Ball Perfect Mason Drpd A no slash

[whiskeyman]

saw a Ball blue pint one of these today...Ball Perfect Mason with dropped "A" and no underscore. Redbook 10 notes a quart, value $25-35...but no pints are listed.[/align]This pint had an inner mouth bruise, hidden by the lid, but no other damage.[/align]Any ideas on it's resale value? It's kind of pricey for a Ball jar and I'd dislike getting stuck with it...[/align]

 

[cookie]

Hi- I'd be a liitle hesitant to go after one of those with a bruise...I think the prices on some of the Ball Perfect Masons are a little over valued...this is one of them....John

 

[whiskeyman]

Thanks, JOHN.

 

[bobclay]

Hi guys,

RB9 shows these as #279-5 with both blue pints and quarts valued at $20-$25. I don't know why pints were not included in RB10 as they are the most commonly seen of these by far, and they're still scarce jars. I've seen quarts of these routinely sell for $50 and better. But, in good condition. Like John says, paying RB prices for a damaged jar is risky for resale.

Sometimes very minor differences in the embossing can make a tremendous difference to collectors that specifically collect Ball jars. This is one of those cases because we 'think' these jars represent a transition between the 1910-1923 and 1923-1933 script styles. The 1923-1933 script style eliminated both the underscore and the dropped a altogether so we think these would have been produced in the early 20s as they (Ball) were thinking about changing the script. We see this evolution in script change (dropped a but Ball not underscored) in both the advertising and Blue Books and even on the cardboard boxes of the period, but seldom on the jars themselves.

As far as I know, there are only 3 time frames Ball used this "dropped 'a' no underscore" script. The first usage was c1909-1910 when they added this type of script above "THE Mason" (making the reworked mould Ball THE Mason jars) when Ball acquired the company in Coffeyville, KS. The second usage was on these PERFECT MASON pint and quarts around 1920 sometime and also on some of the IDEAL jars. (I've seen the blue quart IDEAL sell for over $100) And the last time they used this script style was on the reworked Drey PERFECT MASON jars after Ball acquired Schram in 1925.

In some cases, the Redbook is (or seems) either over valued or undervalued. To a normal jar collector, this wouldn't justify a premium for such a minor difference. But to a Ball jar collector that may have looked specifically for any of these variations for years, they understand which ones are the scarcest and toss the book prices out the window. Not all of them are scarce but some of them really are. Next few times you're out jar hunting, look through a bunch of Perfect Mason jars and see if you run across this interesting variant. []

Bob

 

[Digswithstick]

HI , Wondering value on green jar on right// atlas masons patent // has two 1/4" chips on bottom where side glass went below base between mold if that makes any sense ? thanks ! Digswithstick whoops should have been new post sorry i will try not to let it happen again