Cookie jar prices coming back up

Back when I first started collecting antiques and going to auctions in the 1980s, one of the most collectible items I saw were cookie jars. Of course when any item gets “hot,” companies try to cash in by reproducing close fakes.

When the Second Gulf War happened and gas started going up and the economy started going down, the prices of antiques and collectibles started going down as well. I have recently come across a couple of articles about certain cookie jars bringing high prices at auction again.

When you have been in antiques a long time, it is funny to see how things go in and out of popularity. Oak was king in the ’80s and you couldn’t give away ’50s and ’60s furniture, but now it is hot with the millenials.

Cookie jars actually originated in Great Britain. They were known as biscuit jars there and were often made of glass with metal lids. Well, Americans like cookies or “biscuits” too, and the National Biscuit Company, Nabisco, helped bring the commercial cookie into America as well as many other foreign countries.

In the 1930s, stoneware became the cookie jar material of choice. Then, in the late 1930s, the Brush Potteyr Company in Zanesville began to make cookie jars. That company later became the McCoy Pottery. By the 1940s cookie jars began to be produced in all sizes shapes and colors. Other art pottery companies such as Metlox, American Bisque and Red Wing also started making cookie jars.

Many cookie jars were character shapes like pigs, cows, clowns and just about anything else you could imagine. Little Red Riding Hood was a very popular character, so it was copied in the 1980s. So you must be careful if you collect that one. Disney commissioned a line of cookie jars, and that was just the start. Many other brands such as Coca-Cola and Warner Brothers licensed cookie jars as well.

The heyday of cookie jars pretty much ended in the 1970s, but you can still find new interesting ones. They just aren’t quite as prolific. Some people like to change their cookie jars with the seasons. Vintage ones in good condition are sometimes hard to find since many a kid got startled and dropped the lid when they got caught with their hand in the cookie jar!

A recent auction in Las Vegas featured a McCoy leprechaun cookie jar that brought $720. Cookie jars are fun collectibles and look great across the top of the kitchen cabinets or displayed on a Hoosier cabinet.

Happy Collecting!

Jillinda Falen has been buying and selling antiques for over 31 years and is a licensed REALTOR and estate liquidation specialist. You can contact her through the Houston Home Journal or via email at jcfalen@gmail.com.

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