Does anyone post vintage glass bottles found while MD'ing?

[JB Hunts]

I'm starting to pay attention to old 1800's/early 1900's vintage glass bottles found MD'ing over the last year during my beach hunts. Most bottles are broken and are just washed up and found while I'm hunting. A few bottles however are found completely in tact!

A couple of bottles have been wedged into the sand, but a most bottles I'm finding right after major storms..

The designs and shapes are endless and offer an up close illustration of early Americana that I think is very adjacent to digging old coins...

Some of the more interesting glass bottle finds are a late 1800's /early 1900's "Formamint Tablets" amber bottle used for dust and throat irritation/bacteria, with cap still in tact... Zaney old medical cures for sure which was likely cutting edge at the time!

Another bottle is one that I dug a few months ago while swinging the coil, which from what I understand is the gold standard for vintage bottle Americana-- the cobalt blue apocatherpy medicine bottle-- this one from Squibb Medical Division with a "patent 1925" mark at the bottom.

And this Weekend I found a vintage condiment bottle with a unique loop design at the top of the bottle that just screamed vintage as soon as I found it laying on the sand.

I've also posted some other vintage glass bottles designs-- some with brand names that of course no one has heard of as 99% of these companies are no longer in business! One bottle is for malted milk, and another cobalt blue bottle is a late 1800's Milk of Magnesia bottle.

While not as exhilarating as finding old coins, many of these bottles that I've found are really neat snapshots into the era of quirky medical cures, extinct Americana products, and great industrial design!!

Just like coins, these are creative designs which are really cool to look at from he "I've never seen this" category!

Please share your thoughts on if anyone else has found these great glass bottle slices of early Americana while MD'ing!

Photos attached for more comments!

HH! JB

 

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[scruggs]

Last year I finally rooted out the bottles that were in storage for a decade+.
Still have a few boxes of ones that need cleaning up that have been dug while detecting. View attachment 2131159View attachment 2131160View attachment 2131161View attachment 2131162View attachment 2131163View attachment 2131164

You have a very nice collection of glass Pepper, congratulations!

 

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[Digger RJ]

I'm starting to pay attention to old 1800's/early 1900's vintage glass bottles found MD'ing over the last year during my beach hunts. Most bottles are broken and are just washed up and found while I'm hunting. A few bottles however are found completely in tact!

A couple of bottles have been wedged into the sand, but a most bottles I'm finding right after major storms..

The designs and shapes are endless and offer an up close illustration of early Americana that I think is very adjacent to digging old coins...

Some of the more interesting glass bottle finds are a late 1800's /early 1900's "Formamint Tablets" amber bottle used for dust and throat irritation/bacteria, with cap still in tact... Zaney old medical cures for sure which was likely cutting edge at the time!

Another bottle is one that I dug a few months ago while swinging the coil, which from what I understand is the gold standard for vintage bottle Americana-- the cobalt blue apocatherpy medicine bottle-- this one from Squibb Medical Division with a "patent 1925" mark at the bottom.

And this Weekend I found a vintage condiment bottle with a unique loop design at the top of the bottle that just screamed vintage as soon as I found it laying on the sand.

I've also posted some other vintage glass bottles designs-- some with brand names that of course no one has heard of as 99% of these companies are no longer in business! One bottle is for malted milk, and another cobalt blue bottle is a late 1800's Milk of Magnesia bottle.

While not as exhilarating as finding old coins, many of these bottles that I've found are really neat snapshots into the era of quirky medical cures, extinct Americana products, and great industrial design!!

Just like coins, these are creative designs which are really cool to look at from he "I've never seen this" category!

Please share your thoughts on if anyone else has found these great glass bottle slices of early Americana while MD'ing!

Photos attached for more comments!

HH! JB

Very Cool!!! Congrats!!!

 

[Midden-marauder]

Nice glass!
Honestly, digging antique to vintage glass has been a major pursuit for myself and my partner, we have a fair number of old dumping areas in our vicinity and it is from these places that all the best artifacts both glass and otherwise have been taken from. I should post more photos of what we've found and unearthed but in the last 3 years we've found antique and vintage relics of good quality numbering well into the hundreds so it's a bit overwhelming to pull it all out for a photoshoot. Metal detecting has been semi productive in locating the good stuff, if I'm using that tech in the field it's completely limited to the use of a pinpointer as the preponderance of metals at these sites would make using a large coil a bit of a nightmare plus I like that it's compact and discreet.
When I compare what I've found with a detector vs. eyeball finds and ground probing the latter blows the former wildly out of the water. Metal detecting is amusing but basically nothing I've found using it can hold a candle to the dump digging action. I'm all the time watching for mounds, old anthropogenic debris scattered about an area and of course large quantities of broken glass. Google Earth is my best friend for finding larger waste areas too. I use the pinpointer to help identify "busy" ground to a large degree, if there's a lot of junk in the ground it may be time to just start excavating. Of course I'm a total bottle collector so finding cool glass is hot. Definitely a preferred target type but if old metal relics come out of the hole that's great too! Someone needs to invent a glass detector lol.

 

[Midden-marauder]

Ok here's a photo of a small selection of goodies from several outings and different locations that were laying about the house. We have many unprocessed finds we need to clean up and date, it's getting to be a bit ridiculous in terms of sheer volume. Things here represented range from 1920's to 1950's, glass and metal alike. I know folks like to see the pics so here ya go, maybe I'll get around to posting more, there's just so much of it lol.

 

[Midden-marauder]

Oh, and this is a common sight around our house, a random container of antique glass awaiting full cleaning and dating lol. Our storage unit houses most of this stuff....

 

[JB Hunts]

Nice glass!
Honestly, digging antique to vintage glass has been a major pursuit for myself and my partner, we have a fair number of old dumping areas in our vicinity and it is from these places that all the best artifacts both glass and otherwise have been taken from. I should post more photos of what we've found and unearthed but in the last 3 years we've found antique and vintage relics of good quality numbering well into the hundreds so it's a bit overwhelming to pull it all out for a photoshoot. Metal detecting has been semi productive in locating the good stuff, if I'm using that tech in the field it's completely limited to the use of a pinpointer as the preponderance of metals at these sites would make using a large coil a bit of a nightmare plus I like that it's compact and discreet.
When I compare what I've found with a detector vs. eyeball finds and ground probing the latter blows the former wildly out of the water. Metal detecting is amusing but basically nothing I've found using it can hold a candle to the dump digging action. I'm all the time watching for mounds, old anthropogenic debris scattered about an area and of course large quantities of broken glass. Google Earth is my best friend for finding larger waste areas too. I use the pinpointer to help identify "busy" ground to a large degree, if there's a lot of junk in the ground it may be time to just start excavating. Of course I'm a total bottle collector so finding cool glass is hot. Definitely a preferred target type but if old metal relics come out of the hole that's great too! Someone needs to invent a glass detector lol.

Seems like all of the glass bottle collectors on here are super passionate about the hobby. I love that I can do two hobbies at once. The beach finds will not be as plentiful as your inland finds, but I am really wanting to hunt some farms to test my Deus 2 on land soon! Tks for b your great posts! JB

 

[RatherBeDigging]

Yes. I float between digging shallow dump spots and metal detecting. Sometimes find the dump spot with the detector. #7 sad iron came out of a dump. Few of the milks, the hutch in window on left came out of Atlantic Ocean along with 2 1910s beers and a 19teens pictorial bottle with horse and rider mid jump.

Earliest bottle i have is was made in a dip mold. It has all little seed bubbles, pink tint, no seams and really crooked twisted neck from gathering the glass to from the neck. While it has a spider web impact crack on oneside it is still together. Keep it out of light so it doesn't crack anymore. It 1870 or prior. I've read that's about as late as dip mould bottles. How old I have no idea.

 

[ToddsPoint]

This thread got me out yesterday walking the creek looking for ravines with bottles. I found one pile of junk and baby bottles. Nothing very old. I didn’t bring any tools but I think the stuff in ravines get covered eventually.

 

[CreekSide]

This thread got me out yesterday walking the creek looking for ravines with bottles. I found one pile of junk and baby bottles. Nothing very old. I didn’t bring any tools but I think the stuff in ravines get covered eventually.

I will be out looking for some in about a week or so. Good luck

 

[JB Hunts]

This thread got me out yesterday walking the creek looking for ravines with bottles. I found one pile of junk and baby bottles. Nothing very old. I didn’t bring any tools but I think the stuff in ravines get covered eventually.

Yes, I just "walked" into the glass bottle hobby by accident while MD'ing and now I love it! So cool to see what brands of yesterday were what the public/ culture wanted and thought that they needed for their health. Oh my how 100-150 years have so radically changed in the US. It's a great snapshot into an era of pioneering companies purveying the public with very creative goods and services!!

 

[JB Hunts]

I will be out looking for some in about a week or so. Good luck

First time, or are you very experienced at vintage bottle collecting ??

 

[Gare]

What an amazing group of finds Thanks for posting

 

[Midden-marauder]

Seems like all of the glass bottle collectors on here are super passionate about the hobby. I love that I can do two hobbies at once. The beach finds will not be as plentiful as your inland finds, but I am really wanting to hunt some farms to test my Deus 2 on land soon! Tks for b your great posts! JB

What you find depends on where you are. Out here we don't have much in the way of accessable pre 1900's homesteads, some, but many aren't gonna be easy to get at. Certain ghost towns might be attainable but many of those are early 1900s anyway. Old dumps and middens? Yup, it's a desert too so they tend not to get covered over by layers of leaf litter, easy to find.

Yes. I float between digging shallow dump spots and metal detecting. Sometimes find the dump spot with the detector. #7 sad iron came out of a dump. Few of the milks, the hutch in window on left came out of Atlantic Ocean along with 2 1910s beers and a 19teens pictorial bottle with horse and rider mid jump.

Earliest bottle i have is was made in a dip mold. It has all little seed bubbles, pink tint, no seams and really crooked twisted neck from gathering the glass to from the neck. While it has a spider web impact crack on oneside it is still together. Keep it out of light so it doesn't crack anymore. It 1870 or prior. I've read that's about as late as dip mould bottles. How old I have no idea.

That's not unlike the collection we've gathered except we tend to cherry pick the little ones especially the colored glass or little graduated ones. We have sufficient access to old glass that we can afford to be picky, the bottle dumps in the area we live in are pretty abundant. The Rio Grande river hosts many old dumps and the desert conditions on our region ensures things don't get buried over by leaf litter, they tend to remain right on the surface unless buried by human hands which is where the metal detector comes in handy. If there's buried metal there may be glass or ceramic entombed with it. Even the more modern dumps hold cool relics. There's a place not far from us called 9 mile hill which is an old landfill, if you're bored you should Google Earth it, the area is visibly strewn with a ton of garbage and it's hot digging, much is there to be found. There's older dump grounds here but 9 mile hill gives one a clue about how it is in NM, things are easy to be found right on the surface!

 

[RatherBeDigging]

What you find depends on where you are. Out here we don't have much in the way of accessable pre 1900's homesteads, some, but many aren't gonna be easy to get at. Certain ghost towns might be attainable but many of those are early 1900s anyway. Old dumps and middens? Yup, it's a desert too so they tend not to get covered over by layers of leaf litter, easy to find.

That's not unlike the collection we've gathered except we tend to cherry pick the little ones especially the colored glass or little graduated ones. We have sufficient access to old glass that we can afford to be picky, the bottle dumps in the area we live in are pretty abundant. The Rio Grande river hosts many old dumps and the desert conditions on our region ensures things don't get buried over by leaf litter, they tend to remain right on the surface unless buried by human hands which is where the metal detector comes in handy. If there's buried metal there may be glass or ceramic entombed with it. Even the more modern dumps hold cool relics. There's a place not far from us called 9 mile hill which is an old landfill, if you're bored you should Google Earth it, the area is visibly strewn with a ton of garbage and it's hot digging, much is there to be found. There's older dump grounds here but 9 mile hill gives one a clue about how it is in NM, things are easy to be found right on the surface!

Lately I've been digging in shallow ash dumps. Not more than 6 inches to a foot deep. One is done, other goes pretty far. It seems people would pull a cart along path and dump their stove ash. Sometimes, ash with cans, bottles and other stuff.

 

[Nathan W]

I found these over a year and a half when I was detecting . They are from several different sites. Wife liked them so I put them on the cabinet in the kitchen .

 

[pepperj]

What you find depends on where you are. Out here we don't have much in the way of accessable pre 1900's homesteads, some, but many aren't gonna be easy to get at. Certain ghost towns might be attainable but many of those are early 1900s anyway. Old dumps and middens? Yup, it's a desert too so they tend not to get covered over by layers of leaf litter, easy to find.

That's not unlike the collection we've gathered except we tend to cherry pick the little ones especially the colored glass or little graduated ones. We have sufficient access to old glass that we can afford to be picky, the bottle dumps in the area we live in are pretty abundant. The Rio Grande river hosts many old dumps and the desert conditions on our region ensures things don't get buried over by leaf litter, they tend to remain right on the surface unless buried by human hands which is where the metal detector comes in handy. If there's buried metal there may be glass or ceramic entombed with it. Even the more modern dumps hold cool relics. There's a place not far from us called 9 mile hill which is an old landfill, if you're bored you should Google Earth it, the area is visibly strewn with a ton of garbage and it's hot digging, much is there to be found. There's older dump grounds here but 9 mile hill gives one a clue about how it is in NM, things are easy to be found right on the surface!

We dug in a ghost town that was established in 1880.
It was built on stilts mainly because of the muskeg/bog.
This bottle was floating in the creek system that ran throughout the site.

The bottles were down well past the length of our arms, in the glacier water.
The board sidewalks were 2+ feet under the muskeg.
Never recovered any coins, a fair amount of other relics.
The bottle digging was great.

 

[JB Hunts]

I found these over a year and a half when I was detecting . They are from several different sites. Wife liked them so I put them on the cabinet in the kitchen .

A great clever way to decorate your house....I'm starting to do the same! JB

 

[Trezurehunter]

I have posted bottles in the past, as well as numerous other members have. I like your Cobalt Blue bottle, that is my favorite color when it comes to glass.

 

[JB Hunts]

We dug in a ghost town that was established in 1880.
It was built on stilts mainly because of the muskeg/bog.
This bottle was floating in the creek system that ran throughout the site.View attachment 2131819
The bottles were down well past the length of our arms, in the glacier water.
The board sidewalks were 2+ feet under the muskeg.
Never recovered any coins, a fair amount of other relics.
The bottle digging was great.

Wow. Such a stunning and unique bottle!

 

[pepperj]

Wow. Such a stunning and unique bottle!

They're called case gin bottles