Genuine Beach Combed Sea Glass for Sale!

Recently, I have been spending quite a bit of time sorting sea glass from this summer and fall. As well as some of the really "old" stuff I found before we moved to our current house in 2011. Fact is, my "day job" (as a writer and as a rare postage stamp dealer for collectors) has been keeping me very busy... and is one of the reasons I haven't been posting here as often as I'd like to. During these difficult economic times, it seems like you must work longer and smarter in order to make the same dollars as before.

But that's besides the point!

100 pieces of Cobalt blue sea glass-- a lot now on Etsy

I finally got several of my bins sorted, and have finished the process of creating and uploading dozens of new lots to both the Etsy and eBay sea glass stores.

It felt rewarding to get this done, at last!

At the same time, I felt a bit of sadness at how much less glass I had available, compared to just five years ago. Sea glass truly is a "vanishing resource," as I wrote in a recent article.

A few days ago, I had a chance to get out for a four-hour walk, taking advantage of one of the few low tide afternoons we have, at this time of the year. In winter, most low tides here in the Pacific Northwest occur in the middle of the night when it it pitch black outside. Even though we have had several good fall storms, the pickings were pretty slim. It really drove home the point that we (collectors and artists) keep picking up sea glass, the abrasive action of surf and sand wears away sea glass... and "new" glass really hasn't been going into the ocean in any quantity since stricter environmental laws (and the advent of plastic containers-- yuk!) were enacted in the 1970's and 1980's.

A recent lot in the eBay sea glass store

It also made me stop and wonder about the future for those who make a living from making sea glass jewelry. What do you DO? Do you try to hoard now, so as to have supplies for your art at a later time? Or do you "cave in" and switch to so-called "man made" sea glass? Or do you completely change direction and start making jewelry with other kinds of material-- semi-precious stones and rocks, for example?

There seem to be no easy answers.

As I walked on the beach, a couple of days ago, I realized that my "gatherings" no longer come anywhere near being able to meet the requests of those who have used my sea glass, over the last decade or so. I feel a strange "guilt" about that-- people write to me and ask "when will you next be listing x,y,z?" A while back, I used to be able to say "next week!" Now? All I can say is "I have NO idea."

Anyway, enough musings for today! This is also meant to serve as an announcement that there are new lots available in both the eBay and Etsy stores-- and hopefully you'll find something to your liking:

North Beach Treasures Etsy Shop

North Beach Treasures eBay Store

In the meantime, I'd like to wish everyone a beautiful Holiday Season!

Orange Sea Glass: The Slow "Extinction" of a Rare Color

Fall beach combing is always a bit of a mixed bag.

On the upside, fall means a couple of things, around here. One, "tourist season" is over, which means the pervasive "overpicking" of our local beaches slowly tapers off. Two, the season winds start picking up again after the doldrums of summer, and occasionally we get a good storm or two which will churn up something more than the top couple of inches on the beach. These are good things, for the sea glass hunter.

On the downside, low tides now occur mostly at "awkward" times-- like 4 o'clock in the morning, when it's pitch black outside. The "windows of opportunity" for the sea glass hunter become smaller and shorter every day, and will continue to shrink until the beginning of the new year.

A couple of days ago, we had a brilliant sunny autumn day, so I decided to "get out there" (for the first time in a couple of months) and take advantage of a retreating tide towards sunset.

As I wandered and started spotting a few pieces of sea glass, I became quite aware of the "truth" of something sea glass enthusiasts often say and hear: That sea glass is a "vanishing treasure." I wrote an article about this recently, but this beach walk really underscored the truth of this statement, particularly as it applies to the rarer colors.

For some years now, I have been blessed to live in a place where there was a nice volume of variety of sea glass-- including rare colors. What I notice most-- as the years roll by-- is the relative absence of anything "rare," these days.

Of course, orange has never been anything but a rare color. It is generally regarded as the single rarest color in sea glass collecting-- although this depends somewhat on who you ask-- and many collectors will beach comb for a lifetime and never find a piece. I've been fortunate to live in a place where I used to be able to find maybe 6-8 pieces of genuine orange sea glass per year.

But that was "then" and this is "now." Orange sea glass-- as well as other "rare" colors-- seems to have become all but "extinct."

As I got towards the end of my beach walk-- after about four hours-- what I noticed was that my bag contained a fair amount of clear, brown and green glass, with a scattering of seafoam... and very little else.

When this little nugget (it's only about 3/8" or 10mm long) suddenly caught the late afternoon sun, it was a very exciting moment. But it also made me realize just how long it had been since I'd found a piece of orange sea glass. And where were the other rare colors? I found no red, no teal, no yellow, no pink, no purple.

Sea glass IS a "vanishing treasure" because we pick it up... and none of it-- especially in "odd" colors-- is being replaced. To the small degree we use commercially produced glass objects, they are rarely made "in colors." These days, we mostly use plastics for such things... glass is reserved for things we can make in "huge volumes." Aside from which, environmental regulations keep most glass off our beaches, so it never really has the opportunity to become sea glass, in the first place.

I feel grateful that I have had the opportunity to be a sea glass collector for so many years... years that happened before it became "too late."