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Old man digger

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Hey Dave, I attached a couple pictures of the red dog and rooster bottle. It also goes deep red. These are the colors I am interested in adding to my collection.

View attachment 232317
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Well looks like I am going to strike out on that color phase. I finally remembered the name of the area where I did most of my digging/scraping and it was on the south side of the Canal in an area called Culebra. The name Culebra was at one time called Gaillard Cut. I also dug over near Fort Sherman on the Atlantic side, but digging there was like digging in a muck pile...Your shovel would make this terrible sucking sound when you tried to get a shovel full of dirt out of the hole. Not much fun and did not dig there very much, but some really nice bottles came out of the area. Never made it to Bocas Del Toro, if I had I may have found a rooster bottle...I traded another digger in Panama a very nice Washington Flask for the one and only rooster I had and it was broken beyond repair when shipped back to CONUS in hold baggage. I did see one on display in the Pan canal museum in Balboa and thats how I found out there was a Rooster bottle in Panama. I'd like to go back and dig my butt off in Bocas Del Toro!!!!!!!!
 

bottlebelzer

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Hey Dave, they pop up on Ebay once in a while. Type sociedad vinicola bottle in the search window to keep an eye out for one. They can be a bit pricy ($200-$300) but I think worth the investment. Since you know the Canal, I attached my file that I have of the old French construction sites. Now if I could spend the time, I would check them out. However, I hear that the Panamanian Gov't will have none of the random digging that went on when the US controlled the Canal!!! Would you happen to have this ribbon sealed J.J.W. Peters bottle (see pic)?
 

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  • French Panama Canal Construction Towns.pdf
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  • Peters Ribbon Seal 2.jpg
    Peters Ribbon Seal 2.jpg
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  • Peters Ribbon Seal.jpg
    Peters Ribbon Seal.jpg
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Old man digger

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Hey Dave, they pop up on Ebay once in a while. Type sociedad vinicola bottle in the search window to keep an eye out for one. They can be a bit pricy ($200-$300) but I think worth the investment. Since you know the Canal, I attached my file that I have of the old French construction sites. Now if I could spend the time, I would check them out. However, I hear that the Panamanian Gov't will have none of the random digging that went on when the US controlled the Canal!!! Would you happen to have this ribbon sealed J.J.W. Peters bottle (see pic)?
Robert No, I do not have that bottle. That map is pretty awesome to bad I didn't have one like that when I was there. What I could figure out from those pages is that Culebra had to be somewhere between Miraflores and Pedro Miguel on the south side of the canal. If you left from Ancon Hill, onto 4th of July Ave., drove over the big bridge that crosses the bay, turned right like you were going to Rodman Naval Base, drove past the base and kept going on that road till you came to a 900-yard rifle range on the left-hand side of that road. Stop your vehicle at about where there is a road that divides the range in half. Right at that intersection on the left side of the access road, the were glass bottles that had rounded bottoms and most said BELFAST on them. In that same spot there were glazed pottery bottles that were mostly white and some were half white and half dirty yellow/brown color. I mean hundreds of them!!! My wife at the time spotted something glittering on the other side of the road and went to look and she found another dump or a continuation of the one I have found while at the rifle range during competition. That was a solid everything dump. She found this ink well that looked like an igloo with a chimney coming out of it and it had the name Davids embossed in it. She still has it and we got a divorce many moons ago. One of the prettiest bottles that came out of that dump was this dark green squat bottle with the name DOPELLE or something very close to that. The other place we dug at was over on the Atlantic side at the foot of Fort Sherman. I have had SOCIEDAD VINICOLA as a saved search for 10 or more years on eBay and have never had a hit on that search or "Amber bottle with Rooster riding a bicycle" or "Gamecock riding a Penny Farthing" or "Amber Trade Mark" I just don't seem to have any luck with that one....
 

bottlebelzer

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Hey Dave, I remember the rifle range you mentioned. Was out there with a couple of friends when we came across some glass. Would have gone back to dig but an MP chased us off of it. Did not need to get into any trouble back then so did not go back! I also dug along Culebar and Gorgona, which was out by Gamboa. So is Mamie. Lots of Dogs and Man Gins came out of those dumps along with a lot of nice glass from the French era.

