Telegraph Insulators

[GatorsMoon]

I found a pile of these things today in a few different sizes and colors. I think it was 14 in all. They are made by some different companys. I've been told some are worth a good bit of money while others have said they are useless pieces of glass. I figure someone on here can set me straight. The little green one says (AM.TEL.&TEL.CO.)
The big green one says (HEMINGRAY NO.40) The clear one says ( WHITALL TATUM CO. NO.1) MADE IN USA

 

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[TXDIRTFISHER]

I don't know if they are worth anything but they are cool to me. The only ones I've found are broken.

 

[River Rat]

I own a few...not as pretty as the one in the first picture. I did see one insulator @ the Good Will in Georgia, it was the same as the clear one in your last picture...they wanted $4.50 for it. I had never seen a clear one for that much, but I would had paid that for a colored one.

RR

 

[Baggins]

I dig 'em all, and would collect them as well!
Baggins

 

[beetle662]

Those are nice! Some of them (not sure if they are any of the ones you have though) can fetch some big bucks.

Check them on ebay... there's always some listed on there!

Nice finds!

 

[Leon]

I don't know much about 'em, but I do like 'em...
Very neat finds, and I do believe some are worth quite a bit...
I have only recovered one (intact) myself, a "Hemingray No.9" which I believe is a fairly common one.
TreasureTales beat me to the insulators.com link, but here's another link you may be interested in:
http://www.hemingray.info/index.html

Continued Good luck, & Happy hunting~

 

[MLseverson]

My grandfather collects these, he says the purple colored ones needed to be on the pole 100 years or so, long enough to collect ultraviolet light, and usually bring a premium.

good score!

Mikey

 

[lonewolfe]

Nice find/s - I used to collect them myself when I was a kid, and when they were converting from the old phone poles/wire systems to what we have today - we used to walk the R&R tracks and climb the old poles to unscrew them and see who could collect the most (I had over 1000 of them at one point in time)

Only a few of them are worth any real $$ - the really old and rare ones from the 1800s to around the 1920s or so and the ones that not many were made and/or are unique in style/color are the most expensive - very uncommon to find any of those these days though.

Still in all - they're nice to collect no matter

HH

 

[GatorsMoon]

I checked out the insulator sites you guys give me. I had no idea there were so many different styles and designs. Even with the help of the site it is a little hard to identify them correctly. I did find the big green Hemingray and it is worth $10-$15 dollars. Thanks for the help guys. Now I need to clean the 5 gallon bucket full of the other ones I have and hit the site again. My sister-in -laws all get their pick of 1 also. LOL
I was also clicking through one of those sites and if I read it right some of these things are worth $10,000 to $15,000 dollars. It didn,t show the dollar sign in the graph, but when I put my arrow on the numbers it said current price. Good Hunting All

 

[creeper71]

I checked out the insulator sites you guys give me. I had no idea there were so many different styles and designs. Even with the help of the site it is a little hard to identify them correctly. I did find the big green Hemingray and it is worth $10-$15 dollars. Thanks for the help guys. Now I need to clean the 5 gallon bucket full of the other ones I have and hit the site again. My sister-in -laws all get their pick of 1 also. LOL
I was also clicking through one of those sites and if I read it right some of these things are worth $10,000 to $15,000 dollars. It didn,t show the dollar sign in the graph, but when I put my arrow on the numbers it said current price. Good Hunting All

Just curious where you found a site with current prices at... I would like to put that site in my fav file so I can use it for refference..thank you

 

[GatorsMoon]

It was the site TreasureTales posted on here http://www.insulators.com/ I think this is the one I was looking through when I ran across the prices, if that is what they actually were. Like I said it showed no dollar sign but when I put my cursor on the list it said current going price. I can hardly believe these things would go for so much. I hope I read it right and it's true cause I'm going back to that trash dump behind the old house I found these and try and find more.

The other site was posted by Leon http://hemingray.info/index.html This is the site where I indentified the big green Hemingray in the picture of my first post.

 

[allen]

those are really nice insulators...nice finds