What is an insulator? Many people have sen these domelike glass shapes at garage sales, antique shops or even in their own garage. Yet, they have never figured out what they were. Glass insulators were used on the top of telegraph and telephone poles to protect wires from getting wet and losing their current. The groove size on the insulator indicates what type of wire it carried. The smaller grooves indicate telephone or telegraph wires. Larger grooves indicate cables. Insulators with saddles indicate a high current cable.
In the early days, the colors of insulators were determined by whatever glass color was left in the vat at the end of the day (Myth - NOT by sitting them in a window in the sunlight!). Glass making companies might use green from leftover ginger ale bottle glass or blue from leftover decorative glass. However, during the turn of the century, salesmen promoted separate colors of insulators as a way to tell the lines of one company apart from the lines of another. This worked only for a short while due to the difficulty of finding a replacement insulator (out on the line) in the correct color if one was broken.
Rarity of insulators is determined by color, number of grooves, shape and age.
Dwayne Anthony of San Bernardino, a former "rock hound", stumbled into insulator collecting when he found an insulator sitting on top of a low wireless pole in Utah. He stood on his 4x4 truck and unscrewed it knowing that there were people who collected them but not knowing that he would soon be one of them. After doing some research, he was caught up in the hobby. He bought his first piece in 1986 for $5 - it was green with an embossed star. He became instantly addicted and bought more the next weekend.
Today he is the second biggest insulator collector (that he knows of) in Southern California. His collection, as of November 1994, of 175 pieces is worth about $90,000. Anthony's rarest and most expensive piece is a red amber, 1880's Brookfield of New York. It is worth $8,000 because it is one of a kind.
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"Teapot"
"Beehive"
