No doubt one of the thrills of collecting involves a rare find, a bargain priced item, or the discovery of a previously unheard of piece. That kind of "high" can keep you floating for a few days! But, there are also the lows -- just missed items, deals worked on for a long time only to fall through, and the like. This article is a collection of vignettes involving the ups and lows of collecting -- the "highs" and "lows". And yes, friends....there are million stories in the naked city...these all happened to me!

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An acquaintance of mine who collects telephones and signs promised to keep an eye out for threadless for me. He knows of one older gentleman who had a "dark" one. I reminded him to check it out a number of times over many months. He never had occasion to do so. Then, one Sunday I got a call. The old man had passed away and my pal had attended the auction of his estate. "Yeah, Morgan....that dark threadless...it was a purple one...it sold for $300. No, I didn't bid on it because it had a crack." GROAN!! Why didn't you call?! !#@!!

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Stopped into a country antique store. Over one hundred and fifty insulators displayed on barn beams, shelves, bushel baskets and the floor. A quick look-see revealed no stand out color, just a sea of aqua. "How much for the insulators?" I asked. "Dollar apiece." I looked them all over, found one, paid for it, and walked out the door whistling. In my hand was the only threadless in the bunch, a mint blue aqua CD 731. YES!

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On the way home from a road trip one fall day, I pulled into a combination antique/junk store. Lots of common insulators on the shelves, not to mention a couple of shopping carts filled with Dominion-42's. I talked with the owner --

 "Do you ever get any threadless insulators?" 
"Yes, but I keep all those at home."
"Really? How many have you got?"
"Well, about 30 or 35. Lots of different colors, too."

 I tried to maintain my cool. I gave him my card and my pitch about being a very serious collector. 

"Well, I'm going south for the winter. Give me a call in the spring." 

He gave me his home phone number. He happened to live in the same town as my in-laws do. Early that spring we were visiting my wife's folks. I gave the fellow a call.

"Oh, yes, I remember you...! sold them two weeks ago...can you imagine, a fellow gave me fifty dollars each and took them all!" GR-R-R-R-R!

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Dropped into a nostalgia dealer's shop -- a regular stop every time I'm in that city. Never purchased an insulator from him, but over the years bought a few nice signs. After some insulator talk, a picker who had been listening said, 

"I just saw a blue threadless a couple of days ago...the guy has 150 insulators and wants $200 for the lot."

Of course I realized that "blue" means aqua to many folks.

"Was it a light blue?" I asked. 
"No-real dark." 

He didn't remember the name of the store so I couldn't obtain a phone number. The place was 60 miles away. I decided it was worth the gamble. I got directions and jumped in the truck immediately!

I arrived at a semi-antique second hand store. Sure enough, displayed on shelves in a rear window was a wide assortment of mostly common threaded glass and one threadless. Not wanting to be saddled with a large quantity of stuff, I made him an offer. I chose four insulators and said, "I'll give you $150 for these." He said O.K. I chose a mint clear 1678 with sharp drips, a low dome 1678 purple, a mint purple Brookfield signal, plus the threadless, of course. Oh -- what was the threadless? An indigo CD 719!!! YOW! I was smiling' so hard on the drive back my face was hurtin'!

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I placed an ad in the local paper while out of town, I work there about every couple of months. I got a call from a fellow who was a contractor. He had bulldozed up three threadless, plus he had accumulated a bunch of threaded ones too. All three threadless were "black." "Lots of those Dominion-42's -- clear ones, but one is a real nice blue". However, he was too busy to see me that weekend, so I made a point of calling next time I came to town. He was friendly, but again, too busy working. This went on for over a year. I expressed my concern and assured him I was serious. "Don't worry, they'll be here. I won't sell 'em to anyone else." On one occasion he was coming to Toronto and told me he would bring them by. He never showed. Well, folks, my last call was answered by his wife. "Oh, you're the fellow after those 'conductors.' My husband sold them all last week."

Maybe I wasn't aggressive enough? Excuse me, while I load my shotgun!

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Saw an ad in the paper while I was out west on tour. "Glass insulators, $1.00 each." I called to ask if they were all the same. "No, there are lots of different ones." I drove there to check it out and was happy to see six milk crates filled with Diamond 102' s, after sorting through them all I found two mustard yellows! I was happy, but I got happier when the elderly couple selling them told me that their son had dropped them off and he had over 5000 more back on his farm in Saskatchewan. Well, I got his number and arranged to stop there on the return trip home. Meanwhile, my mind was reeling. Let's see, 2 yellows in 300 means 30-40 in 5000... WOW!...at $100 apiece...! began to have fantasies of payin' off the mortgage! 

