Post #359825 by TabooDan on Thu, Feb 7, 2008 12:14 PM

I agree with Swanky. You can't really judge mugs by price.
Sure some go steadily at very high prices but we are talking rarity right?
Not price, just straight up very hard to find! Price is way too hard to judge the rarity as some people are just willing to pay more for something that they do not have. This has been talked about so many times on here.

If you think of some rare mugs, they come from specific establishment's where there was usually only one location that had a mug for one of their drinks. I would say I see alot more of the 'Rare' mugs then I do some of the most sought after and hardest to find.
A couple examples would be the Steve Crane's Ku (Multi-colored) and the Tounge Tiki, the Kahiki Moai's by Hoffman and what about the commonly known Holy Grail...the Frank Oma War God from the Trade Winds? I see these more on ebay than a few other mugs I can think of. Oh, and I don't even have some of these mugs and I still don't think they are the rarest. Ren Clarks Severed Head? Sure it is a hard to find mug but do you see it.....Yes you do. And lately, quite a bit. I would even go on a limb here and say lately it seems that the othe mugs from Ren Clark's Polynesian Village are harder to find then the severed head. (I hope I am not asking for trouble here!)

I would say there are mugs that were simply produced less, in less numbers, because either the Restaurant wasn't around too long, cost involved to produce the mugs and perhaps the quantities actually ordered. This is where the missing information from some of these mug manufacture's would come in handy!

Some Restuarants had specific mug designs which you could not get anywhere else. This mug was only available at this location. OMC, for example, would probably have a small supply of stock but then would probably make more mugs as they were ordered. Not ordered....not made. The counts of mugs made would have to be much much lower on some of these mugs.

I guess a quick example of this would be (which I think is a underrated mug and no I am not trying to sell one) the mug from St.Louis MO, The Mainlander. These mugs were based on the Witco Carved Fountains. You do see these out there, and they are not the rarest by any means, but that's an example of a very specific mug produced for a specific restaurant only. We do know that there were two sizes of mugs created one being larger then the other. This restaurant also burned down in 1978 so how many of these mugs were actually produced? We'll probably never know.

I gotta say, some of the rarest of mugs would have to be the ones that would have cost alot more to produce even back then. Like Swanky said of the Mai Kai bowl, that is a vey hard to find bowl and because of it's size, just how many would have been produced? Granted, the Mai Kai are still around today but how long were those original bowls produced for? Speaking of Mai Kai, how many of those hand made grey colored mugs and jugs were produced? Gotta be small numbers. Personally they are kind of ugly to me but maybe that's one reason they dont fetrch huge amounts. Personal taste plays alot in determining the prices we see.

A few quick examples of high cost to produce that are very specific to me would be the mugs from Detroit's Mauna Loa (TQ p.46) made by HF Pottery. The tall bamboo mug with the bird on the side as a handle. Now that is a very cool mug and is very hard to find. It must have cost a little more to produce because of this feature and detail.
Another of these with the same styled design is the very rare mug from the Kalua Room in Seattle Wa. Tall mug with what looks like a praying mantus on the side. Now that's a rare mug! How many of these have you seen lately??

Ku Mugs, War Gods, Severed Heads, they are all available or someone knows someone who has one. Perfect mug flying under the radar here is the very unique Tiki mug with the Hula Girl in it's mouth (BOT p.181) from the Hawaii Kai in New York. A great mug made by Jard Products but a fragile one as well. Not a very common manufacturer. How many made for how long? Who knows?

Trader Vics, for example, had hand made mugs made by Polynesian Pottery to serve some of their drinks that were ONLY available at their Honolulu Hawaii location. Hand made mugs would have to be very low numbers and the details make each one a little different. A tall brown one with seriographs on it sold yesterday for about $86 which I had never seen before. Rare, yep. Expensive, nope.

Sorry for rambling on here but I hope that mugs will be looked at one day for their ACTUAL rarity as opposed to what people say is rare or their selling price. Some people just have more money and are willing to spend it to get it. Nothing really wrong with that.

Okay and after all this...the Holy Grail....maybe there isn't one.
You gotta come up with your own. I guess if there was a rarest of Holy Grail's, it would be so rare that we wouldn't even know it existed.
Kind of like that old joke, "My job is so secret even I don't know what I'm doing".

My own Holy Grail has gotta be Skipper Kent's Zombie Village Zombie/Gene face mug! The blue color fading to the lighter color and that face peering out at yah! Great design and one you'll only see every once in a blue moon. Oh, I also just noticed that this mug isn't in BOT or TQ, is that a sign?

I guess it really comes down to what you want and what you like.
Enjoy the hunt. TabooDan

[ Edited by: TabooDan 2008-02-07 12:44 ]