Post #660316 by Tattoo on Sat, Dec 1, 2012 6:39 PM

As far as the Spurlin Otagiri question, I want to add a relevant quote here from another thread about an e-bay listing. It's interesting because the items sold were from an OMC sales rep who had in possession two Spurlin Tiki mugs with one marked "Original Islander."

On 2006-09-02 07:54, Tiki Kollektor wrote:
I'm curious about these mugs that just sold on ebay. If anyone missed them, they were apparently from the estate of an OMC sales rep. I know from Ooga Mooga that the first one is a Tiki Bob's Maori (it sold for $212):

But the two other ones do not seem to be listed on Ooga Mooga (at least I couldnt find them) so I was wondering if anyone had seen them before and had more info? Since they were marked as OMC samples, and the red one was pencil noted "Original Islander", I'm sure someday I'll regret not bidding huge on them. But congratulations to the collectors who got them! -- I'm just learning about tiki mugs, but I suspect these were something special:

This one sold for $180:

And this one sold for $167:

Quite obvious that OMC had in their possession the Spurlin mugs and made copies of them. And as far as the timeline is concerned, those Life magazine pictures of the Los Angeles Islander are, according to Getty images, from August 1960.