Gravatating Stopper Soda

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DeepSeaDan

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Nice find, Since these soda Bottles pre date the Hutch & date to the 1870's I rarely get to dig them, Think I only dug one & maybe only have 3 or 4 in my Michigan Collection. They seem tough to find. LEON.
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Agreed, they are tough to find. I have a couple of collector buds who have amazing grav collections, mostly purchased or traded for. I'm always hoping to find more examples.
 

CanadianBottles

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I have but one Gravitating Stopper style bottle; I found it in a lake where 99% of the bottom consists of weedy, gooey muck. Someone, many moons ago, had the decency to plop this bottle into 3' of water, near the beginning of a very old dock; it landed on a lonely patch of sand - a single, small oasis of relative terra firma, in a sea of gooey quicksand. It lay there, through the many long years, waiting for me to rescue it. One of my favourite finds of all-time.

( Yes, it's a 16-year-old thread, but what the heck )
Great bottle! Do you know if Canada has many other gravitating stoppers? I don't remember hearing of any from the areas that I've lived, maybe just a southern Ontario thing?
 

tolmanbridge

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I don't have many bottles yet as I am just starting out but I do have a Canadian gravitating stopper bottle. It is probably quite common but it is Richard Genge, Kingston, Ontario and has the same embossing on the bottom as shown in your photo.
 

DeepSeaDan

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Great bottle! Do you know if Canada has many other gravitating stoppers? I don't remember hearing of any from the areas that I've lived, maybe just a southern Ontario thing?
Not sure about gravs in other Provinces, but many Ontario bottlers produced them prior to switching to hutchinson-style bottles; a rough guess might be 15 - 20 different gravs. I don't doubt many Provinces had bottlers who used the grav bottle at some point. I'll query some of the more knowledgeable bottle collectors for their take on this issue & report back.

Update: Sources tell me there are almost 50 varieties of Gravs in Ontario!, most of them being manufactured in smaller towns. The rest of Canada - not so much; maybe a few on the East Coast, but essentially, it's an "Ontario thing." It was also said that some Ontario bottlers created "Transition Variants", another style, which could use either the grave-type stopper or the Hutchinson and only a few bottlers did this, making them quite rare indeed.
 
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DeepSeaDan

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I don't have many bottles yet as I am just starting out but I do have a Canadian gravitating stopper bottle. It is probably quite common but it is Richard Genge, Kingston, Ontario and has the same embossing on the bottom as shown in your photo.
Pictures please!
 

tolmanbridge

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Here are some photos. If you know anything about this bottle I would appreciate the information.
 

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CanadianBottles

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Here are some photos. If you know anything about this bottle I would appreciate the information.
Wow that's a nice one! I doubt it's too common, it's not one that I remember seeing and I'll often come across Kingston bottles.
 

DeepSeaDan

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I don't have many bottles yet as I am just starting out but I do have a Canadian gravitating stopper bottle. It is probably quite common but it is Richard Genge, Kingston, Ontario and has the same embossing on the bottom as shown in your photo.
That's a nice looking bottle! Did you dig it or buy it? My grav buddy says it's one of the more common gravs, with nice, high-relief embossing - "1872ish"
 

tolmanbridge

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That's a nice looking bottle! Did you dig it or buy it? My grav buddy says it's one of the more common gravs, with nice, high-relief embossing - "1872ish"
Weird thing is I don't remember where I got it from but I do know I definitely purchased it as I never had much luck finding my own. I bought two collections this summer but it wasn't in one of them. Before that, I had a few bottles I had picked up over the years at garage sales or while on vacation. I know I've had this bottle for probably thirty or more years. It was just this summer I started really getting into collecting the bottles after buying the two collections. I collect anything to do with history so I have a collection of fossils, meteorites, crystals, coins, bottles, hockey cards, silver overlay glass, depression glass, insulators, Japanese fish floats, etc. My grandkids call my basement the museum as I have most items labelled with when and where I got them. This bottle had no information. I also try to have an approx. value on every label as I had stage three cancer a few years back and thought it was important I give my family some idea of what things were worth. When I was looking at the new posts I saw the one on gravitating stoppers and remembered I had one somewhere. So I found it and thought maybe someone here had some information on it. This site is awesome and I appreciate all the help people have given me on my posts.
 

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