A SCORCHER and a BRICK CAP brings a BUNCH of Early Bottles w/ VIDEOS

[{Sentinel}]

On Saturday morning, I hooked up with my buddy Louis and we went down to this little spot that we had prospected for some bottles. It had been a few months since the last time and we marked off a new grid with fresh ground below, an area about 6 x 10 and we prepared to dig what would end up being a VERY TOUGH day of digging! To start off with the temperature at 6:30AM was already in the 80s and within a couple of hours was around 95! Next, as we busted open the ground, what was revealed to us was a ‘Brick Cap’ of about 2 1/2 feet thick. This was a task to break open in that scorching VA heat but after about an 1 ½ hours we were through it. We spent the next several hours digging down to about 6 ft and that is when we hit the original surface of the creek bed. It was meshed with broken glass, lime, and bottles! The bottles started flowing with almost every scoop of the shovel.

We were going to dig through another 2 feet of sand to another layer of bottles but the combination of near exhaustion and heat with the fact that we didn’t feel a whole lot of anything else below using the probe rod, led us to end the hunt and to back fill the hole which was a task in itself.

Most of these bottles were around the mid to1880s era with a few around the 1900 mark. Got quite alot of nice bottles with lettering and embossing on them including some medicines, sodas, whiskys....here's a small sample of some of them...take a look:

MOXIE'S 'NERVE FOOD'



"Baltimore"




NORFOLK BRANCH (1873-1890)...The "H" stands for Heurich...Christian Heurich, who owned a beer brewery and this bottle of course came from the...Norfolk Branch




Early "Lea & Perrin's" Worcester Sauce Bottle. Worcester Sauce was heavily copied by individual sutlers across the country at the time. Some of these others are very rare. I happened to get one of the copied Worcester Sauce bottles this dig as well




"COURTENAY & CO. Worcester Sauce" This bottle is a SCARCE find. This brand is a very hard brand to find. This is an example of a "copied" Lea & Perrins....Back then copyright infringement wasn't given much thought. dating from the mid 1880s...The bottle stands 7"tall,has a hand tooled cork top finish,is round in shape.The bottom is embossed with the letters "A & P".This is one of the many copycat versions of the ever popular Lea & Perrins Sauce bottles



Emerson Drug Co. Baltimore, MD




I was cleaning this one and all of a sudden I busted out laughing at this SCHLITZ antiquity The earliest malt liquor bottle I have ever seen.. THE FIRST SCHLITZ MALT LIQUOR HAHA




"WHITTEMORE BOSTON"


THIS IS MY FAVORITE and it was sitting 6 FEET DEEP straight up. It is a BEAUTIFUL Earthenware Terra Cotta pot aka Spittoon. It has a nice red color and a great fern design on the front. I have ALL THE PIECES to the lip and once I have bonded it back together, this will make a TERRIFIC PIECE


"JOHNSONS LINIMENT"


And LAST but not least, here is a photo of all the bottles together..



These bottle were hard earned so I hope you guys liked all the pictures. I will be posting video of the dig to this thread too in the next couple hours.


VIDEO OF DIG (Forewarning: I believe the extreme heat on Saturday got to my DVR as you will notice that the videos have a certain watery or wobbly effect to them in certain parts of the clips however this doesnt take away from the clips):

Part I
[video=google;-891253528173825593]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-891253528173825593&hl=en[/video]

Part II
[video=google;3233867572201083149]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3233867572201083149&hl=en[/video]

Part III
[video=google;5610969134870181653]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5610969134870181653&hl=en[/video]

 

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[BuckleBoy]

Re: A SCORCHER and a BRICK CAP brings a BUNCH of Early Bottles

That ain't no terra cotta pot.  That's a terra cotta SPITTOON!!  


The bottles are Lovely.  Nice digs, brotha!



-Buck




P.S.--I can't wait to see the video of this one.

 

[Baggins]

Re: A SCORCHER and a BRICK CAP brings a BUNCH of Early Bottles

Always love to see dug bottles!
HH
Baggins

 

[{Sentinel}]

Re: A SCORCHER and a BRICK CAP brings a BUNCH of Early Bottles

That ain't no terra cotta pot. That's a terra cotta SPITTOON!!


The bottles are Lovely. Nice digs, brotha!



-Buck




P.S.--I can't wait to see the video of this one.

Yes, you are absolutely correct Buck and you will here me allude to that fact in the video. It is indeed a spittoon.

 

[MonkeyBoy]

You are the man!! Digging in that heat!!! Outstanding VA bottles... ;-) my last pit produced three VA town bottles.. (2) Leesburg and a Purcellville... both in Northern VA.. and late bottle... but I'll alway take the ones with town names on them!! I have 3 spots "ready" to dig... but I'll wait till fall!! ;-)


MonkeyBoy

 

[stillgottawork]

You hit the mother load of bottles....

