I had to share Edmond Braun's Walgreen's ID card. The pictures of the dishes will have to wait until I go back to the Yosemite house as they are residing there at the moment.
My biggest collection was inspired by my Aunt Helen. My Mother's sister. She had a set of Anchor Hocking Fire King Jadite when I was a little kid and I just thought it was the greatest stuff ever. It was the first dinnerware that could go in the oven, but I liked it because I just loved the color. The history of this stuff is kind of interesting. They made it in three patterns Alice, Jane Ray, and Diner Ware. When I was still pretty young, I started seeing it in estate sales and antique stores and just started buying every piece I found. One time when we were going to Mexico for me to do some research, and we were in this dusty little border town in Texas where everybody looked like extras from "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly". Just as we were about to cross the border into Mexico, I spotted a junk shop and one of the voices in my head said, "Alto Aqui..Oye, Gringo Alto Aqui." It's a good thing I understand Spanish because, geeze...what a Jadite haul!!! Half of the shop of Jadite and the dude was really happy to get rid of it. OK, yeah, it made navigating the Mexican roads a little more nervewracking than usual, but, again....SCORE!!! What makes it interesting is that over a period of about 10 years I had amassed a significant collection when it wasn't considered collectable yet. Then, HRH Martha Stewart decided that she also liked it (which only slightly diminished my appreciation of it). She scammed some of a woman and decorated her set with it and suddenly my amassed boxes became a valuable collection.
