What is the difference?

A Fake is when a company produces their own mould in order to copy someone else's pattern. These
items will look similar to an original, but when carefully studied, it's easy to see that they are different. Sometimes
an actual piece will be used to form the new mould, and then this new mould will be used to reproduce the item.
These copies are true fakes and ususally pattern detail will not be as sharp or crisp as the original was. These
are made for one purpose. To fool the collecting community. So beware.

A Reproduction is when a company acquires an old mould from another company that's gone out of
business, and then produces glass items using that mould. One company that was notorious for this was the
L.G. Wright Glass Company. They never produced their own glass. It was made by Fenton, Smith, and
Weishar to name a few manufactures. The reproductions made for L.G. Wright were never signed so it was very
difficult for collectors to tell the differences, but seasoned collectors do know what to look for. Throughout this
Price Guide I will show you how to tell the differences.

A Reissue is when a company will produce a pattern for a certain length of time, and then retire it.
At a later time it will start making that pattern again possibly in different colors and adding a company logo.
The Fenton Art Glass Company is well known for doing this. They made early patterns beginning around 1908,
and after several years retired the moulds. Then beginning in 1970 they brought those old moulds out of storage
and reissued the patterns but added their Fenton company logo to the pieces so collectors would know what was
old and what was new.

Alterations - I've added this as a new category which mimics authentic pieces. Forgers have discovered that
they can take old authentic pieces of early pattern glass, and early colored Opalescent glass and put them
in a box and expose them to Ultra Violet (UV) light for extended periods of time. This process turns the glass
Purple or Amethyst. Other dealers call this Sun Purpled Glass although it has nothing to do with exposure
to sunlight. Forgers do this for one purpose only. Greed! They think that they can create something collectors will
think is an extremely rare color, and pay large amounts of money for them. Our only defense against this
type of fraud is the knowledge of what patterns were orginially made in Amethyst Opalescent and
and which ones were not. My price guide will list only the known original colors the patterns were made in,
and I will show you pictures of the patterns that have been color altered.

Whimsey - A whimsey is an item that was made on a whim. The worker would take a piece of hot pressed glass
from a mould and distort it from it's original form. Whimsey's are pieces that never went into full production.

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