Evaluation Guidelines.html

SALT SHAKER EVALUATION GUIDELINES

          Below are just a few guidelines to help as a yard stick in establishing a fair evaluation of a desired shaker if presented with the opportunity to whether to purchase or not. Others may apply but a few are as follows:

1.       Some roughness and minor chipping under the tops of salt and pepper shakers is not necessarily a basis for lowering value. This is because most of the shakers are mold blown and were taken off the pontil rod at the top. This manufacturing technique left roughness and chips which were usually not polished out by the manufacturing glasshouse because they were considered to hidden from view by the shaker tops.

2.       A little chipping or roughness on the bottom of a shaker, if not readily seen when displayed may result in a devaluation of a shaker's worth. (sometimes ten percent). Remember, salt shakers were often pounded on their bottom due to a tenancy of salt becoming hard and encrusted.

3.       At times, old glass shakers will have rough mold lines. This tends to be somewhat common as a manufacturing flaw, and is not cause for devaluation of a shaker's worth.

4.       In the instance of hand painted (fired-on) decorations, it is difficult to find one with its decoration in an almost perfect (mint) condition, because of all of the constant use at meals and eventual washings they received. Many of the soaps used during the this era were quite abrasive and usually resulted in some wear to the different types of applied decorations . The rule is, as long as the decorations are not totally removed, it more than likely should have little basis for devaluating a shaker, but should be looked at on an item-by-item basis.

          As always, a particular shaker's value should be arrived at only after taking into consideration the following: condition, type and quality of glass, collectability, color and scarcity factors.