More than 30 years ago, a collector from South Dakota paid $750 for a 30-gallon Red Wing stoneware crock at an auction.
It was double-stamped, salt-glazed, and bore the same hand-painted cobalt butterfly pattern that would one day make a 91-year-old Nebraska woman’s nearly identical crock sell for $32,000.
The collector put it in an old granary on his farm. It sat there for decades.
Then in January, a small-town auction in Holdrege, Nebraska, made international news.
A crock that had spent 30 years on a back porch — one its owner nearly sold at a garage sale for $20 — brought $32,000 for Lois Jurgens on her 91st birthday.
The story was picked up by The Washington Post, NBC’s TODAY, and outlets in South Africa and India.
The collector in South Dakota saw the photos and recognized what he had — a missing piece to a puzzle being assembled by Nebraska auctioneer Ken Bramer.
Collectors believe there are as many as six of these intricately decorated Red Wing crocks, with three well-known among crock insiders.
“A guy from up by Watertown, South Dakota, called me and said, ‘I got the fourth crock,’” Bramer told Cowboy State Daily. “And that’s how he started the conversation out. He said, ‘That one you sold down there for such big money? I got the twin sister to it.’”
By the next morning, the man was sitting in Bramer’s driveway at 8 a.m., having loaded his crock and driven 400 miles all night from Watertown.
The collector only wants to be identified as Rick. He lives on a farm and doesn’t want people to know what he has or where to find him.
In that way, he’s a lot like the man who bought Jurgens’ crock — a passionate collector from Kansas who was out hunting pheasant when he called in the winning $32,000 bid and has also declined to be publicly identified.
In the world of antique crocks, anonymity is apparently part of the game.
“It also has a double stamp. It has the blue butterfly. It has the elephant ears. It’s salt glaze,” Bramer said of Rick’s crock. “But it also has a crack down the back, and he said, ‘I bought it that way.’”
Rick also brought along an 18-inch Red Wing bowl so large it doesn’t appear in the standard collector guides.
Both pieces are headed to auction on Saturday, April 18, at the Phelps County fairgrounds in Holdrege, as “crock mania” continues to grow.
Downhome Scoop
The journalist who broke the Jurgens story — and whose original post has been viewed close to 13 million times — has been tracking every twist.
Colleen Williams spent more than 20 years as a news anchor in central Nebraska before launching a good-news digital magazine called “The Bright Side.”
A Facebook tip from someone who attended one of Bramer’s auctions led her to Jurgens, and the story took off from there.
“That post resonated with so many people because they grew up with a crock that their grandma had in the corner,” Williams told Cowboy State Daily. “It just has this feeling of being at grandma’s.”
Across social media, thousands of people tagged family members asking if someone still had a crock in the basement. The excitement wasn’t just nostalgia — it was the tantalizing possibility that a forgotten heirloom might be worth thousands.
“How many people thought, ‘Maybe I’ve got one that’s worth $30,000 in the basement,’” Williams said. “They would tag someone saying, ‘Does Mildred still have her crock?’”
The word “crock” itself had to overcome some cultural baggage to get here.
Williams said she researched how the expression “what a crock” entered the American vocabulary and discovered that chamber pots — the pre-electricity precursors to the toilet — were made of the same ceramic material.
“So it literally was a crock of, you know what,” Williams said.
When she first broke the story to her family, the word tripped everyone up. Her son thought she was talking about Croc shoes. Her husband assumed she meant a Crock-Pot.
Now, with the phrase “what a crock” still widely used to call out things that seem profoundly inauthentic, the undeniable authenticity of Red Wing pottery has broken through to the masses and restored the word crock to a place of honor.
“Crocks are having a moment,” Williams said. “And it all can be pinpointed to the moment that that sweet woman, Lois, put her crock into an auction and was hoping for $100, maybe $1,000, and then it was $32,000.”
Beehive Buzz
The mania hasn’t stopped at crocks.
Red Wing expert Larry Peterson, who has collected Red Wing pottery for 55 years and co-authored three books on the subject, said the wave of public interest has rippled outward.
“Beehive jugs, decorated, have a lot of interest too,” Peterson told Cowboy State Daily. “The interest is continually growing.”
At a recent show in Des Moines, decorated salt-glaze jugs and beehive jugs in the 3- to 5-gallon range drew strong attention. A beehive jug priced at $4,000 didn’t sell at the show, but Peterson isn’t concerned.
“It will get sold,” he said.
The original Jurgens crock will go on display at the Pottery Museum of Red Wing in Minnesota for a year starting in April.
As for what Rick’s cracked twin might bring at auction, Peterson has his doubts it will match $32,000 given the condition — the crack in back may be worse than the one on Jurgens’ crock, and the butterfly may not be as large.
“But it’s going to get a lot of interest,” he said. “Stories like this don’t happen very often, and to see two of these come out at basically the same time is an example of the publicity it got, and people looking to see what they have.”
This rare antique crock comes with butterfly art and deep roots in Red Wing, Minnesota, southeast of Minneapolis on the Mississippi River. It sold for $32,000 on Jan. 10, just in time for its owner’s 91st birthday, auctioneer Ken Bramer told Cowboy State Daily. Lois Jurgens said when she heard the selling price, it felt like she was in a dream. (Courtesy Ken Bramer) 
This rare antique crock comes with butterfly art and deep roots in Red Wing, Minnesota, southeast of Minneapolis on the Mississippi River. It sold for $32,000 on Jan. 10, just in time for its owner’s 91st birthday, auctioneer Ken Bramer told Cowboy State Daily. Lois Jurgens said when she heard the selling price, it felt like she was in a dream. (Courtesy Ken Bramer) 
Since auctioning off a $32,000 crock, auctioneer Ken Bramer has been buried in requests from potential clients who wonder if they have the next golden crock. (Courtesy Ken Bramer)
Holy Crock
With her $32,000 windfall in hand, Jurgens made a sizable donation to her church in Holdrege.
“It was always the plan to use the money for the Lord’s work,” said Vickie Stepanich, Jurgens’ daughter. Lois, still active at 91, is currently on a cruise ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean — a trip that was planned and paid for pre-crock.
“We are aware of another crock being auctioned in April,” Stepanich said. “We plan to be in attendance. It will be interesting to see the next chapter unfold.”
Williams said she’ll be there too and plans to pick up Jurgens and drive together to the April 18 auction.
“Ken is saving us a seat, he said,” Williams told Cowboy State Daily.
Stepanich and the Kansas collector who bought the original crock will also grab seats on the front row.
Before then, Bramer has an auction this Saturday with close to 100 crocks along with furniture, antiques and collectibles, listed at bramerauction.com. The April 18 sale will also feature a 40-gallon crock from Oklahoma and a 150-gallon crock with a lid from Texas.
Since the Jurgens sale, Bramer said he has received thousands of calls, texts and emails from people asking if their crocks are worth anything. He’s managed to respond to about 250 so far.
“Everybody thinks theirs is now worth $32,000,” Bramer said. “But I think there’s still treasures out here to be found. A lot of people take them for granted. Grandpa and grandma had them, great-grandpa and great-grandma had them, and they just pass them down from one generation to the other. And now they’re starting to pay a little attention.”
David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.
