$748 mottled red candlestick mouthpiece?

[wds]

I'm sure some of you were watching this auction - $748 for a marbled red mouthpiece.  I watched this for several days and couldn't believe the final  selling price.  Does anyone know what makes this so valuable?  The reason I ask is I have one of these, actually in better condition made for W.E. transmitters.  Should I put mine on Ebay ?

Red Mouthpiece

[HarrySmith]

WOW! I was watching that one too, I am shocked! I guess they are rare but that is unbelievable. I would definitely put yours up! Hopefully the same 2 deep pocket buyers will want a WE one too!

[Doug Rose]

Ole Huck must be real happy today!

[wds]

Here's another one - I had no idea they were so valuable.

[AE_Collector]

Ole Huck must be real happy today!

I was going to ask if he is the winner or loser! Then I realized....the Seller.

Terry

[HarrySmith]

Here's another one - I had no idea they were so valuable.

Was this yours Dave?

[wds]

Yes it was.  This sale helped pay for a couple more phones!  Like the Am. E. fluted column phone.

[HarrySmith]

Nice! Congrats!

[oyang]

What's the material used to make mouthpieces in general, and these specifically? In my main hobby, fountain pens, the major material was hard (vulcanized) rubber, replaced by nitrocellulose-based plastic (celluloid) in the late 1920s, replaced by acrylic plastics (lucite) in the late 1930s.

The vast majority of hard rubber pens were black because that was the easiest and most stable with high sulfur content. A few were "red" (actually an orange color) or mixed black and red in "ripple" or "mottled" patterns.  Pure red was very fragile compared to black, and the hybrid black/red were intermediate.  For this reason, red pens and mixed color pens are much more valuable than their black counterparts, since fewer were made and fewer survived.

As a new phone person, I only have a few mouthpieces that seem to be made from some type of plastic, but I don't know what material they are.  They don't seem to be hard rubber, so I don't know if that is because they are later replacements or because the phone manufacturers moved to plastics earlier than pen manufacturers. They don't seem to be made of gutta percha, the earliest thermoplastic, which was too fragile for pens and I'd imagine for mouthpieces too.

Otto