Glass Chatroom Board

@itsagas : The Carnival Glass shipped in barrels was packed with straw. Most glass factories had a "hayshed" where the straw was stored.

Stories about people finding or having original sealed barrels full of Carnival Glass have been circulating ever since people started collecting it 50-60 years ago. Here in the northeast there was a popular story about someone in NH that had a barn packed to the rafters with Carnival, much of it in original barrels. There was another story about someone here in Maine, in a backwoods town, who owned an old, long boarded up general store, the cellar of which was full of old barrels full of Carnival Glass. There are dozens more such stories from all parts of the country. Thing is, whenever someone made a serious effort to varify these stories, the situation begins to get very vague & numerous "excuses" start popping up: "The barn burned down & all was lost"; "The guy died & his heirs had the old store bulldozed, glass & all"; "The barrels were all rotting so he unpacked the glass, sold it & threw the rotting barrels in the landfill", etc, etc. There's always a "fly in the ointment". That's because all of these stories are nothing more than wishfull, romantic fantasizing. In the 42 years I've been involved in Carnival Glass not a single one of these stories have ever been confirmed. Not a single original barrel full of Carnival has ever been documented as being owned by any collector in the hobby. If ANY of these stories were true, then surely in all these years there would be one of these barrels in the hands of a serious collector. But, there are none.