Late in the 1930s, businessman Max Eckardt made an arrangement with the Corning Glass Company that got them started on Christmas ornament production in their light bulb plants. Corning started making glass ornaments for Eckardt's line after adapting their own light bulb manufacturing process and proceeded to ship ornaments to both Woolworth's stores and to Eckardt's factories where the plain ornaments could be further adorned by hand after being machine-lacquered.
As wartime shortages increased however, making both lacquer and silver difficult to come by, Eckardt started having the ornaments decorated in pastels and bright colors. As a result, Shiny Brite ornaments became very popular because of their uniqueness and soon become a staple of every family's Christmas trees. By the end of the war, Shiny Brite was the largest manufacturer of Christmas ornaments in the world and the popularity of the ornaments raged on into the 1950s.
Shiny Brite stopped making and selling the glass balls in 1962 because of production disruption and because of the changing business landscape and moved into the production of plastic ornaments, which never proved to be as popular. But they are madly collected today by all kinds of fans of the original vintage Shiny Brite ornaments.
 Vintage Shiny Brite Small Glass Bells Round Ornaments US $7.50 |
 Vintage Lot of Old Christmas Balls Shiny Brite US $7.95 |
 VINTAGE SHINY BRITE INDENTED TREE TOPPER WEST GERMANY US $7.19 |
 Lot of 5 vintage shiny brite indent ornaments nice set US $5.61 |
 108 SHINY BRITE ALUMINUM CHRISTMAS TREE BLUE ORNAMENTS US $16.49 |
 SHINY BRITE VINTAGE TREE ORNAMENTS GLASS BOX OF 12 US $7.00 |
 Shiny Brite Gift Package Cards With Display Box SWEET US $5.93 |
 SHINY BRITE VINTAGE XMAS TREE GLASS ORNAMENTS 1940s US $4.53 |
 Shiny Brite Feather Tree Christmas Ornaments SHAPES US $9.99 |
 VINTAGE SHINY BRITE CROWN CHRISTMAS ORNAMENT US $9.50 |
 ONE DOZEN VINTAGE SHINY BRITE GLASS XMAS ORNAMENTS US $5.13 |
 4 vintage shiny brite pink blue silver ornaments nice US $8.50 |
 ViNTaGe SHiNy BRiTe TRee BeLL ToP CHRiSTMaS oRNaMeNTS US $18.27 |
 3 SHINY BRITE PLASTIC NATIVITY SETS US $9.99 |
 VINTAGE LARGE SHINY BRITE SHAPES WITH UNCLE SAM BOX US $49.99 |
One thing to keep in mind though when shopping on Ebay for these ornaments is that many sellers and buyers seem to think that "Shiny Brite" refers to a type of ornament rather than a specific brand name. So if you are looking specifically for ornaments made by Max Eckardt's company, you might want to do a little digging into the listings just to make sure the description is accurate.
In addition to the vintage Shiny Brite Christmas ornaments available at antique shops, flea markets and online, Christopher Radko started making reproductions of the ornaments around 2001 and you'll find those on Ebay as well. Generally though you don't have to worry about the Radko reproductions being passed off as the vintage ornaments because Radko's ornaments are collectible in their own right. Also, Radko's ornaments are made in Europe and all of the original Shiny Brite's were of American manufacture.