Milk Glass Binoculars - Candy Bottle?

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historic-antiques

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Hi Everyone,

I found this in a large, pre-1908 Chicago refuse site, over which the River View amusement park existed from 1908 until the late 1960s. The part of the dump that was exposed during construction (before they erected fences around these sites in Chicago) from 1970 until 1974, covered around 10 acres at least, and still can be seen sticking out of the banks of the nearby Chicago River branch.

Unfortunately it's all under a shopping mall, the DeVry Institute, and probably the old Lane Tech High School. There are tens of thousands more bottles underneath it all....but no use weeping over spilt milk......

Speaking of milk, I found this in that dump, and never knew what it exactly was. Never saw it in bottle book or online. It has an old hairline crack on the other side (found with it) but no missing pieces, chips, etc. anywhere.

Is it rare? Any info would be very much appreciated!

I sold most of my most common bottles 11 years ago to an Ebay dealer, but still have some of the nicest ones which, after I "dig out" again from storage, I'll post them here!

Thanks again for any info on that "binoculars"!

Sincerely,

Paul
 

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CanadianBottles

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Wow! That is an absolutely fantastic find! I imagine it is a candy container and the best one I've ever seen. I can't say for certain that it's rare but it absolutely isn't anywhere close to common. I've never heard of another and the design is one that would have a hard time surviving in a dump.
 

historic-antiques

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Thanks CanadianBottles for your assessments. Yes, it's probably a candy bottle, the two large "lens" focal pieces are hollow and probably used for sweets. Miraculously it did survive in one piece! The dump itself was around 10 feet deep, if not more, that's the deepest I reached, otherwise cave-ins were dangerous. So it was under lots of pressure for a long time. Thanks again for your comments. Maybe I'll see another similar find one day.......
 

RCO

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there is a dump here that is under a shopping plaza , in a lot of cities it was a common thing to do if land was scarce or dump in a location needed for new development

as for the binoculars I don't know anything about them and haven't seen them before
 

historic-antiques

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RCO thanks for your input. If you ever find another such binoculars, please let me know. It would be nice to get the full history of the bottle. Actually, I'm thinking of digging under the shopping plaza in Chicago, from the river bed, in!!!
 

CanadianBottles

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Yeah most of our large dumps have something built over top of them as well. But hey you never know, one day they might knock the shopping centre down and redevelop the land! These days you usually can't gain access to large construction sites but buying bottles off the workers is still often possible.
 

historic-antiques

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Yes, gone are the days when one could enter a construction site. There were bottles found in this dump that were made from the 1860s to the early 1900s, some even had their labels still intact. Other artifacts too, like Indian Head pennies, jewelry, buttons, etc. I remember "finding" the dump. With my metal detector, I was searching for coins dropped when the site encompassed the old River View amusement park. Didn't find any, but there was so much "noise" from rusted metal pieces, I couldn't figure it out, didn't know too much about bottles and old refuse dumps, much less did I think I was standing on one. But I was. A few steps later, I started seeing pieces of old bottles, and then some whole ones! That started my interest in antique bottles.
 

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