The Holy Grails of the South

On inexpensive collectibles, happy memories and the importance of proper branding

Jan 25, 2025

Shorter edition this week, friends, a combination of travel and monstro day job deadlines. Let’s get at it.

In this house, the fine china is green plastic.

It’s true. I haven’t used the wedding crystal in, like, decades, but the small plastic cups I get every year at the Masters? Oh man, those are in constant rotation. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, ice water at the desk, midnight cold-milk splash … Masters cups, all the time.

The cups are the most accessible souvenir at the Masters — a drink is just $2 — and every year you’ll see patrons (don’t call ‘em fans) stacking a dozen or more cups for the folks back home. There’s not a lot of trash-can diving, since the Powers that Be at Augusta tend to frown on that sort of uncouth behavior. You won’t see a massive 50-foot-long Wrigley Field-style cup snake, either, since no one wants to give up their precious once-a-year cups for a common cause.

I’m not sure of the origins of the famous Masters plastic cup, but they date back at least to the early 1990s, when the cups were thick white slabs that looked like this:

Yeah, I might have to buy a few of those.

As with pretty much everything at Augusta National, quality is the rule; these cups will last through years, if not decades, of summer-afternoon mixed drinks and dishwasher runs. And every time you hold the cup, you remember exactly where you were when you got it, the pine trees and impossibly green grass and blessed cell-phone-free silence all around.

Maybe that’s why I like little totems like this so much; they’re little plastic madelines that unlock good memories every time you touch them. They don’t have any real value once you’re off the course — over on ebay, Masters plastic cups go for around $5 a pop, which is honestly a better deal than I expected. (It’s quite the price drop from the famous Masters gnome, which starts at a couple hundred bucks and goes way upward from there.)

All the value you attach to souvenirs like this, or refrigerator magnets, or keychains, or any of a thousand little branded tourist trinkets, is intrinsic and personal. You take a sip from that cup, you give it a look — hey, 2019, that’s when Tiger won! — and you remember that warm April afternoon, when all was right with the world.

Just, for the love of God, don’t try to scoop up any souvenir sand from an Augusta National bunker in the cup. That won’t end well for you.

I’m a sucker for these kinds of easy collectibles. I blame the old McDonald’s Dream Team cups from the early 1990s for infecting me at the genetic level. If you’re of a certain age, this will be a serious hit of Nirvana-era nostalgia:

I remember I managed to collect all 12, even the prized Jordan one — although I got stuck with like 15 Chris Mullins and Clyde Drexlers before I snagged the MJ. As for where those cups are now … probably sitting in a landfill where they’ll remain in mint condition for a thousand years.

This past summer in Paris, I got sucked in once again; the Olympics offered souvenir cups with every single sport emblazoned on them (see above). More than once, I watched some desperate souvenir hunter — not me, promise — get weary servers to comb through stacks of cups to find that elusive surfing or handball one. It’s a disease, I tell you.

Lately I’ve found a new contender for the southern plastic cup podium: the commemorative cups at Gallette’s in Tuscaloosa. Gallette’s is home to the Yellowhammer, a rum-and-fruit-juice bomb that’s the unofficial drink of the University of Alabama. Yellowhammers come in special red-and-yellow plastic cups (see above) that are so prized that Alabama students will dive into trash cans chasing them … and nobody’s stopping college students from doing anything that’s harmless, if still stupid.

Crimson Tide brides and grooms have commissioned special wedding-day Gallette’s cups, and the bar itself has served up special variants for various holidays — pink for breast cancer awareness month, black and orange for Halloween, crimson for Nick Saban’s retirement.

And one day, I will have them all. Oh yes, I will.

So what am I missing? What collectible sports/bar cups do I need to add to my obsessive hunting list? Let me know … and if you have any, perhaps we could make a little deal …

Song of the Week: “The Pool House,” Patterson Hood

Much like with Jason Isbell, if any member of the Drive-By Truckers Cinematic Universe releases new music, we spotlight that music here. Patterson Hood, the more chaotic of DBT’s two lead singers, has a solo album, “Exploding Trees & Airplane Screams,” coming out on Feb. 21, and “Pool House” is a sinister, 1970s-L.A. canyons-vibed tune off the album.

“The Pool House” was originally inspired by a night I spent at a creepy rental,” Hood says in press info for the album. “A literal pool house for an apartment complex that I rented cheap for the night during a solo tour. It was off-season and the pool was dark green and filled with algae. The whole thing was creepy and as I’d had a couple of drinks, my mind was definitely wandering, conjuring up some macabre shit.” Yeah, you get vibe that off this song. It’s a real departure from the hellraising of DBT, but in the best possible way.

Check out “Pool House” and everything else we spotlight here on the Flashlight & A Biscuit Spotify playlist:

Stunt Food of the Week: The BBQ Box of Champions

Oh mercy. Would you look at this … a national championship box of barbecue and trimmings, sold this past week at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta for the Ohio State-Notre Dame game. (I was there. Here’s my story on Notre Dame’s gutsy QB.)

I did not, however, get one of these Boxes of Champions, but I would have if I’d known they existed. They were a limited edition — only 200 made, per Levy Restaurants — and went for $40 a pop. Here’s what you get for that forty bucks: brisket, chicken, beef ribs, cornbread, baked beans, apple kale slaw, peach cobbler, and two different kinds of BBQ sauce.

Damn, that looks strong. Hell, Levy even did a damn hype video for this thing. I feel like this poll might go a little better than last week’s Cotton Candy Burrito. So tell us…

Seen some weird/horrifying/disturbingly enticing food on a restaurant menu or at a stadium? Let me know!