COLLECTIBLES – So Many Beautiful Things, So Little Room!

Vaseline Glass Paper Weight

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My favorite type of collectible glass has always been Uranium Glass. I was attracted to it’s bright glowing color as a child looking at my grandmother’s few precious pieces in her china cabinet.

What I didn’t know until I started to research it, is that this product actually did have uranium added to it, or diuranate which is an oxide of uranium. The shortage of the element during the cold war led to the decline in production of this type of glassware. Another interesting fact is that real Vaseline Glass or Uranium Glass will glow under black light.

Vaseline Glass is generally used as the term for the yellow and Jadite for the green.

Some of the more commonly found American manufacturers of depression era Uranium Glass are Fenton, Mosser an Gibson.

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Wade & Myatt which later became George Wade & Sons produced commercial ceramics as well as the Wade Whimsies designed by George Wade in the 1950’s . These small solid ceramic figurines were also created in collections called “TV Pets’, ‘Whoppas’, and ‘Minikins’ and are still produced today. The Whimsies began being included in tins of Red Rose Tea in 1967.

I had never heard of Wade Whimsies until I purchased a batch of Hallmark die-cast toy cars on ebay and the seller kindly included a set of these with my order. They told me that these tiny figurines were included in tins of british tea in the fifties. Intrigued, I kept them and looked up the information on the origin of these little guys and was hooked on yet another collectible. If you’ve ever stuck your arm into a box of cereal digging to the bottom looking for that elusive toy skulking in the corner of the box, you may know why I was intrigued with the idea of opening a tin of tea and finding a brightly colored little animal figurine.

These little guys really are cute. The glazes are bright and colorful. There are a wide variety of animals and other subjects. They’ve been making them for over three decades. So far, I have only found lists of the more recent collections. If anyone has any lists of the older vintage collections and when the were made and released please post it on this page.