Two Large Amber Meds from Baltimore.

Got these two at the club meeting last friday. One is a D.WADE and one is a CARR BROS. Notice that the bottles are the same but different embosseing.

Both list as rare in the Balto. book. Both tough bottles to get. I am very pleased. The D.Wade has been over tumbled a bit, but past the line of no return.

I have an ongoing conversation with another bottle collector I know about tumbleing verses leaveing them as they come out of the ground.

As a collector of all kinds of antiques I always go by the golden rule, never touch it. leave as found. notably there are some instances where say a piece of furniture is just to far gone and needs restoration. I can see it.
But funny how alot of us collectors prefer sparkling mint bottles.

In Just about any other area of collecting if you remove any of the original material its made of.....it reduces the value.
Most of the time in the bottle collecting world it works in reverse. I have a umbrella that is yellow with a olive tint that I would never have tumbled because I am scared it would break. If I had it tumbled the yellow would really stand out.

Where do you stand?

oooppppsssss forgot to upload!

Those are two very nice medicines you have added. As far as the tumbling vs. leaving alone issue I decide on a bottle by bottle basis.. I like a good irradescent stain more than an attic mint surface at times but on others I have to have them cleaned to enjoy them. This is especially true with bright colors covered with milky stain.. Overtumbled bottles are a different issue and I can't stand the feel or the waxy look.

Excellent issues that you bring up.

I was a collector of US, ancient, and foreign coins well before I started accumulating bottles in any quantity. My father brought me to the Baltimore coin shows when I was 5, 6, and 7 and I went through the ancient coin bins finding excellent Greek bronzes for a buck a piece, and perused the stock of US coin dealers looking for nice old silver. I often got discounts because of my tender age, but that wasn't why I was interested. I loved the historical implications of items with such distant historic origins, and I had a darn good eye too, as far as it goes for a kindergartner. I loved the patina on old coins then (since it usually indicates the age of the item just as concretely as the date stamped upon the slug) and the same holds true for antique bottles, in my opinion.

Personally, I think that tumbled bottles in general are far less appealing than ones which retain the indicators of their age. I have no tumbled glass, and have no desire to pay for it. I've got some decent old bottles that would probably fetch more with a polish, but just as it goes with cleaned coins, I consider the removal of fine details, such as imperfections of the mold itself that are carried into the bottles created, the distinctness of the slug plate's definition itself, whittle, and of course the embossing, to be a considerable detriment to the inherent value of the item. My eyesight is around the 20/13 level (said an F on the bottom line was an E, []) so i see fine details without any considerable effort. Cleaned bottles lack so many of the subtle cues which denote their age and the evidence of the hand-made manufacturing conventions utilized that are present on dug or uncleaned glass that I find such tumbled items to be almost as dull and lifeless as the modern machine made garbage that you see every time you walk into a grocery store.

This position makes it a lot better for me when obtaining old glass that hasn't been cleaned though! Lower prices, and essentially 100% of the material that was present when the item was created. Can't beat that. []

You know why a large number of people enjoy tumbled glass?

I have 3 hypotheses:

Some people who enjoy cleaned, polished, unnaturally smooth glass have average or poor eyesight and need the glass to be cleaned in order to appreciate it visually . This is understandable and not a problem in my mind, but the other people....

They have been corrupted by a wide range of societal influences and gain a large proportion of their satisfaction from their hobby/avocation via the impressed looks on the faces of people who don't know much about bottles and who would usually view them as old garbage, and thus these collectors, as well as the impartial viewers, judge the worth of such items by how much they sparkle and how tastefully they are arranged. You people suck. Sorry.

Those who don't fall into these categories have been influenced by the former 2 categories and realize that, for whatever reason, they can get more money from collectors by providing cleaned bottles, and thus do it without regard for the patina or "context" provided by the irregularities of uncleaned glass. People have to make their money, I suppose...

I've seen bottles that would be great additions to the collection if they weren't cleaned "beyond return," and I have overlooked them as if they were ABM screwtop beers. Or worse.

I agree that I prefer a bottle untumbled. I even like them uncleaned. I'd rather do it myself than have someone damage it. However, I think that many collectors want minty glass that sparkles. Heck, I want minty glass that sparkles. I, however, am perfectly willing to accept a bottle that doesn't have it (and won't get it) as it is until I get a shot at a better example. The tumbling removes character and history IMO.

