Bottle experts

[Longun]

I know many of you probably have other hobbies than just hunting animals....I found this blue bottle yesterday by an old homestead on the main ranch and was wondering if anybody has an idea of what kind it is? No writing and has the old time screw on lip. I don't think its really that old but sure is purdy!

 

[d13r]

milk of magnesia

JB

 

[sageadvice]

That or something similar would be my guess as well. Family size. Neat find!

At one time i had over 100 different cobalt cork top poison bottles. Some very hard ones to come by. I sold a bunch of the best ones some years ago to raise cash and have given out some as presents, pretty neat stuff. Kinda wish i still had that collection. IMO, most awsome color there is.

Joey

 

[kilowatt]

JB should know that bottle, he uses it a lot. LOL

Brian

 

[eelgrass]

Mike, one year I made a big loop around those big alkali lakes between Alturas and the Nevada border. We were looking for a Booner antelope. Somewhere out there on the north side of Hwy 299, on the east side of the "lake" we came across an old homestead. We poked around a little and found a bunch of old bottles. It was such a neat spot that we couldn't bear to even take one, so we left everything as we found it. I doubt if anybody else has found it since that day.

Eel

 

[overton]

Eel

Email me the directions please.


Ransom

 

[legacy]

Fiddle around with this site for a while...it's pretty neat if you're into bottles! Let us know what your estimated age is...

http://www.sha.org/bottle/dating.htm

 

[NVBighorn]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-19-08 AT 09:48PM (MST)[p]legacy,

Thanks for that link. I have boxes and boxes of old bottles and stuff that my folks left me. Way back when I was a kid they got the bottle collecting bug. We went to ghost towns and mining camps all over western Nevada digging and finding stuff. I have some pretty cool ones. I have purple, brown, aqua, green, pottery, "black", cobalt blue. Literally hundreds.

Only thing wrong with that link was when I went to bookmark it, it showed up in my favorites as "Dating Page". Don't want the wife to see that.

 

[cjboz]

Opium! Did you drink the rest of the bottle?

 

[legacy]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-20-08 AT 09:00AM (MST)[p]"Only thing wrong with that link was when I went to bookmark it, it showed up in my favorites as "Dating Page". Don't want the wife to see that."

That's funny stuff! I have a few bottles...one I found out in the west desert (Utah) in an old mining camp. It is a "flask" type bottle that says "1 PINT" on it and it still has the cork in it. It had a little liquid inside when I found it. I also found a couple near Camp Williams (Utah). One was a cobalt blue Vicks bottle that still had the glass dropper in it. The other was a clear Listerine cork bottle.

My neighbor / friend was the foreman for the new credit union in Nephi (Utah). When they broke ground they heard glass breaking. They stopped to investigate and ended up finding a bunch of old bottles. He did some research and found out that the credit union was being built on the site of an old fort. Cool stuff.

 

[NVBighorn]

Is your flask round shaped and very thin glass or is it shaped more like a modern day pint bottle? The rounded ones were called "pumpkinseeds" because of their obvious shape and a great bottle for a collection. I have no idea what they may be worth. I have several in different sizes, mostly purple (amythest). My dad was especially fond of those because they were rather rare to find in one piece because of the thin glass. He had a number of them that he treasured. When he died I made sure that all my siblings and I got a nice representation from his "pumpkinseed" collection. When the folks were in their hayday of bottle collecting I was only 6 or 8 years old but I was the only one of my sibs who found it interesting so I always went along. Had lots of fun.

I'll try to get a picture of one of those "pumpkinseed" flasks and post it up.

By the way, one of the other cobalt blue bottles that was fairly common back in the mining camp days besides milk of magnesia was bromoseltzer. They came in various sizes but were usually round unlike the bottle in longun's original post.

 

[legacy]

It's not a "pumpkinseed", nor is it hand blown. I think it dates back to the early 1900's. I'll have to check again and see exactly what date I come up with. I'll post some pics later as well.

 

[sageadvice]

Old bottles are way cool! I used to know a cpouple "serious" collectors that sold most of the stuff they dug or bought. They made a living hustling bottles. Yeah, they would buy and sell most anything they knew that they could turn a profit, but bottles was their game and some of their profits went to get examples that they needed for their own killer collections.

