By Ben Marks — Baseball season is upon us, so naturally our thoughts turn to beer. Yes beer, the social lubricant that transforms even the most taciturn fans into long-lost brothers and sisters—when it isn’t serving as the catalyst for countless post-game brawls in countless parking lots and bars. “Ruth responded to the writer's hyperbole by swatting a three-run homer.” We all have our beer-and-baseball stories, whether it’s the salving effects of a couple of cold ones after your team was literally...

My Goodness! Guinness Collectors Snap Up Secret Stash of Unpublished Advertising Art

By Ben Marks — The biggest cliché in the collecting world is the “discovery” of a previously unknown cache of stuff that’s been hidden away for years until one day, much to everyone’s amazement, the treasure trove is unearthed and the collecting landscape is changed forever. As a corollary to this hoary trope, if you are in the right place at the right time, you can get in on the action before the word gets out. "Some of the canvases were 80 years old, dating from 1930." Cliché or not, that’s roughly...

Beer Steins, From Stoneware to Faience

By Maribeth Keane — I’ve been a beer stein collector for about 25 years. About 10 years ago I sold my business, a specialty database provider. At that point, I had some experience in compiling databases and beer steins were my passion, so with the spare time that had become available to me I tried applying my business skills to the hobby I enjoy and the Beer Stein Library was born. If there’s one thing missing in almost every hobby, it’s a source of searchable information. When you’ve found an old beer stein...