown's various books are positively indispensable reference tools for any porcelain collector, and I'm sure there is no active collector who does not use them constantly for reference as I do, However, the pricing in them is valueless. Actually, because of the severity of the errors on both the low side and high side, more harm than good will result by attempting to use the price guides in his books.

Gerald uses an incremental price code for each item, - wherein each increment is a $5 increase in value. This is completely inflexible in the price range of 95% of all the porcelain insulators that are illustrated. With the first increment (1 star) representing all values from zero to $5, it is impossible to indicate that a given $3 item is three times better than a $1 item -- or thirty times better than a $.10 item.

The more serious harm that arises from this guide is the gross overpricing of common to nearly worthless items -- a complete disdain for the welfare of fellow collectors who might use this guide in their dealings. There are numerous $.50 to $2 insulators priced with two stars ($5 to $10 value). There are even nail knobs ($.10 items) priced with three stars ($10 to $15 value)!

Although of less serious consequence, there are some items underpriced. For instance, the U-189A (a $75 item mint) is shown as a three-star value ($10 to $15). Would you trade your U-189A for a nail knob, also rated by Gerald as a three-star value?

So there you have it, the difficulties of the neophyte porcelain collector trying to determine porcelain values. It isn't really a problem for advanced or very active porcelain collectors who know the goodies when they see them and how much they are worth -- and summarily ignore all published price guides anyway.

Is the beginner then at the mercy of the other fellow when he starts to buy or sell something? No, unless he is either in a hurry, or too indifferent to really care.

Any collector who does desire to learn a little about the values of porcelains can't help but get a quick and reasonably accurate education by just observing the price stickers on show tables and by scanning the various ads in Crown Jewels where items are sold competitively.

If you just look at the insulators in your own collection, in the collections of others, in the exhibits, on the show tables, you very quickly learn what everyone else has in abundance or what no one else has been able to locate and consequently may have high value.

You soon learn that absolute rarity has positively no bearing on porcelain prices. What does count is absolute desirability! Even a unique specimen of a large, modern, brown cable made by Ohio Brass might never sell with a $1 sticker at any show. No one wants it.

Yet you could sell cobalt blue Roman Helmets at $20 a clip as fast as you could wrap them even if you showed up with a trailer load of them. Everyone wants it.

This kind of thing then leads to some generalizations which help greatly in making horseback guesses on porcelain insulator values. Regardless of what price guides you may have seen, let your own intuition assist you in deciding reasonable price ranges for various items.

If the insulator is a very ordinary-looking brown pin type, either unmarked or from a big company, chances are it's a $1 to $2 item at best. As opposed to glass pin types, largeness is more of a liability than an asset.

Practically all the special purpose pin types (mines, transpositions, eared cables, fog bowls, etc.) have more than minimal values. Even common varieties without special color or rare markings are in the $5 to $10 range. Some of the tougher ones to find are worth two to three times that, and there are a few very rare ones worth considerably more.

Any pin types with special glaze colors (blue, green, yellow, mustard etc.) are considered desirable items, and even common styles in "color" are $3 to $5 items. Any of the special styles in "colors" are uncommon and can be worth a considerable premium over the common-colored ones.

Virtually all the very early items made by Imperial, Thomas and Fred M. Locke are desirable items. And in this particular case, largeness may enhance the value.

In the case of porcelain insulators other than pin types, you will soon learn that not having a threaded pin hole for use on crossarm pins is two strikes against any potentially high value for the specimen. There are some exceptions in the case of very old specimens or highly unusual gadgets of known usage, but these are few. Miscellaneous equipment bushings and the like are very pretty items that make nice go-withs, but the average collector will not pay a high price for "oddballs".

All forms of wiring insulators and various "standard porcelain" items are real fun items to collect and usually involve more interesting histories than ordinary pin type insulators, but their collector value is very low. The exceptions are unusual "patented" forms of special knobs and cleats. Anyone collecting these small insulators is liable to pay substantial premiums for unusual, rare ones they do not have in their collections.

If you are a beginning collector or a noncollector needing help in pricing specimens, keep in mind that any collector knowledgeable in porcelains will always be quick to assist you in valuing insulators. If you are buying (or selling) insulators at a show and need a price check on any insulator, check with some other party before you make the purchase or sale.

Lastly, keep in mind that if you yourself are happy with the purchase you just made, that's what counts. Some insulators may turn me on to the extent of $20, but you wouldn't want them for $2 -- or vice versa. It reminds me of the time when I bought an item and commented to my buddy as we walked away about "how I really stole that goody for only $12"-- only to overhear the dealer behind me telling his buddy how he "really took that pigeon with that piece of junk he just sold for $12". If both buyer and seller are that happy about the deal, the price must have been o.k. -- regardless of what any price guide said.