One guy had a blob top soda bottle collection that was out of this world. All different kinds a colors including many cobalts, most of them with raised embossed lettering in the glass describing the product and city sold. My other buddy collected old ceramic pot lids and inks, commonly known as old ink wells. His inks weren't your garden variety, they were again all over the spectrum in colors but what i noticed about his over the couple dozen that i had, the glass was super thin, almost brittle. $$$

Some guys collect Whisky's, Med's, Beer's, crock's, punkinseed's, foods like olives had a bigger round top, perfumes, it goes on and on.

We dug in areas that we figured might have been the location of old out houses. We'd probe with metal tipped stainless rods until there was enough evidence making worth the effort of digging a pit. Some holes paid off, some didn't. My best find wasn't dug but bought from a landloard who had a big triangular blue bottle w/ label setting on his window sill everytime i paid my rent. I wasn't into bottles at the time but i really was attracted to that bottle. I knew the landloard was into drugs and figured that he'd someday take me up on my "$50. anytime you want to sell it" offer. He did and that's how my bottle education began. I met one of the above mentioned fellows when i took it to his shop to find out what i had and what it was worth.

Imagine my surprise when it turns out that i had bought a 1890's Mint Quart sized Owl Drug Poison Bottle, still had the cork & origional seriel #'rd label describing the couple inches of denatured alcohol the bottle still contained. I sold it for $400., probably too cheap, part cash part other blue poison bottles, that's how i started to collect blue. Fun Hobby but now i'm into old fishing lures. That's another story alltogether! lol

Joey

 

[ClorideRUS]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-20-08 AT 08:29PM (MST)[p]We came across a camp out near the Utah-Nevada border and collected a bunch of old bottles. My middle daughter is an archeologist ... or how ever you spell it.

Anyway she took the numbers and markings off the bottom of the bottles & found out they was from the Owl Drug Company ... apparently back in the 20's 30's & 40's the hucksters were selling codeine and cocaine door to door. Most people thought it was great. I ask my dad about it and he said ?Oh yea! They were kind of like the Hoover vacuum sales guy's they just showed up every 6 months or so and sold you drugs.

I haven't seen a vacuum salesman lately ... but Jose' shows up once in awhile and offers me codeine or cocaine. I usually just ask him "dude got any Mexican Beer"?

Can't spell that one either ..cerveza .. dos equis .... corona .. whatever.

RUS

RUS

 

[kilowatt]

My cousin took over the collection that his old brother had collected over many years of digging around old mine shafts etc. in Nevada County in N. Kali. My aunts house was a mess with those old bottles and in side of closets too. Probably many boxes under the house too with them. Better tell Bob he might have a "pile of money" just laying around collecting dust and not be aware of it.

Brian

 

[sageadvice]

Rus, That was pretty funny. Thanks!

It's tough to get good money for bottles. Yes indeed, there are some out there that do bring in over say 30-$50. but that would be the odd one. By far most that a guy comes across are in the 2- $10. range. Embossing helps value. Cork top or earlier is almost a must. Very few screw top bottles can sell at all unless someone likes the color. Age-circa, color, company, embossing, rairity, condition, demand. If you got one that has it all, can be some serious money.

That Owl Drug Co. bottle that i bought and sold just happened to be of a good old San Francisco Co., Right dark Cobalt color, had POISON as well as an owl embossed, rare size, and the origional label with not a single chip or scratch which really made it extreemly rare and desirable. Maybe, no finer example existed. Looking back, that bottle might have brought $1000. if i played my cards right. Then again, i might have broken it taking it back home or an earthquake.

I used the money i got from that bottle to roadtrip visit my Uncle in Elko, fished a couple creeks, for brookies, that come out of the Rubies, caugh lots of Bass in the ruby marshes, and caught a big brown trout plugging from the bank at Wildhorse Res. Nv. 1985, had a blast. Money went farther back then.

Joey

 

[legacy]

Here are some of my bottles. Obviously the blue Vicks bottle Isn't really old, but the color and glass dropper is kind of cool. I think it dates back to the 40's. The Listerine bottle is a cork top. I threw in a Hemingray insulator just for fun as well! I found the whiskey bottle outside the door of an old mining cabin. It was hidden under a sage brush. The bottle is 8 inches tall.