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More RecentlyOver six years ago, my sister told me she was buying some collectible type stuff on eBay. I said "eBay????" After a bit of online browsing I discovered hundreds of insulators I had never even seen, available starting at just a few dollars. (US $ of course) Well, that was it, my interest in collecting those funny glass things was rejuvenated. Now, eight years, over 500 eBay transactions, several ICON buys, various worldwide trades, and numerous insulator shows/sales later, my collection is approaching 1,200 pieces from all over the world.
When I first started buying on eBay, I was buying insulators for $3-10 US and paying as much or more to have them mailed to me. After some reflection on the mathematics of my collecting style, I slowly started buying more valuable/expensive insulators on eBay in order to improve the glass to postage ratio. I now have a number of foreign pieces worth $100 and up, most of which I have bought well below book values. Shortly after starting to buy on eBay, I bought the McDougald Reference books (on eBay) and then ordered the Price Guide to go with them. Later I ordered the GIFONA books from Marilyn Albers so I could figure out what I was doing with the foreign glass. I have also purchased a small library of old insulator books as well. They make for very interesting reading.
I joined ICON several years ago, and became a small part of this great big, nutty, collecting family.
My North American glass collection is now "fondly" referred to as the "sea of aqua", a reflection of the predominant colour. I have picked up a nice assortment of carnival pieces, as well as some other nicely coloured pieces. I have managed to add a handful of less common styles to the shelf including a trio of Withycombes (a 121 and two 143s), a 110.5, and a 141. I have a sub-specialty of spools, with about 15 CDs represented. I also collect non-glass/non-porcelain insulators and have examples of wood, rubber, composition, bakelite, plastic, clay and metal types.
My main interest at the present time is in getting Australian and other foreign glass pieces. I have more than 75 from Australia, and in total, insulators from 19 countries besides Canada and USA.
The Australian insulators appeal to me because I can afford to buy fancy coloured glass from Australia that I could never afford in North American pieces. I have all kinds of purples, ambers, and greens from there that would cost hundreds of dollars to try and match in Hemi-19s. Also, there is a much smaller group of them, and it is "almost" possible to get all the CDs and colours. Just like in North America, there are a few rare and uncommon pieces, but the majority of Aussie pieces are available for sale at least once in a while. An example of the colour range, would be the picture I had on my website of all my CD 422s. There were four shades of purple, three shades of green, several grays, plus clear and straw in the group. The entire group probably cost me less than $150. Try to get just one good purple Hemi for that price!
I like the other foreign insulators because their styles are so different than our domestic glass. I have a gingerbread boy and a man, several T-bars, nosers, and even a spook and a robot. These fancy shapes cost more than the average foreign insulator, but they still are far less than the high end coloured pieces from North America. I am trying to get at least one insulator from as many different countries as I can.
Several years ago I started to teach myself HTML coding by building this website to showcase the nicer parts of my collection. This site is the result of my learning efforts. Since then there have been almost 10,000 visitors to the site, with about 30 additional hits each week. The website traffic has resulted in e-mails from all around the world and even a few purchases, deals and trades to add to my collection. This is now the third generation of the website, after a complete overhaul in late 2007.
For a while I was doing a section called "Featured Insulator" to profile in detail a particular insulator or CD. Extra photos, history, availability, embossings, colours, price guide listings, and market place thoughts fill in as much as I know about each one. This eventually ended as I ran out of insulator types that I had enough information on to do a decent writeup. All of the previous Featured Insulator pages are still accessible from the main menu, under 'My Collection'.
Copyright © 2007 - Doug Netzke and Micro Solutions of Sudbury