Brian Parkinson
One of the great joys of collecting cookie jars is the hunt. Nothing gets the heart beating faster than seeing a long sought after jar tucked away in the corner of an antique store or sitting on a kitchen counter at an estate sale.
Recently we joined other collectors and dealers on a hunt at an estate sale about three hours from our home in southern California. Unlike the majority of estate sales, this one allowed you to sign up early to hold your place in line but there was a catch. There always is. The sign up list went up at 12 midnight but you couldn't leave and come back the next morning for the sale. You had to stay with your car, parked on the street, except for one 30-minute run in order to fetch coffee or find a bathroom and they did monitor the cars and the people who signed up at midnight. If you left and didnŐt come back within the prescribed time, your name was scratched off the list.
So why did we go? Because we saw in one of the online pictures a portion of a blue bow that had to be a Shawnee Muggsy, and after confirming with the company handling the estate sale that there were over sixty cookie jars being offered, we knew we had to join the hunt.
My partner Gary and I arrived at the location at 11:20pm and when the list went up, we were numbers ten and eleven on the list. We had brought along pillows and blankets but two six-foot tall middle-aged men aren't going to find comfort in a Saturn Ion coupe, no matter how hard we tried. As it was a humid night, we left the windows down and at 3am we enjoyed a free shower compliments of the sprinkler system of the home where we had parked our car.
By 4am, there were already sixty-six people signed up on the list and when dawn broke, we were finally able to see the surrounding area and our fellow hunters. Although there were streetlights lining the street, not a single one was on. Emblazoned on the gate of the home where the estate sale was being held was "Tara" and sure enough, the home behind the gates was a miniature version of the famous mansion from the film "Gone with the Wind." In fact, the entire neighborhood had thematic homes. Across the way was a Mediterranean villa, next door a South Seas estate and further down the street another huge home styled after the famous Greek Acropolis. What a setting for an estate sale.
By 7am, the list had passed 150 names and cars were parked blocks down the street. We mingled and chatted with fellow collectors trying to determine who was our competition. We met button collectors, vintage toy collectors, and many owners of antique stores along with hardcore eBay sellers. We determined there were at least three other cookie jar collectors, but they were further down the list than we were so our chances looked good.
At 7:30 they lined us up according to our names on the list and gave us final instructions not to run, push, punch, grab, or steal. Precisely at 8am they opened the gates and allowed the first twenty-five people down the hedge lined path to the open front doors. I didn't run, but I'm six foot three and can stride past the best of them, even if my legs were still cramping from their night spent in a shoe boxed sized car. As I passed an employee from the estate sale company, I quietly asked directions to the kitchen and then made my way up the front steps through the doors past a grand staircase and into a dining room where I could see in the reflection of a mirror the treasures we were seeking.
I could hear footsteps and panting behind me, so I quickened my stride and reached the cookie jar laden table first. As it turned out, the panting was coming from Gary, who started placing cookie jars into our boxes as if possessed. We didn't check condition, as we knew we could do that later in a holding area. We just grabbed and placed the jars in our boxes and about our feet. By the time we had sixteen cookie jars on the ground, two collectors had made it to the table. Their sighs told us we had already taken those jars they were seeking, but that didn't stop one determined collector from trying to reach for the Muggsy. Politely, but firmly, she was told the jar was sold.
"How much was it?" she inquired.
"Forty dollars," I replied, raising myself to my full six foot three height to indicate she would need more than herself to wrestle the jar away from me.
Then the real fun began. We had to take each jar from the kitchen to the holding area, circumnavigating what had now become a crazed mass of overly tired and anxious buyers. It was chaotic. But we did manage to get all sixteen jars to a holding table past broken pieces of china and one poor lady who had slipped and fallen on a small set of steps. As she was already being helped, I didn't stop. Besides, it could have been a diversionary tactic.
We carefully inspected all jars and ended up taking nine back to the kitchen, as their condition was not up to our standards. But we still had to get seven cookie jars and two salt and pepper sets to the check out table past the front doors, across a long veranda, and down six steps to the check out tent all the while avoiding Grand Central Station type crowds.
I carried the first two jars to the check out tent but now had to figure out how to guard the jars in the tent and at the holding table. Gary was now 200 yards away from me and that one lady collector was buzzing about him, even though she knew the jars he was guarding were sold. Determined collector, that one. One of the ladies we had chatted with before the sale started came to the rescue and between the three of us we guarded and carried until all of our items had been placed in the check out tent and had been paid for. Then one by one we took turns taking them out to our car. When the last jar had made it safely into our car, we leaned back on the trunk and watched in amazement the scene before us. I can only describe it as if one were watching a colony of army ants flowing in and out of their hill. Some carrying items, others scurrying about in search of treasurers, and yet more pressed hard against the front gates still trying to get in.
When the dust had settled, we had in our car the Shawnee Muggsy ($40), McCoy's Boy on a Baseball ($12), Kitten in Basketweave and Dog in Basketweave ($25), a Metlox Mammy ($55), a Sierra Vista/Starnes Froggy Goes a Courtin' ($12), a Brayton Laguna Mammy ($65), and two sets of Muggsy salt and pepper shakers. One plain, one gold ($8 each).
It was a successful, exhausting, exhilarating hunt that we will never forget. Would we drive for three hours and sleep in our car again just to buy some cookie jars? You bet! Because it is this type of magical, crazy adventure that makes collecting cookie jars so much fun and so worthwhile.
