July is National Ice Cream Month, and the third Sunday, July 19 this year, is National Ice Cream Day. Ice cream was a rare and exotic treat as far back as the second century B.C., but it wasn’t until the late 1800s that new technology made ice cream making, serving, storing and transporting more available. George Washington spent about $200 on ice cream from a New York merchant in 1790. Thomas Jefferson was said to have a favorite recipe for an ice cream dessert like a modern Baked Alaska. And Dolly Madison served a strawberry ice cream dessert at President Madison’s second inaugural banquet in 1813.

Cool ice cream scoops are hot collectibles. Between 1878 and 1940, hundreds of patents for ice cream scoops – also called dippers and dishers – in all shapes with all sorts of mechanisms were granted. The first was cone-shaped and had a key at the point of the cone. After scooping, the key was turned and a scraper moved around to get the ice cream out. The classic lever-action scoop was patented in 1897. Most were tin, cone or globe shaped, and had a wooden handle. During the early 1900s, novel shapes were introduced, and scoops most valued by collectors dish up squares and rectangles for ice cream sandwiches, triangles for topping slices of pie, ovals for banana splits, and cylinders to fit inside tube-shaped wafers.

But the one that makes collectors melt is the heart-shaped scoop. John Manos of Manos Novelty Co. in Toronto, Ohio, patented the heart-shaped scoop in 1925. They also made heart-shaped dishes for ice cream. The scoop pictured was made by the Manos Co. and is marked “Patented Nov. 1925” on the inside plate. It’s nickel-plated brass with a wood handle and sold for a cool $4,800 at a 2014 Iowa auction. The heart-shaped dish is also by Manos, and was used at John Manos’ Candyland Ice Cream Parlor. It’s glass with a scrolling leaf pattern, marked “JM Pat Pend,” and sold for $360 at the same auction.

Find more prices of ice cream scoops in the free online price guide at Kovels.com.