The pic is of two of the three Roosters I own. I bought these two on Ebay a while ago. One came out of an estate from a vet who was in the Canal during WWII. I asked about the other and the only info the seller had was that he came across it along with a couple of dogs wrapped up in an old suit case. They almost certainly came from Panama too.
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The red Rooster is the color that I am looking for in the Dog bottle to add to my collection. I have one that is a blood red and three that are a copper color (amber with some red). Do not have this redder version, which would be between the deep red and the copper dog color that I have.
 

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  • Rooster Bottle.jpg
    Rooster Bottle.jpg
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Old man digger

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Hey Dave, I remember the rifle range you mentioned. Was out there with a couple of friends when we came across some glass. Would have gone back to dig but an MP chased us off of it. Did not need to get into any trouble back then so did not go back! I also dug along Culebar and Gorgona, which was out by Gamboa. So is Mamie. Lots of Dogs and Man Gins came out of those dumps along with a lot of nice glass from the French era.

The pic is of two of the three Roosters I own. I bought these two on Ebay a while ago. One came out of an estate from a vet who was in the Canal during WWII. I asked about the other and the only info the seller had was that he came across it along with a couple of dogs wrapped up in an old suit case. They almost certainly came from Panama too.
.
The red Rooster is the color that I am looking for in the Dog bottle to add to my collection. I have one that is a blood red and three that are a copper color (amber with some red). Do not have this redder version, which would be between the deep red and the copper dog color that I have.
It's funny how so many colors of the dog bottle exist, and all were out of Hamburg. I see you have not done anything to your bottles either in the way of cleaning. I am supposed to get a tumbling machine right after Christmas. I think I am going to take that bottle with the dog on it that appears red to me and run it through the process to see if I can get it to a more transparent state.
I have some of the heavy black glass wine bottles that I was told were favored by the French, but I cannot say they were or the were not French. They were in the same area as the bottles by the rifle range and there were lots of English glass squats out there with them. Infact two of my favorite English bottles came from there and a quart size glazed ink well in perfect shape with DENBY NEAR DARBY stamped into the clay before it was fired.
When I was down in Panama there was a Zoo located in Gamboa, was that there when you were digging in that area? Dave
 

bottlebelzer

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Hey Dave, agreed on the variety of colors. It seems that they had no quality control and just mixed up whatever they felt like when they were blowing a bunch of bottles. See the photo of my red rooster. I am a buyer of a dog in this color.

Separately, if you found dogs and man gins with the English glass, they most likely are from the French construction days. There were a few periods with different glass in Panama but nobody to my knowledge documented which bottles came from the different periods. The pictorals like the dog and man gin were from the French period. Then there was the earlier gold rush 49er period. The glass then was older - free blowns, crude three piece molds, ect. Separately, there were European plantations like in Bocas where there also were the same glass that found its way to the French town sites. I have some nice pieces that came out of a plantation dump from Belize including beautiful free blown case gins in slendid condition since they came out of a mud bank in a river and were well preserved. I also have a crude Melchers man gin from this site.

Regarding the zoo in Gamboa, that was not were we dug. It was right next to the Canal across from Gamboa. The town of Gorgona was on a hill, which is the remnant there. We knew it as Gorgona Island. It is right across from Gamboa in the Canal. A big time French dump where a lot of nice glass came out.
 

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  • Red Rooster.jpg
    Red Rooster.jpg
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Old man digger

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Hey Dave, agreed on the variety of colors. It seems that they had no quality control and just mixed up whatever they felt like when they were blowing a bunch of bottles. See the photo of my red rooster. I am a buyer of a dog in this color.

Separately, if you found dogs and man gins with the English glass, they most likely are from the French construction days. There were a few periods with different glass in Panama but nobody to my knowledge documented which bottles came from the different periods. The pictorals like the dog and man gin were from the French period. Then there was the earlier gold rush 49er period. The glass then was older - free blowns, crude three piece molds, ect. Separately, there were European plantations like in Bocas where there also were the same glass that found its way to the French town sites. I have some nice pieces that came out of a plantation dump from Belize including beautiful free blown case gins in slendid condition since they came out of a mud bank in a river and were well preserved. I also have a crude Melchers man gin from this site.

Regarding the zoo in Gamboa, that was not were we dug. It was right next to the Canal across from Gamboa. The town of Gorgona was on a hill, which is the remnant there. We knew it as Gorgona Island. It is right across from Gamboa in the Canal. A big time French dump where a lot of nice glass came out.
That has to be the best Rooster I have ever seen. Hopefully this one dog I have will clean up nice and we can do a trade for one of your lesser Roosters!!!
 

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