We find that Bauer Pottery thrift store finds seem to come in phases. There is no consistency whatsoever! We can go 4 months with finding absolutely nothing, not even overpriced stuff that thrift stores feel the need to jack up in price just because of the name (this is a whole other gripe of ours, but we won’t get into that right now). Then we’ll find 4-5 pieces in a row.

Nowadays, one of the only ways to get your hands on Bauer inexpensively is when it isn’t marked, or there’s a partial mark. There’s just too many Ebay seller wannabees at the thrifts. However, you can always trust that they haven’t done their homework - that goes for any California Pottery, not just Bauer.

Flowerpots like this nice Spanish yellow #4 are often unmarked except for a number. That allowed us to pick up this mint example for a dollar. When they are identified, we often see cracked or chipped examples at high end estate sales being sold for an arm and a leg.

This La Linda oval vegetable dish is often unmarked and we’ve picked up a few examples already because of that. This one is a light lemon yellow in color. Actually, this particular one did have a mark as seen below. However, the important part of it, “Bauer”, was obscurred by glaze.

This is always a happy day for us when this happens. Even if you didn’t know the La Linda Bauer shape, we could tell this was probably Bauer from the combination of the visible part of the mark which reads “Los Angeles”, and the glaze of the piece. It wasn’t as cheap, but still cheaper than if it had a full mark.