Civil War camp dig..........

[jaken]

You guys might enjoy taking a look at the bottles we dug at Diggin' in Virginia II a couple weekends ago. 140 of us dug a Yankee winter encampment and found over 150 period bottles, not to mention the Civil War relics. Go to www.mytreasurespot.com and go to the Diggin' forum. There is a picture gallery there with many pictures of bottles including a Crowleyville Mason. Enjoy

 

[Maine Digger]

Hey John, thanks for sharing! Those are wonderful pics of what must have been a fantastic experience.[]

 

[Gunsmoke47]

Great pictures Jaken! I too am an avid Military artifact digger. My sites are all of Indian Wars era but it's surprising how little the Militaria changed from 1865 to 1890. Fantastic Dig! I wish I had been there with you. Thanks for sharing, I was glued to the monitor for a couple of hours. [] Happy Diggin, Kelley

 

[Pontiled]

Thanks for the link. These are typical views that come to mind when I was heavily into Civil War relic digging. The bottle shots were very interesting, but the relics they found are enough to get you to salivating! I, too, spent about 2 hours going through the site and checking messages. Now, for the real interesting part, a friend, John Bowers, called me the other night and proceeded to tell me all about the results and, of course, the Crowleytown Mason dug there. He had a ball at the site! I wish I had been there too!

 

[Pontiled]

I prefer to read about digging bottles on land where an ink bottle that is usually priced at $10.00 isn't priced at $750.00. The Republic's contents aren't that special to serious bottle collectors.

Sorry!

 

[kumtow]

That looks like a hell of a lot of fun. Wish I was there.

 

[Ryan]

"I prefer to read about digging bottles on land where an ink bottle that is usually priced at $10.00 isn't priced at $750.00. The Republic's contents aren't that special to serious bottle collectors.

Sorry!"

Ouch! That hurts! I wasn't in any way trying to say one was more important than the other, or that bottles are even the most important reason to watch the show. Try not to be so sensitive. I was just mentioning that it's on; I would think anyone interested in history would be interested in watching the show.

Have you talked with the people involved in the recovery of the Republic? Have you seen some of the bottles that are not on the website and won't be on the show? Unless you have I don't think it's fair to say they're not important when you don't even have a full inventory of what was found. Even common bottles are historically important. And even if they didn't find any super rare bottles I would think the show would still interest most casual bottle collectors, which I would assume make up a large portion of the readers of this board....

Their prices are outlandish, but I'm glad they put up the millions of dollars to recover an historically important shipwreck... And even though their prices are painful to look at, there are much more important aspects of bottle collecting than the prices people ask for them...

Sorry for the confusion, I just wanted to tell people about the show and I don't see anything wrong with that...

-Ryan

 

[Ryan]

P.S.

Thanks jaken for posting the link. I found it really interesting. Extra kudos for posting pics on the web, so many digs go unrecorded, it's nice to be able to see real history being dug up...

-Ryan

 

[Pontiled]

Jaken, I am not alarmed or disgruntled at all. No problem at all! As for offshore search and find people and ships, I go back to the days of Mel Fisher (the Atocha) and had known him for many years, so there's no problem with that side of it. I was just a bit upset when I saw the prices that some collectors may think their finds are worth.

 

[Ryan]

Pontiled, that's a good point about other people maybe thinking their bottles are worth similar amounts as the ones on the website. I did not think of that aspect of affecting the market. I can see it now, someone trying to sell a plain aqua inkwell and referring to the website as justification for their outlandish price.

I only got to see the Atocha stuff on one of their tours, and just what I saw was some really neat stuff...

-Ryan