Culture
Mothership Glass Releases Elite Dragon Scale Line
Action Bronson’s favorite glass group drops a new line of elite glass pieces in Walnut Creek, California.
The company producing the world’s premier glass smoking utensils dropped their newest series last night, with some collectors traveling nearly 2,000 miles to get first dibs on the Elite Dragon Scale release in Northern California.
Mothership Glass, of course, is now among the most elite glass companies on the planet, regularly bringing fun new twists on their collection of designs that are famed for their function, craftsmanship and beauty. Consequently, Mothership Glass seems to have more TV time than the rest of the industry combined, with favorite patrons including multimedia sensation Action Bronson.
The drop christened a newly opened smoke shop, The Cave, in Walnut Creek, California, which is the sister location to the world-famous shop of the same name on the other side of the San Francisco Bay in San Mateo. We talked with the employees at The Cave to see what goes into preparing for this kind of event with one of the most famous and desired companies in the glass game.
Now, after seven months of planning, the event comes a week before one of the biggest shows of the year for the glass industry: the American Glass Expo.
“This is really stressful for us trying to get it together just a few days before AGE, but Mothership made it really easy for us. The way they send the orders, the design of the boxes now and all that,” said Chuck, an employee at The Cave.
One of the things that put The Cave’s San Mateo location on the glass map was the fact that the store held showcases for various high-end artists over the years. The drop at The Cave’s San Mateo location was the only in-store show that Mothership has ever done.
According to Chuck, the Dragon Scale drop was almost a grand opening present from Mothership to the Walnut Creek location, since they’d already been working together for years.
In order to manage the number of glass collectors they expected, The Cave drew raffle tickets in order to determine the order of who purchasing, in order to prevent folks from camping out for days.
“Even if we don’t sell out tonight, we’ve had dozens of collectors reach out that want us to ship to them,” Chuck said. “But we prefer to sell out of the store per agreement with Mothership.”
The Cave’s General Manager, a man named Blake, told Cannabis Now that this was the 15th drop they’d done with Mothership, with the first in 2013. Both Blake and Chuck said that the Ball Rig was their favorite piece, noting the difficulty in assembly.
As the clock approached the 8 p.m. raffle drawing, a group of Humboldt’s finest walked in, thrilled they’d beat the clock. Another group of collectors from Santa Cruz was not so lucky, but the mob decided to give them five minutes and they popped up quick. From there, all of the spectators began eye-balling the collection.
We met one collector who flew in from Dallas, Texas to try and get first dibs on one of the elites. We mentioned that was a good hike for a rig.
“It is,” he said with a laugh. “I actually has two flights cancel on me. I finally got a last minute flight and headed over here directly from SFO.”
We asked him if it was worth it so far, now that he’d seen the collection and his prospects in person. “Yeah, I would say so,” he replied. “It’s been really dope. Everyone has been really nice.”
He says the piece that inspired him to make the trip was the dragon scales. “I’m a Game of Thrones fan,” the collector said. “I just want a piece, so that at some point, when the next season premieres, I’ll be able to say, ‘I have that piece.’”
His top picks were the Dragon Scale Exo and the matching Klein. “The scaling on them is really nice,” he said of the pair. “The quality they went to on every part, even the bottom of the base — they do so many extra things. It just shows when you see the quality in person you can see how much time went into the pieces.”
The raffle started when Blake looked around and declared that it was time to begin, as silence fell on the room.
The first name was pulled — and Humboldt got the victory, and as the collector strolled up in his new Yeezy’s to make his pick, he said he was glad the drive was worth it.
He proved to be an economical fellow, purchasing the elite Dragonscale Mini, which was the most affordable of the elites (which were all worth a few months’ rent in San Francisco, more expensive than the other half of the drop).
The second place choice was the sandblasted mini, as it cost about $1,900, which was was $5,000 dollars cheaper than its Dragonscale sibling of similar design. Third place went to the clear Exo with the sandblasted mouthpiece and bottom. Next went the first of the Fab Eggs and after that, the Ball Rig.
Through the first five picks, only the cheapest elite had left the board — and then came Texas. After a tedious wait hoping to go early, he got his shot and that Dragonscale Klien that would make Daenerys Targaryen sat there waiting for him. Now he just had to pay, make it back to SFO for a red-eye to Texas, and be the only person in the world with a Mothership Dragonscale Klien when Game of Thrones’ 7th season premieres in 2019.
TELL US, which piece would you want to add to your collection?