# I believe I found a very rare Ball Mason.



## Jumpinrocks (Jul 17, 2015)

Hi there, I'm new to forum and this is my first post. I'm out of Bellingham WA and am just getting into estate searching and reselling yada yada. I had this old collection of bottles from way back when that I was just about to trade to a friend in the business when he pointed out to me some things that would be worth my while to look into. This bottle has some interesting features.There is no "perfect"The 5 on bottom is backwardsThe last L on Ball is dropped,The bottom of B has no hook on it,and the top of bottle where the top was applied appears to have maybe been offset on accident and seems almost to have 6 molds all applied together. Am I seeing things or is this extremely rare like maybe a prototype or an unusual error? Thanks for your input in advance,Jumpinrocks


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## cowseatmaize (Jul 18, 2015)

I think this is what you have. I never fully grasped the meaning but maybe it will help. "   In 1896 Ball purchased from the United States Glass Company the patent rights to the Arbogast patent
for $10,000, quite a bit of money for the time.  The Arbogast patent called for the use of "forced air" into the jar cavity or mold to form the jar.
   Frank C. Ball took this and with some modifications made the FC Ball machine which was granted a patent
on September 6th, 1898. This machine also used the forced air to form the jar, it had a rotating table
which allowed the operators to make 5 jars in a series, each mold pair set had three pieces, the neck ring mold, the solid blank mold and the finish mold.
   As the table was rotated it came to the stage that the "neck ring mold" was screwed onto the top of the solid blank mold, before being rotated to the station that actually blew the molten glass into the mold. The molten glass was placed into the blank mold before this was done.
  Now 99.9% of the time the mold seams did not align on these two sections and hence you have a gap between the body and the neck ring finish seams.  It is unique to this machine and it is how jars made on this machine are identified."


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## botlguy (Jul 18, 2015)

What you have is very common, in my opinion, and worth very little. There are dozens of variations of this jar. This is a Shoulder seal jar which preceded the Bead seal jars which were embossed Perfect Mason. A Ball Jar specialist MAY find something wonderful about this specific jar but I don't see it. I sincerely hope someone can give you better news / information...                   Jim


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## coreya (Jul 18, 2015)

what you have is a # 234 in the red book. These are circa 1900 to 1910 and in clear (hard to tell with your photo background) are a bit harder to find but fairly common overall as billions were made. The 5 on the bottom is a mold number and there are hundreds to thousands of variations of these, the embossing being done by hand have thousands of variations. The clear quarts list in red book 9 at between 20 and 40 but depending on where you are and how badly someone wants it that can go from 1 or 2 bucks to whatever the market will bear.If there is any tinge of color in the glass its not *clear.*


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## RED Matthews (Jul 18, 2015)

To some one>  i would like to get a Red Book - latest edition. I guess Eric  cam help ,me.  RED M.


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## coreya (Jul 19, 2015)

Red here is the link you can order direct from the author.http://redbookjars.com/just click on the big red book.


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