Plumbata
Posts: 1657
Joined: 12/4/2007
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quote:
ORIGINAL: rockbot
I believe the hutch stopper is made with lead?
Hmm never thought about that, is it some sort of pewter that the gasket is attached to? Either way a little lead doesn't bother me. I play with depleted Uranium, caustic and poisonous chemicals, Mercury, and smoke cigarettes to boot so a few atoms of Pb in the soda certainly won't kill me, at least not before the other stuff does!
quote:
ORIGINAL: GuntherHess
I don’t think the preference to clean bottles has much to do with the sophistication level of collectors, there are certainly very sophisticated bottle collectors. The owner has the option of how they prefer their glass.
Hmm, that is not what I was going for but I understand where you are coming from. I was more musing about the potential reasons that tumbling started in the first place, decades before my birth. It is clear why people do it now, however, and naturally it is their option, as is shattering the bottle. Neither was I suggesting that bottle collecting and the collectors aren't respectable or sophisticated; it just seems that it wasn't really considered to be respectable until 50 years ago or less, and even presently some antiquarians scoff at old bottles.
I was reading a book from 1949 about finding treasures in truck and trash and the author, in the section on glasswares, indicates that plain bottles with pontil marks, pontiled decanters, pontiled flasks, and bitters bottles either with pontils or not, were of value. "There are bitters bottles worth one hundred dollars, whiskey bottles worth two hundred and fifty dollars (historical flasks or something else?), and drinking glasses worth one thousand dollars." Most of the emphasis is on non-bottle glasswares though.
It is interesting how now, the top prices paid for bitters bottles are damn near 1,000 times higher than those paid 61 years ago. I wonder if there are drinking glasses out there worth a million dollars currently? Regardless, it shows rather well how far this hobby has developed and expanded over relatively short period of time. High-end bottles may indeed be a splendid hedge against inflation if in the next 60 years prices continue to rise dramatically and the hobby keeps growing (doubt anyone will be spending 100,000,000 on any American bottles in 6 decades, though that would be pretty sweet).
Perhaps someone a tad older than 23 can throw some wisdom and experience regarding the development of this hobby my way?
quote:
ORIGINAL: GuntherHess
I think it has more to do with the particular nature of glass. Some bottles look ok with an old even patina others have stain that masks the true beauty of the glass.
You provided a very telling indicator of why people may prefer tumbling; because of "stain that masks the true beauty of the glass". The reason I started collecting bottles when I was 5 was not because of the beauty of the superficial appearance of the glass, it was because of the beauty of the age and associated history indicated by the glass (and I just loved all sorts of bottles, old and new, because they were so magically useful in their sequestering of contents from the external environment). Typical aesthetics were, and are secondary to me, though certainly very important.
Perhaps this is where the division lies; some collectors see the bottles more as attractive works of art which should be allowed to shine and sparkle approximately as they would have just after manufacture (after the evidence of potential damage accrued over time is eliminated), and others may see them more as artifacts from an age long past, venerable by virtue of the age (and potential damages) that they show? Why else would there be such a deep rift of valid opinions?
quote:
ORIGINAL: GuntherHess
While modern coins are generally not cleaned, the majority of ancient coins have been cleaned in some way and it seems to be a generally accepted practice. Modern coins normally don’t need cleaned because most are not excavated.
Decent point, but the highest value coins are generally the ones which require the least cleaning, or nothing but a rinse. Often ancient coins come out in splendid shape, and they are not tossed in with the 1-2 dollar bulk lots of tumbler-scoured crusty roman bronzes because they are far more desirable as-is. It is generally accepted in part because after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc some profiteers had amassed millions of uncleaned excavated coins and they had to find a way to make them appealing enough to sell to the widest number of people possible. Many people who own ancient coins have no other numismatic interests, so having a bunch of hokey-looking cleaned bronzes presents no problem to them or the opening of their wallets. If it makes money, then naturally it is generally accepted, but it doesn't automatically make it a preferable practice. The majority of ancient coins that are cleaned in this way are the least valuable, most common examples which are not particularly desirable by actual collectors. Likewise, I doubt many coin collectors would care much if you polished up some wheatback pennies on a burnishing wheel, but if you did the same to a nice 1652 Pine Tree Shilling those same collectors would be looking to string you up on the nearest coniferous tree! If you've seen uncleaned ancient bronze (the kind that then gets cleaned), then the carbonate and dirt deposits are commonly so severe that the coin is entirely unattributable. This is not really an issue with old American bottles, not this millennium anyway.
To switch gears slightly, would you carry your assertion that since these ancient Roman bottles/containers possess "stain that masks the true beauty of the glass" they should be tumbled clean and smooth, along with more recent excavated hand-blown American glass (provided they wouldn't break, in this scenario)? Or are they more "artifacts" than "art" which should have the patinated "context" preserved?
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Cleaning bottles vs professional cleaning - 
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