Glass canning jars, also known as fruit jars or Mason jars (named after its inventor, not masonry) have been around since the early 1850s and today are eagerly sought after by collectors. There is a section on Ebay devoted to the sale of antique fruit jars, some of which have sold for as high as ^*]30,000.

The earliest glass jars were called wax sealers because they used sealing wax, which was poured into a channel around the lip which held on a tin lid. This process was complicated and error-prone, but was largely the only one available for a long time, and widely used even into the early 1900s.

By far, though, the most popular form of seal was the screw-on zinc cap, the precursor to today's screw-on lids. The earliest successful application of this was discovered by John Landis Mason and patented on November 30, 1858, a date that is embedded in collectors' collective subconcious because it is embossed on thousands of jars. Jars with "Patent Nov 30th 1858" were made in many shapes, sizes and colors well into the 1900s. They range in price from a few dollars to many thousands of dollars. Since they were made in such quantity and used for such long periods, many of them have survived to the present day, and the vast majority of them are sold for less than $10 despite often being more than 100 years old. Canners often use a two-piece lid consisting of a center portion used to seal the jar and a sealing ring, or figgler, to hold the center portion in place during sealing.