Up on the Rooftop...
Lightning rods, weather vanes once a crowning glory
by Gary Van Hoozer
Those who own ornate lightning rods and weather vanes know the collectibles are both artistic and functional. But some are also historical, telling a story about the place and what the owners did or produced.
Collectors continue hot after old rooftop items, so values continue to increase. Proof of that is the large number of fakes and reproductions on the market.
One rod I particularly remember was in Greene County, Iowa, adorned with a vertical, fat ear of corn complete with kernels and shucks. I hope the fancy barn it topped also remains there. Besides protecting the barn from lightning, the rod showed that the original owner likely got big yields from the fields behind the barn.
Top quality decorative collectibles often were made of hammered sheet copper, using molds, while some vanes had weighted zinc heads to balance a longer arrow's weight. Flat, sheet-iron vanes are most common, with many of those being decorated lightning rods. Seed companies occasionally gave gilded animal-motif vanes, such as roosters or pigs, as premiums. Values of those often run into several hundred dollars, especially if they are unrestored and unpainted.
Lightning rods range from plain ones to those with copper tips, ornamental glass balls or pendants, and weather vanes. The balls were decorative, but they also had a practical side: if broken, they served notice of possible lightning damage.
Phil Steiner, Wanatah, Ind., avidly collects and deals in rooftop objects. Ever-higher prices have been the rule recently, he says, especially for the scarcer genuine items. One example he gives is a gray Moon and Star ball worth up to $9,000 recently, and climbing. But more common balls - like the plain whites and blues - can still be bought for $10 to $50, he adds.
Phil has seen balls sell in the $500-$ 1,500 range, especially if they're the "hard to get" colors: gold, silver, root beer, pink, slag, some cobalts and reds. The more valuable ones were never mounted since being produced in the late 1870s. He recalls a neon yellow Plain and a cobalt Moon and Star each bringing $3,500 a few years ago, and an orange Moon and Stars fetching $5,000.
He considers balls or vanes of questionable origin of little worth.
"Without some reliable means to document or provide assurance of the source of a lightning rod ball and its authenticity," he says, "we will no longer sell, buy or trade for any light amber balls or pendants, including Maher, Mast, RHF, JFG or several others."