More on my blue canning jars

Some research on the Internet has led me to believe the jars pictured in my previous entry were made between 1923 and 1933.

This goes along with a story my mother often told me.

Mother acquired a lovely little girl (around four years old, I believe, at the time) when she and my father married in 1932: my half-sister, Maxine, whose mother had died giving birth to our brother.

Someone asked Maxine if she was getting plenty to eat now that she had a step-mother (she called Mother her "foot-mama" at first).

"Oh, I should say we do!" Maxine reportedly replied with great enthusiasm. And then she started naming all the individual things they had been eating, including many canned goods given to them by my maternal grandma as sort of a wedding gift... peaches, green beans, jam, and so forth.

I like to think these old jars are the ones Grandma gave to my parents, full of things so delicious that the flavors and abundance amazed a little girl who had been without a mother for a while.

Old canning jars

I'm still working on clearing out the "junk room" in the upstairs of our old house. I've really been dragging my feet on the closet-full of canning jars; I recall buying so many cases of them when money was truly tight. They seemed like a treasure to me at the time, and I proudly filled them with peaches, green beans, tomatoes, blackberries, and jams and jellies of all flavors.

In my older age, I grew weary of the whole gardening-and-canning process; I ended up throwing so much stuff away because it got old before Cliff and I used it. And the truth is, it just isn't fun any more.

But I kept my jars. A whole closet full of boxes and boxes of canning jars.

I resolved to give them all away; after all, I don't think I want to do much canning in the future.

Then I thought about the way prices are rising and decided to keep half of them.

As my sister-in-law, Rena, and I began hauling them to Cliff's shop, he figured we'd better keep them. After all, we may have to garden and can to survive.

But when he saw how many I had, he hollered "uncle" and said, "We have plenty; give the rest away."

I agreed, but there were certain jars I had inherited from my mother with which I cannot part.

The beautiful blue jars. I assumed they were all identical, but then I looked at the bottoms and saw different numbers and letters on them:

There's an underlined 9, an underlined G or 6, and a couple of zeros. All of this means something to a collector, I'm not sure what; the information I got from Google is limited.

Those seams down either side also date the jars somehow; if I understood what I read, I think it means they were made before 1937. But I might be wrong.

See the seams?

Oh, and the delightful flaws in these old jars. I'm not sure how well it will show up in the pictures, but there are bubbles in the glass!

Now for a special treasure....

Atlas Strong Shoulder Mason!

It has even MORE bubbles in the glass; I'm assuming it's the oldest of the lot.

But what makes these jars special for me is knowing my mother used them for years before passing them on to me; maybe my Grandma even used them! I have used them all, not even thinking about their possible worth. (Their worth isn't really all that much, by the way: Anywhere from $5 to $25, best I can determine.)

So, now that you know I can't part with them, do you have any suggestions for their use?

Somebody just shoot me.

Added later: I found an informative article with a chart which explains how to date Ball jars by the way the logo is made. Click HERE and scroll to the bottom.