Most embarrassing/bone-headed bottle moment

Hi all. I don't post much, but I visit the site often and enjoy reading the stories and looking at the bottles. I especially enjoyed the thread where people are posting pics of their best bottles. Some of them are unbelieveable!

Anyway, in the same spirit, I thought it might be fun to have a thread on the most embarrassing bottle moment. I'll start with one of mine. I started digging in the Baltimore area in the early '70s, when I was young. My dad and I dug quite a lot of bottles. I got older, went away to college, then joined the Navy. My parents in the meantime moved to Florida. Our best bottles were (and are) displayed in cabinets, but many other bottles were stored in boxes in my parent's attic. When I finally got a place of my own, my dad got a u-haul and brought all my stuff, including the bottles that were boxed, and left them all with me.

Well, as most of the boxed bottles were from the Baltimore area (medicines, milks, and the like), and as they weren't doing much good in boxes, I got the idea that I would rent a table at the Baltimore bottle show, sell most of the boxed stuff for a nominal amount ($5 apiece), and use the money to buy one or two really nice bottles. And that's what I did, in 1995, I believe.

Well, at the show, as I broke out my boxes and started unwrapping the bottles, quite a crowd gathered around me, and business was brisk. Milk collectors had their lists out, and obviously saw some they didn't have, because they were snapping mine up at the $5 price. Most of the Baltimore druggists went quickly as well. I'm sure I made some collectors' days that day.

One bottle in particular I remember that day was a blob ginger ale we had dug pretty early in our digging career. I don't remmeber the manufacturer; all I recall is that it was pretty old (1870ish) and had XXX on it. I'm kind of surprised - and definitely angry at myself, in retrospect - that I sold it, because generally we don't sell our better stuff, and an emblossed blob top would definitely qualify as the "good stuff." But there was a lot of commotion around my table as I was unwrapping the bottles, and when I unwrapped that one and set it down, someone picked it up and said, "How much?" I, distracted, responded as I had responded to everyone else buying my milks and drugstore bottles. "Five bucks," I told the guy. He whipped out a five spot, and the deal was consummated. He then told me that he was a long-standing ginger ale collector, that he had some large number of ginger ales in his collection (I recall it being 200), and that he'd only ever seen one other of these bottles, that his buddy had it, that he'd been pestering him for years to sell, but that his buddy wouldn't do so. I groaned inside, and regret to this day that very bad business decision (much as I regret taking bottles to school years ago for show and tell against my dad's advice, and then breaking them!).

So - what's your bone-headed moment?

Heh, now this will be another good thread []

My bonehead moment was the near complete destruction of my whole collection. I first started digging and collecting when I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s. We lived on one of the oldest still-standing farmhouses in West Greenwich, Rhode Island, and there were lots of untouched dumps on the 40 acre property. I used to go out and dig and I had a pretty sizable collection, which I had displayed on a rickety shelf in the cement-floored barn/garage (can you see where I'm going?) Anyway, I was probably about 8 or 9 and no structural engineer, so of course I pushed the limits of my shelf too far and the whole thing tipped over and smashed to bits on the floor. Thankfully I wasn't all that industrious of a digger either and I know that most of what was destroyed was common 1880s stuff. I did have a deep teal cathedral pepper sauce and a cobalt ink that were the prizes of my collection, and both were casualties.

That was actually the end of my bottle collecting for many years as we soon sold the farm and moved. I hadn't thought about bottles for years when in the mid 90s I found an oldie while diving and it all came flooding back. When I was talking about the length of the mold seam on the neck I'll never forget my dive buddy: "how the hell do you know that?"

Anyway, that's my bonehead moment.... so far

Sean

well i did not know it at the time but mine would be the time a "GAVE" some guy about 100, 1860 -1880's bottles. i had no idea what i had and just gave them away. i got them on my job in construction on a big dig[&o]. i seem to remember a lot of bitters type bottles[:-] oh well live and learn!!!!!!!

My "moment"...

I found a gorgeous beautiful gallon sized stoddard looking demi with a layered sloping collar and 300,000,000 seed bubbles....for $12.00...........and bought it...........and 20 minutes later gave it to my digging buddy for his 40th birthday....and he now never fails to show me his favorite bottle......should have given him two box to his ear!

I have so many it is hard to pick one,but here goes.

About 4 yrs. ago I dug an S. Mckee embossed,cd 731 threadless insulator in a hole with a bunch of threaded insulators that were broken.Being an average looking aqua insulator I tossed it in a bucket with some other not so good stuff we dug.A month or so later I pulled it out of the bucket and noticed it was threadless,not a collector of insulators I knew I was going to be selling it.The problem was there was a wood pin & burlap filling the pin hole making it hard to get a good photo for ebay.A saw and drill fixed that problem.

Now find me an insulator collector that doesn't want to reach through their monitor and slap me.

Hey everybody. I have two (if you don't mind).

The first was on my digging adventure. I was going along with two pros who were kind enough to share their spot with me. I knew that I had nothing to offer as far as skills went (I couldn't probe - I'd never asked for permission - or dug a hole), so, I figured I'd work really hard and they'd like having me along. A few feet down into a large pit, one of the guys was having trouble with a thick tree root. The other was throwing dirt out on the other side over his left shoulder. I popped down like I was doing a push-up to help pull the root. The digger throwing dirt switched sides to throw over his right shoulder and clunked me right in the center of the forehead with the shovel point. I wasn't badly hurt but I bled a ton. It might have helped garner some sympathy, though, and I definitely left there with bottles.

The second story is from scuba diving. About a year ago, on a swim out from shore, I was out diving alone. I thought that my float line had tangled into the back of my BCD. I removed my gear and untangled the line. When I prepared to put my gear back on, I realized that it was gone. I hadn't properly inflated it and it sank! I tried to swim down for it, but I'd lost my weighting, the visibility was bad and it was too deep. Luckily for me, my buddies and I recovered the gear about a week later.

I'd been working for a while to get an olive/black glass ale bottle from an 1860s creekside dump buried in heavy clay soil. I thought I had excavated enough around the bottle that I could gently pry it out base first...just enough of the applied lip was still anchored by the heavy clay causing the applied lip to shatter as I held the base in my hand. Took the rest of the bottle and threw it down in the creek bed.

Other moment has to be digging in downtown Mountain View on a nighttime dig, my turn in the privy. Got a common Mason jar, tossed it up onto the tailings pile, but not quite far enough so it tumbled right back down and hit me in the head...the good old days!

I was searching the creek bank one winter where the original town dump was located , but regretfully dug during my time in the military . I was walking in the water looking at the bank when I spotted the bottom of a pontiled scroll flash sticking out of the bank . Needless to say , I got cranked up pretty quickly , to have had the fortune of finding such a great bottle . [/align] [/align]The ground was pretty well frozen , and the only thing I had to scratch with was my pocket knife . Anyway , after carefully and painstakingly digging frozen dirt bit by bit from around the bottle and freezing to death myself for a good 45 minutes , my efforts were finally rewarded with about two thirds of the flask falling out of the bank in my hands ! The rest of it was not even there . I always hated it when that happened . And I was glad no one else had witnessed it at the time .[/align]