bottle populations

[myersdiggers1998]

How do you find out these bottle populations, it cant be an exacting science?????

 

[buzzkutt033]

ahhhh, this should be a good thread.

the $64,000 question............

one of the by products of having better quality items
professionally graded is having a registry. over time
this HELPS keeping track of what is really scarce.

jim

 

[coreya]

can't wait to hear the comments, I would think sites like this that have a lot of participation would help in establising a base ie awhile ago I posted about a ball (no standard) wax sealer which according to all research does not exsist and got very little response so no one must know about it.

 

[GuntherHess]

bottle populations? not sure what that means.

 

[myersdiggers1998]

I here collecters say this bottle is 1 of 5 know to exist, where do they get that info.???

 

[GuntherHess]

I here collecters say this bottle is 1 of 5 know to exist, where do they get that info.???

In my opinon it is usually a figment of thier imagination.
Not to say that there arent certain key bottles of which the collecting community has a good idea about how many are floating around.
I have seen way too many bottles called unique or unlisted to take those terms too seriously.
Putting aside my disclaimer, I think the answer to your question is the bottle collecting community is fairly tightknit and word travels about who has what. There are no "bottle registries/census" that I have ever heard of.

 

[Poison_Us]

Bottle census...now that would be a wonderful website. Have them all categorized and everyone submit your collection. Only thing, there would have to be some standard laid first for each type for ID purposes. I know it would be an "on your honor" type of deal....so it may not be an exact number and you can only count who submits.
Next problem would be those who have repos...and may not know it. Would cause "noise" in the charts.

 

[Lordbud]

I always reference a book when mentioning relative rarity of given bottle posted on the forum. Any good reference book is a starting point, not a be-all-end-all as far as accurate information as to the rarity of any given bottle. Bottle populations are but a guess in most instances, although several advanced collectors who sometimes post here can personally attest to digging a privy full of Bay City Soda Works or Owen Caseys which gives an idea as to their commonness. Whereas we can be reasonably sure there aren't a whole lot of CC&B mugbase sodas out there in collections.
Speaking of rarity, the recently posted damaged Keating & Babb bottle (under digging and finding) is still quite the rarity. A whole example of the same bottle was shattered by the handy shovel work of one of our South Bay diggers just recently according to rumor. Oops![:-]
Bottle population estimates for even one city's bottles would be an extreme undertaking to come up with anything near accurate numbers...

 

[Road Dog]

If a bottle is exists , but nobody is there to see it does it really exist?

Kinda like if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is there to hear it does it make a noise?[8|]

Dang , if I know. I'm just having a Kung-Fu moment.[]

 

[Staunton Dan]

For example. Here is part of an email that I received prior to listing this Baltimore beer bottle on ebay. "I compiled the beer and pontiled soda section for the Baltimore Antique bottle Club's " Baltimore Bottle Book", and can tell you that as of the last printing there were only two of the Clark bottles known, with yours now being the 3rd." When I listed the bottle I said that at this time, this bottle was one of only three known to exist. I never received any other information to the contrary so I went with it. Are there more than 3 Clark bottles out there? Possibly, but so far only 3 people have come forward. I would be interested to know if any more exist but for now I'm going with this one. Like Matt suggests, It makes a good story.