Other forms of barware

Does anyone here (besides mrsmiley) collect non-tiki barware? I picked up three black frosted glass Playboy Club mugs at the Alameda Point flea market yesterday for $8. They came with a great story from the seller about how he was a key-carrying Playboy Club member when he was still underage. He's vowed never to sell his key.

Ooo, that stirs a rough memory for me! My stepdad grew up in Chicago. I can rememerb being in the John Hancock building at night and looking down at the Playboy building with the rotating light on it. He told me how that used to be a tall building in Chicago. Anyway, one night at the kitchen table he started cleaning out his wallet. Years of stuff. One thing he pulled out was his Playboy Club membership card. He said "I guess I won't need that anymore" and threw it away! Damn I wish I had that!

And in answer to your question, yes. We have a bamboo bar and a swank bar in the house. We have some great vintage barware. My Pink Elephants mixer and shot glasses is my favorite. We'd like to have a house big enough to have 2 actual bars set up.

I too, have two bars but they aren't done. Since the move my house is a constant work in progress. I have the entire set of pink elephant (shots, juice, rocks, buckets, highballs,shaker, ice bucket) found all together. I also have almost the whole set of "pick your poison" glass wear! I love those and they tie in with the skull glasses. I also have a lot of "nudie stuff" for one bar and tiki for the other!
It's all a slippery slope. I'm sliding to collectors OCD!

I initially got interested in the whole retro-bar thing by collecting cocktail shakers and by reading a book by Stephen Visakay called Vintage Bar Ware...I probably have accumulated about 50 shakers as well as countless related barware items. I really liked the glass shakers with the screen printed graphics and was involved in many a bidding war on Ebay for ones I wanted. Before I moved (last February) I started doing my bar with a Polynesian theme, I started buying tiki mugs and covering the walls with bamboo and matting but I didn’t get too carried away because it would either have to come down or be packed up and moved. I must have spent 2 weeks wrapping and boxing all the barware I already had. I did my new bar, at the new house completely tiki and have relegated the shakers/glasses/seltzer bottles/Mr. Bartender items/etc. to a display case in my living room. Recently when I wanted to unload some cocktail shakers to support my tiki habit, I found the bottom had fallen out of the vintage barware market and I wasn't willing to give the stuff away. I guess I'll just have to hold on to this stuff until the market improves or my grandchildren decide to sell the stuff at a yard sale when I'm dead and gone...don’t get me wrong I still love the vintage stuff but I don’t have the space to have two bars like Laney
:)

:drink: