- #1
Thread Owner
Bottle Vitals
| Embossing | Date | Color | Shape | Size (Height x Diameter) | Value* |
| None | 1880 | Clear | Round flask with neck | 3.75" x 5.5" x 1.25" | $20.00 |
Bottle Views (click to enlarge):
| Front | Back | Side | Side | Bottom |
 |  |  |  |  |
This little bottle doesn't have any embossing at all, which makes it a bit of a challenge. It could have held just about anything, but most of the examples I can find call say it's a whiskey bottle, so that's what I'll go with. There were a number of different styles of this bottle produced in the late 1800s. Several of them had embossing from various companies, but this one does not. It would likely have had a paper label but that has long since been lost.
I could not find any advertising from that era that has this type of flask pictured -- in fact it's hard to find much advertising of whiskey advertising from that era at all, because it was building up to prohibition. For example, here's a legislator from Kansas lamenting the lawless folks from Missouri bringing whiskey over into their state in small flasks like this (click to enlarge)
And apparently it was a fun thing to put fake messages in them and toss them into a body of water. Here are a couple of examples (click to enlarge):
And last but certainly not least, here's a little tidbit that mentions both Tennessee and Missouri:
And here is the pictured bottle, before and after cleaning with soap, water, and a couple of different brushes.
* Value is a guess based on similar examples sold on eBay at the time of posting. Values on bottles like this were all over the place, mostly seemingly dependent on embossing and color. Plain clear bottles like this one seemed to be on the low end, and some were as low as $5. The estimated $20 seemed typical.
