Advice for selling these antique (pharmacy, apthecary, ???) jars

November 6, 2015 3:30 PM

My son spent several hundreds of dollars a few years ago on a shopping trip in France, buying these unique lidded blue glass jars with porcelain labels. His decorating needs changed, and I inherited these unique and lovely jars, but I have no idea what they are, what they might be worth, and how to turn them into cash. (Craigslist, eBay, etc,?) Can anyone advise?

Some are about 11" high, but most are around 9" high. The blue color is really lovely, as are the porcelain labels (most with gold edging) and painted tin lids. I have no clue how to translate the labels (any French speaking pharmacists up to the challenge?)
I really don't know how to find someone who might value them. I am not in the position of needing a tax break, so donating them is a last resort.

Here are some photos:
Jars with lids
Jar, lid off
Plenty of jars
Really. Plenty.

Any thoughts?

posted by SamFrancisco to Grab Bag (8 answers total)

I'd suggest selling them locally because if you have to ship them it's going to cost a lot and possibly result in breakage.
I think they're kitchen jars. I can't read most of them but one of them says "Black Tea".
They may very possibly be repros, in which case they probably don't have much value. If they're originals from before 1920 or so they probably do have some value.
Craigslist would be a good place to start.
posted by crazylegs at 3:52 PM on November 6, 2015

Best answer: That's an interesting collection -- there are no heavy-hitting drugs that I can see, but there is licorice (reglisse), black tea (the noir), coriander. Less appealing for consumption: baking soda (the bicarb), senna leaves (feuille senn), starch (fecule), citric acid, boric acid, gum arabic. Many of the rest are medicinal herbs. Just Google away with the name on any one. The "poud." is short for poudre, powdered. Guimauve means marshmallow.

On embiggening the pictures I don't think they're reproductions, which was also my first thought.

They are pretty obscure and a big collection like that is not a common sight. I think they are quite valuable -- they certainly have not gone down in value, and that he took the trouble to move so many to another continent increases their scarcity/value here -- but they are the sort of thing where the value is determined in no small part by what somebody is willing to pay and how much trouble somebody is willing to go to sell them. They are lovely, they are valuable, and, there are only so many people who want these sorts of things. It's a matter of taking the time to find the right buyer if you want to wring the maximum return out of them. A CL ad might see them off quickly in a big city, but if you're in a smaller area, not so likely. CL prices are not generally high for old collectibles, though; the most likely customer would be a dealer looking to flip them.

The easiest way might be to e-mail local health food stores and ask if they were interested in purchasing the lot as a decoration (show off the long history of herbs in medicine, what a great ad, etc). The most profitable way would be to photograph them nicely and list them individually on Etsy, and...wait. You could also sell them directly to an antique dealer. I might go to the trouble of e-mailing web-based dealers of medical antiques to see if there was any interests.

You can pay shipping stores to pack stuff like this up safely for shipping if you don't want to fiddle with that yourself. You could list them on eBay with a whopping high price for the entire set, and sit back and see if any idle rich are impulse shopping. If no, add a "best offer" option, and sit and contemplate the offers that roll in. The best way to sell a thing like this also depends on how long you are willing to sit on it for.
posted by kmennie at 4:09 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Are they antique or reproduction? They are French apothecary jars, and it looks like the style is pretty common -- looks like the red striped cap, the blue glass bottle, and that style of label in varying levels of slanted text is definitely a thing.

You can find very similar French apothecary jars out there, and they definitely aren't cheap.

I'm guessing you could ebay these pretty easily and for a decent amount of money.
posted by erst at 4:09 PM on November 6, 2015

Many of them are things most people wouldn't keep in a kitchen. Kina rouge is red cinchona, the thing we get quinine from, as in tonic water; acide citrique is citric acid; tab: vichy literally means Vichy tablets. Amusingly there's also a jar for Seidlitz powder, which seemed to serve roughly the same purpose as Vichy tablets, just in a loose form (cf. Alka-Seltzer vs Bromo Seltzer). I do wonder why an apothecary would have had black tea though. Probably seen as medicinal in some way. Same for the coriander.

The likely candidate I can think of for these would be a bar. I'll second the comment about selling them locally, though. Packing and shipping them would be a killer. Try listing them on Craigslist, and I guess you could maybe put them on eBay as local pickup only. Somebody might want the whole set to decorate a bar, but you don't want to have to pack them up and insure them yourself. Or maybe see if there's a local antique shop that does consignments?
posted by fedward at 4:13 PM on November 6, 2015

I agree with everyone saying Ebay and Etsy. I particularly like Etsy because the fees are lower. You could sell them all as one - you might get a lower price per item this way because there are fewer people with a large amount of money to drop on a big collection, but it is less hassle. You could also break them up into lots, trying to mix "desirable" ones with less desirable ones (i.e., google translate them and put uncommon ones with common ones, as you might have a harder time selling citric acid than black tea).
posted by decathexis at 5:27 PM on November 6, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks for the ideas. As always, the hive mind does not disappoint.

I just saw a single similar jar listed on Etsy for over $100 !

Yikes !
At that rate, the collection of 40 jars represents a tidy sum indeed.
(Provided I could find 40 purchasers.) :-)
posted by SamFrancisco at 6:00 PM on November 6, 2015

Best answer: Oh, I think these will sell really well. Take pretty pictures of them and put them on Etsy. I used to sell these in my boutique in San Francisco and there were at least a half dozen *serious* collectors of antique glassware who would hound me about these types of jars. The glass covering the label seems to be a particular point of appeal, which yours look like they have, so be sure to highlight that in your description. And they all have lids -- this is another big point for collectors.

Translate the labels with translate.google or something. These are probably part of a full apothecary set, and although the heavy pharmaceuticals / poisons are more highly prized for oddity's sake, there are plenty of people who will want to pay very well for jars like these.

Have fun!
posted by ananci at 6:09 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Or this...
A set of 3 (just like my 40) for $799 !
Now that I know where to look, there are a zillion Medical antique dealers (thanks Kmennie). I should put together a good flyer, well photographed, listing each bottle and its label and size, and shop it around widely. If I have the patience, I could sell in small lots. If I am lucky, I will find a buyer for the works.
posted by SamFrancisco at 6:35 PM on November 6, 2015 [2 favorites]