 

[tymcmurray]

Great finds, Josh!!
I may have missed a post, but how did
you decide to dig there?

 

[TimC (North Alabama)]

Awesome bottles, I love old bottles. Way to go on the glass

 

[Colonial Copper Zeus]

Great job my man.....I can just see that spitoon full of jib juice at one time. I'll bet you could have needed a shot of that nerve food after finding all those goodies.
Chris

 

[civilman1]

There's some awesome lookin' bottle's there Josh....The "spittoon" is pretty cool,too bad about the damage though.Are you guy's going to expand the hole or leave it like that?Congrat's to you and your Bud on some Great bottle's Buddy....I think they're Cool!!

 

[Ron B]

Way to go!
Many of us complain of digging 6 or 8 inches to retrieve coins; you guys dig 6 feet or more and love it!
Go figger!

I, like most Metal Detectorists like history. You gave me a lesson in bottles for sure!

Thanks for posting such an informative post!
GRB

 

[toolman61]

Great recovery by u and your friend. Was this a dump from an individual house or a bunch of them? Also did and do u guys run your detectors over the holes yall dig? Awsome finds indeed. i used to save antique bottles gave em all to 1 of my grandsons but i think my stepson moved and didn"t take them with them really burned me up... I had the kid a real nice collection going about 120 different pop bottles from 40-80 yrs old. Oh well can"t win em all. HH tom

 

[Admiral de Salee]

That's the finest gang of dug bottles I have ever seen.

Thanks for the pictures (can't watch the videos, I'm at work).

 

[Lowbatts]

Thanks for the great pics! Nice digs for sure!

 

[jimbob450]

very nice collection of bottles. be careful working in them holes. Jimbob

 

[Nana40]

OHHH, YESSSSSS! 8) I knew you'd come through with a fantastic video of you dig!

I don't know how you guys did it though! Dang, it's HOT out! I'm gonna have to try bottle diggin' one day..only it'll have to be a bunch cooler weather! Guess I'ma sissy girl. :P

LOVE ALL those bottles, Senti! And I know you're very proud to place them into your collection.

Thanks for video!! Congrats on a successful dig!

Nana

 

[NGE]

Nice digs! One possible explanation of watery video; heat rising in front of your lens from hot , overheated bodies. Sorta like "oasis' on the road, where you see flooded road, but it's just heat rising from pavement.......Not GE

 

[{Sentinel}]

Great finds, Josh!!
I may have missed a post, but how did
you decide to dig there?

Hey Ty, this was an old spot that use to be a bottle dump in the 1800s. Usually the lowest areas in any city are a great place to find bottle dumps. This is how this one was found, with the aid of an old map of the city.

There's some awesome lookin' bottle's there Josh....The "spittoon" is pretty cool,too bad about the damage though.Are you guy's going to expand the hole or leave it like that?Congrat's to you and your Bud on some Great bottle's Buddy....I think they're Cool!!

Well the good thing about the spittoon is that I have all the broken pieces and they usually still retain a high value if you can piece them back together. We will probably expand the hole to another grid but will WAIT until it gets cooler because it was hot as the

Great recovery by u and your friend. Was this a dump from an individual house or a bunch of them? Also did and do u guys run your detectors over the holes yall dig? Awsome finds indeed. i used to save antique bottles gave em all to 1 of my grandsons but i think my stepson moved and didn"t take them with them really burned me up... I had the kid a real nice collection going about 120 different pop bottles from 40-80 yrs old. Oh well can"t win em all. HH tom

This was a collective community dump. It use to be the marshy area next to a creek. Usually, as a rule, we do run our detectors over the dirt. I pulled a few buckles out of this spot but this spot was mainly a bottle dump so I didn't scan as vigourous as I would some other more accesible dumpsites. I pulled a Large Cent out of another dump site last week. We are yet to go back to that one though, but eventually we will

OHHH, YESSSSSS! 8) I knew you'd come through with a fantastic video of you dig!

I don't know how you guys did it though! Dang, it's HOT out! I'm gonna have to try bottle diggin' one day..only it'll have to be a bunch cooler weather! Guess I'ma sissy girl. :P

LOVE ALL those bottles, Senti! And I know you're very proud to place them into your collection.

Thanks for video!! Congrats on a successful dig!

Nana

It was a TOUGH DAY OF DIGGING with that HEAT but we stayed the course Thank YOU for enjoying the pics and video. I told you that I was going to get some video for you and I did

 

[Merf]

Love those finds Sentinel
I used to drink Schlitz malt liquor

 

[CRUSADER]

I miss bottle digging, I used to do alot as a kid. It was a Victorian bottle dump (1/2mile square area), it was amazing, 6 foot holes eveywhere. I used to jump in & chip away at the sides. It was very dangerous but who cared back then.lol I came back with carry bags full. Dad told me to throw hundreds away when we moved & pick my fav 50.

I have been trying to get in with the local diggers, but the ones I know mainly dive the rivers!