We arrived in a tiny town in Saskatchewan and met the farmer. He led us to a big old wheat field. There, we found rusty buckets filled with water and ponies. Lots of buckets. Lots of water. Lots of frost pops. And lots of hungry mosquitoes! I had, of course, enlisted my good buddies in the band to help me look through this massive quantity of glass, with a hefty reward for every yellow one found, of course. Well, folks, we were a couple of hours out there, gettin' eaten up real bad 'cause we were the only folks in the province fool enough to be hang in' around a wheat field at sundown. We were sportin' a few cuts by now too...and guess what...not one more yellow in the whole pile! 

Ah, well, you gotta dream!

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A bottle digger friend told me the tale of an adventure he and two friends had digging a farm dump near the old Grand Trunk Railway line. On this particular dig they unearthed one aqua CD 742 and two CD 719's -- one green and one MAUVE. Each of them took one insulator and my friend got the CD 742. I pestered him for the names of the other fellows, neither one was an insulator collector. One lived nearby. I saw his beautiful forest green CD 719 and though he didn't want to sell it, I made him an offer. The other fellow had moved out west. I wrote him and arranged to see him on my next tour in the summer. Well, he had a threadless -- an aqua M.T.CO. "What happened to the purple one?" I asked. He face froze. He muttered something about a love affair gone wrong and didn't want to talk further about it. "Stolen?" I asked. "Yep," he answered.

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Rob Lloyd and I had been working the lines for a week solid. Sleeping in the truck, up at dawn, walking and scouting and digging and raking and dropping exhausted at the end of each day. We were working prime territory, but all we had found were Dwights, Canadian Pacifics, and a Gisborne or two. On the morning of our last day we found a couple of threadless shards -- Rob had found a shiny dome chunk of a purple CD 726. This kinda fired us up to say the least! Finally, as the week closed, we chose one last spot, and it happened to be within 100 miles of the old Foster Brothers factory. We had about two hours before dark. We were three poles in from the road when I walked up to a recently cut pole surrounded by freshly upturned earth. As I rounded the pole I spied a dark CD 740 dome sticking out of the ground. Probably just the dome, I said to myself, heart racing. I pulled it from the ground and flipped out when an almost mint, shiny No Name CD 740 was in my hand. And it was a variant I didn't have yet! What a perfect end to a great trip!

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I was shooting the breeze with an antique dealer friend of mine when he suddenly remembered that he knew a lady who had a "red" threadless. Trying to keep my jaw off the floor, I asked him to arrange a meeting with me. "Oh, I'll see her at the show coming up next month." I insisted he call her. "Don't worry she's had it for years -- she won't sell it before then;" I checked with him after the show. "I didn't see her," he reported. Again I asked him to call her and offered him a finder's fee. "No, I'll see her soon enough." Months passed. I checked him regularly. Then, one day I learned that a friend of mine had purchased a purple M.T.Co. that had been freshly bought in Canada. By that time the dealer had checked with the lady. JUST SOLD!! 

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I attended a small local antique show of twenty dealers or so. After a thorough perusal of the tables turned up no insulators, I began to chat with a bottle dealer about threadless. An older gent was nearby and overheard us,

"I've got one of those threadless insulators." 
"Oh really," I said. "Does it have any embossing?" 
"Yes, I believe it says Dominion Telegraph Company."

Well, over the years I've heard so many inaccurate descriptions, I thought he probably had a Dominion-42.

"Where is it embossed?" I asked. 
"On the base," he said. 

My heart stopped. I remembered reading the segment in Colin McIntosh's book, Canadian Insulators: "Insulators used by this company are only known by here-say at this time. They are supposed to be embossed D.T. or D.T.C. and I imagined at least some of them are threadless. More information and the insulators themselves will perhaps be located in the years to come." 

That book had been written almost twenty years ago. No examples had yet been found. 

"Is it for sale?" 
"I don't think so. I bought it about twelve years ago. I was looking through a barrel of insulators and it was the only threadless -- I paid two dollars for it!" 
"Can I have a look at it sometime?"
"Sure. I'm leaving the show right now."

 Vikki and I followed him to his house. Between us we had a little over $300. What if it did exist? What if he decided to sell??

We arrived at his home and it turned out that he had worked for Dominion Glass Company for over 30 years. He began to drag out boxes of paperweights, lightning rod balls, glass canes, chains, and whimsies. He had early Roman glass as well. Wow! We sat for three hours, totally fascinated. I learned so much about glassmaking. Finally, a cardboard box of loose, unwrapped insulators came out. He handed me a CD 742. It was hazy (dug) with two large flakes from wire groove to the base. I turned it over. The embossing was strong and undamaged. "D.T.Co." I was stunned. I held in my hands the first example of this insulator known to the hobby. He spoke to me. 

"You know, you seem really interested in these old insulators. You can have it for thirty dollars." 

I thanked him profusely and drove home in a dreamlike state.