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Pottery and Cookie Jar Collectibles

A picture guide to modern, vintage and antique cookie jars and the companies who made them, along with values, sizes and history. Find that elusive jar, put a value on the jar you already have or start a new collection!

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Barbara's Collectibles Blog

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday July 8, 2009

The name on this contraption was purposely blurred - it would have given it away! So what do you think this was used for?

Add your guess in the comment.

Last week's Mystery Antique and Answer.

Customer Service - Good, Bad and Indifferent

Monday July 6, 2009
I was just chatting on the phone with a collector who was not happy with an online auction company. It appears that after the sale is over, they are too busy to send the stuff out in a timely manner. And in fact apparently too busy to politely answer questions when a customer calls about their winning bids.

What's happened to customer service? It doesn't matter what the economic temperature of the country is - customer service should still be one of the most important things driving a company, be it an auction house, department store or online store.

In the past few months I've had amazing examples on both ends of the spectrum. For instance I tried to buy an item at an online mall, tried at least four times to buy said item. No I didn't want a discount. I was willing to pay full price, but I after an initial email from seller, he no longer responded to my putting the item in my "shopping cart" and trying to pay. When I emailed the owner of the mall, I was more or less told they had no control over what a seller does in that regard. At least my money wasn't taken, so I guess I should count myself lucky.

Meanwhile I bought my husband a Kindle DX for his birthday, after one week the faceplate was cracked! I then found out that the official case/holder that is sold by Amazon is faulty and is known to crack the Kindle DX. No, it didn't hurt the workings, just the cosmetic outside. But I was extremely annoyed to say the least. I emailed Amazon customer service on Friday, July 3rd in the evening. Within an hour they responded and asked me to call. We now have a Kindle DX and case on the way, next day shipping and we have several weeks to get the broken one back to them before incurring any additional charges. Now that's customer service!

What's your story about customer service? Tell us folks you've been pleased with and folks that you'll never deal with again.

Have a Happy Fourth!

Saturday July 4, 2009
Although we don't celebrate or get as crazy as a lot of folks do, we have our certain traditions on the Fourth of July. A few blocks away is our town's annual parade, followed by a day of fun at the nearby park with a car show, music, craft booths and lots of food. Fireworks top the evening and if we're lazy, we can sit in front of our house and see most of them (over the trees). But no fireworks displays top the fun we had several years ago. When we visited NYC, my son scored an invite to a party in a building in midtown Manhattan. It was quite the experience, a picnic in a high-rise office building and when the fireworks started we could see at least three different fireworks displays in lower Manhattan -- gives me chills to remember it all.

If you like beautiful animated cards, here's a special card for you!

Shown is a Ben Franklin Cookie jar, a limited edition offered by Strawbridge and Clothier, made by Treasure Craft.

More of my patriotic favorites include glass ornaments that fill a tree from May through August, a patriotic crock jar, a Williraye Folk Art Uncle Sam jar, an Uncle Sam Bust jar and an M & M jar with red and blue candies making up the flag!

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday July 1, 2009

Although this is obviously some type of hammer - the question is what was it used for? This is another antique piece that has a very specific use and the items seen around the tool are not part of it and in fact are in the glass case below. The tool handle is approximately 30" long

The ANSWER

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