This is an interesting post and I wanted to describe my recent experience with the tumbling issue. At the Adamstown, Pa show this summer I bought my first pontiled medicines and they have been tumbled until they sparkle. When I proudly showed the purchases to my wife she didn't believe they were 150 years old. She said they look like some cheap Mexican glass. I was somewhat offended but I can see her point. Bottles that old should look like they have some age on them. In fact, I got two Barry's Tricopherous bottles, one cleaned and one with a little stain. I kept the stained bottle for my collection and gave the cleaned one to a digging buddy who had never had a pontiled bottle.
So I guess I am in agreement that tumbling removes some of the character from an old bottle.
Jay

I like any bottle I keep in my collection to either be attic mint or in dug condition. I look at tumbling as drastically altering the bottles surface. You may argue that a stained dug bottle has a drastically altered surface too. However it was altered through a natural chemical process in the ground that took many years. Tumbling is an artifical process that takes a couple weeks. You could look at a dug bottle with stain from more of the context it was recovered in and that it survived in the ground for someone to rediscover. The fact that it was buried is now part of the bottles history. We are collecting utilitarian objects that were disposable. The fact that any have survived is a feat unto its self and how they survived weather thrown in a dump or privy and dug up or found in an attic or in a wall are part of the bottles story. Tumbled bottles loose part of that story in my opinion.

Also take the time and feel some attic mint bottles then go pick up a tumbled bottle you will notice that the glass of the tumbled bottle just feels different. So the argument can't be made that tumbling is restoring an original surface because it removes the original surface exposing an under layer of glass. To me a stained dug bottle still has its original surface it has simply been altered through chemical process over time caused by being buried. This is good evidence that the bottle has some age and is not new.

For anyone who studies molds of bottles trying to make attributions to a certain glass house or local. Small imperfections in a mold can be invaluable when trying to determine if two bottles were blown in the same mold. Tumbling often obscures small details like these and makes comparison far more difficult if not imposable in some cases.

Now as to why certain collectors prefer tumbled bottles to dug bottles I think really depends on what they collect and how they acquire their bottles. I think you can break all bottle collectors into three groups you have

Collectors who just buy bottles weather at flea markets, bottle shows, estate auctions, or bottle auctions, or from other collectors. I would say most of this type of collector prefers Mint or tumbled bottles.

Collector - Digger this is where I fall I spend alot of time digging for bottles but I also buy things for my collection. And sell much of what I dig that I don't have any interest in keeping. I would say its about 50/50 for this type of collector

Pure Digger this is the purest that only digs and doesn't buy bottles for their collection. They may buy something to resale if its a super bargain but generally if they buy a bottle won't keep it very long. I would say most of this type of collector prefers their bottles in dug condition.

Someone who collects figural bitters or historical flasks where many attic mint examples are around because the bottles were pretty and were not thrown away seem to prefer a tumbled bottle over a stained example simply because its likely that a large portion of their collection is attic mint bottles. Also these collectors are usually not diggers they simply buy bottle. Being they are not exposed to dug bottles from the diggers point of view they look at stain as simply damage rather then part of the bottles history.

Where as collectors of sodas and medicines usually don't have a problem with putting stained dug bottles on their shelf. Probably because a higher proportion of them are diggers and they collect what they dig stained dug sodas beers and meds. I think more diggers look at tumbling as altering a bottle and collectors look at tumbling as restoring a bottle.

Overall this is a very debatable area. But I also look at the rest of the antique world and collection bottles is a relatively new field of antique collecting and I still think it has many years to go before it reaches maturity. So I will leave my bottles alone and if i ever sell them and tumbling will get me more money then I will tumble them before I sell them. But if views change and tumbling is looked upon as altering the bottle in a bad way I will be fine with my collection of dug and attic mint bottles.

Chris

Very well spoken. That said, I also agree that to each his own. If you like your bottles tumbled....have at it. Ryan needs to make a living too...LOL

I think Chris' points are good. My opinion is every dug bottle is unique. I decide what to do on a per bottle basis. For instance if a dug bottle has a nice overall patina/oxidation I may leave it be. If a bottle has some light patchy stain inside and a quick polish is all that would take to make it look mint, I would probably tumble it. If tumbling would bring out the color in a nice colored bottle I would probably tumble it. Etc etc etc.