Embossed (Eagle and Stars) Gallon bottle….

[Bottle Baby]

Can someone please share information?
I think it may be a whiskey bottle. It’s just over 17” tall, embossed eagle and stars on both side, has “FULL GALLON” and “FEDERAL LAW FORBIDS……”
Thank you!

 

[Sitcoms]

I agree it was probably a whiskey or a wine. The "Federal Law Prohibits" places the date range between 1935 and about the 1970s; the phrase was no longer required after 1964, but lots of bottle makers didn't change their molds until it truly needed it. Someone else might be able to give you a confident ID on the specific brand.

Does the base have any markings? Lots of liquor bottles from this time period put a 2 number date stamp (though not all did).

 

[Bottle Baby]

On the bottom it has “MADE IN USA”, D-126, 66 42, and 1.
Thank you so much!

 

[DavidW]

Hello "Bottle Baby" and all,
Sorry to give a little "shameless plug" to my webpage, but I can pass along this info:
The "66" is a "liquor bottle permit number" that was assigned to Kimble Glass Company of Chicago Heights, Illinois. The bottle was made in 1942 (42 is a date code). The "D-126" is a distiller code number assigned to the distiller of the liquor. D126 indicates it was a product of Seagram's. I don't know what the exact liquor was, since Seagrams marketed a lot of different "sub brands" under their banner name. The "1" is a mold number (mold cavity number).

The "Federal Law Forbids Sale or Reuse of this bottle" was placed on bottles intended for liquor (bourbon whiskey, etc) but not wine, as far as I can tell.

This page has the most complete list you can find online of the liquor bottle permit numbers seen on liquor bottles between 1934 and the 1970s. (A few bottles had liquor bottle permit numbers marked on them as late as the 1980s).
The permit number is usually placed to the left, with the date code on the right (Not always, but usually).

Liquor Bottle Permit Numbers

Table of "Liquor bottle permit numbers" seen on older glass bottles in the US. The numbers can help show where and when a bottle was made.

glassbottlemarks.com

Hope this helps! DavidW

 

[Bottle Baby]

You are awesome! This is so helpful!
Thank you!!!!

 

[Bottle Baby]

Any idea of how I can find values on bottles? I find quite a few at estate sales and flea markets.

 

[Bottle Baby]

Hello "Bottle Baby" and all,
Sorry to give a little "shameless plug" to my webpage, but I can pass along this info:
The "66" is a "liquor bottle permit number" that was assigned to Kimble Glass Company of Chicago Heights, Illinois. The bottle was made in 1942 (42 is a date code). The "D-126" is a distiller code number assigned to the distiller of the liquor. D126 indicates it was a product of Seagram's. I don't know what the exact liquor was, since Seagrams marketed a lot of different "sub brands" under their banner name. The "1" is a mold number (mold cavity number).

The "Federal Law Forbids Sale or Reuse of this bottle" was placed on bottles intended for liquor (bourbon whiskey, etc) but not wine, as far as I can tell.

This page has the most complete list you can find online of the liquor bottle permit numbers seen on liquor bottles between 1934 and the 1970s. (A few bottles had liquor bottle permit numbers marked on them as late as the 1980s).
The permit number is usually placed to the left, with the date code on the right (Not always, but usually).

Liquor Bottle Permit Numbers

Table of "Liquor bottle permit numbers" seen on older glass bottles in the US. The numbers can help show where and when a bottle was made.

glassbottlemarks.com

Hope this helps! DavidW

This is a neat website! It’ll be helpful on a lot of glass. Thanks again!!

 

[CanadianBottles]

Any idea of how I can find values on bottles? I find quite a few at estate sales and flea markets.

Checking completed listings on Ebay and otherwise just general experience are typically how you roughly estimate value, but with this sort of thing it's always going to be a rough estimate because it's just based on what someone will be wiling to pay. The "Federal Law Forbids..." bottles typically don't have a very high value, there just aren't many people collecting them. Which is a shame, because a lot have very interesting designs, but for some reason they never drew much interest compared to similarly-designed soda bottles of that era.

 

[DavidW]

Any idea of how I can find values on bottles? I find quite a few at estate sales and flea markets.

That's one of those "eternal questions" that can never be answered completely or adequately. There are lots of bottle price guide books but most are out of print, out of date and very unreliable as to values, and also they only list a very tiny, tiny selection of known antique and vintage bottles. There have been literally several hundreds of thousands (or more likely millions) of different bottles made over the last 200 years alone - and that is only counting US bottles. There are only another 200 (more or less) countries in the world, and most have had glass bottles made there also!

Your best bet is using pertinent keywords to search for similar bottles on the ebay site, (typing in any embossed lettering on the bottles into the search feature) and then checking the "Completed Items" box to see if any similar bottles actually sold and what their selling prices were.
There are tons of bottles on ebay that never sell because often sellers have no idea on what they have and if it has any value, so they start an item for a totally unrealistic price, or do a "Buy it Now" listing and it never sells because the asking price is way way too high.

Also there are innumerable bottles that are too common or ordinary or (for some reason) not in demand so they don't sell on ebay, or they may never even be listed on ebay, or other sites such as etsy.

To be fair, most ebay sellers don't have time or energy to do in-depth research on bottles so they just come up with a price from checking a couple of other listings.........which are often unrealistic, and they copy off of them.

Another method is subscribing to the Worthpoint site, which is a huge database of past auctions. I don't subscribe so I'm not sure what the cost of subscription is now. The site can be searched for older bottle listings/auctions and you can see the original descriptions and photos, but just not the selling prices.

This may not be of much help, but maybe its a start!