How did you start collecting and what was your 1st bottle?

[CanadianBoy]

My first bottle find was in 1957,I was 15.The bottle was a blue ink,it was in a privy,on a shelf.We had just come to Canada from England,the privy was at a cottage we had just bought in Muskoka.
I no longer have the bottle as it went with the cottage when we sold it.
But over the years I seemed to find bottles, never keeping any,then in 1972 I had an auction room and was always looking for things to sell.
I happened to be taking a short cut to a fishing spot,and I came across a log cabin that had fallen in on its self,looking around I saw a couple of bits of furniture then I saw a groundhog come out of a hole in the foundation.That gave me the idea of looking in the cellar,it took awhile to make the hole big enough to crawl in.When I got in it was a good sized space and there was light coming in through the old floor.Right in front of my face were three bottles (I found 16 )that turned out to be FREE-BLOWN.
Well I'll tell you the old heart did a flipflop,once I was able to kneel in the cellar(I'm 6'3") I was able to explore and saw the steps that had come down from above,thinking
maybe I could make a better way in & out i tried to move them out of the way but they fell apart.And there right behind the steps were 6 crocks on shelves,all were in exellent
condition and all were full & sealed.
3 had pickles & 3 had strawberry peserves,anyway I ended up auctioning everything at off,if I remember the bottles brought about $10.00 eachand the crocks $20-30.
After that I started looking for bottles even more & 10 years later sold my collection of 1500 bottles for about $4,000.
I was hooked then & now I'm hooked again!!.

 

[TheDiggerBoy91]

Wow, very interesting. Irish, that's quite a collection you got. Can you believe I don't have a single codd yet?? No, I would NEVER let anybody, I repeat, ANYBODY, get in the way of my sacred hobby of bottle collecting. I just want to make bottle collecting look more, um,"appeitising" to her. She actually thinks it's cool I collect bottles. I had actually been planning for quite a while to get rid of my broken stuff, long before that. Karen, was that Pepsi an embossed one or ACL? Dave, now that is KOOL. I wonder when that cabin was last occupied? Julie, I think everybody's first bottle is common. Mine was (see above). I've never dug a privy before either, I'm just a dumpdigger. I just haven't got the guts to ask somebody if I could tear up their lawn looking for bottles. Just gotta find that right abandoned 1870's farmhouse......[]

 

[ronvae]

Hey, you asked:
I got addicted to scuba diving, but I live in Minnesota, so to dive every week from April through November, I had to put up with cold water and almost no visibility. Since there is nothing to look at, and I needed something to do to keep my mind off the cold, I fell in with a bottle-diving club. Basically, we feel around & grap stuff that feels old, and inspect it when we get to shore, so it includes alot more than bottles. After a while, your hands get trained: "ooh, feels man-made", "feels like glass", "hmm, not broken", "I feel embossing! I'm bringing this up!". Gives me hope that life will still be exciting if I go blind. My first bottle (2002) was a green wine, with no embossing or maker's marks, no mold seams, and a slightly crooked applied lip. I think it is about 1890s, but I'm not sure. I brought it up, the guys told me it was old, I started wondering if somebody proposed in a canoe over wine, or if somebody whacked someone else over the head with it & rowed out to drop the murder weapon in the lake...and I was hooked. I've got about 20 bottles and an inkwell now, five of them are pre-1900 I think. I've never bought or dug a bottle, but I can't tell you the thrill when my hand closes around an old one. I'm the first person to touch it since it was thrown overboard. Talk about a thrill!

 

[ronvae]

PS: I'm a picky woman, & I think bottle collecting is cool. Hold out for a girl who appreciates your hobby!

 

[S.C. Warner]

Wow, this is first I read this thread. I just kept reading, scrolling and looking at the great collections of everyone and thinking Wow, wow and wow!
Super collections and great posts.
(My first was an aqua KickaPoo Sagwa, with the full Head Dress, it was sitting right next to a denby ink about a foot down in a little dunk. My parents started collecting when I was about 12 or 13 and took me with them. When I held up the Sagwa and asked: "Is a bottle with the picture of an Indian on it worth anything. My old man's mouth dropped open. (they were digging the dump's rich section and I had wandered off to the side.) The Denby's, to me, have always been a favorite though."
Ronvae: I totally agree with your post, there is just so much left to the imagination with bottle collecting. And what isn't imagination is real history. I mentioned in another post, in School it should be worth extra credit. Or maybe a taught Class in itself. (for obvious reasons)
Diggerboy: great topic!
best,
sc

 

[O.T. digger]

The first bottle I rmember finding was a a bottle that said Dr. Jacksons Herb and Root Cordial that was the best bottle I have ever found it was worth about 40 bucks I sold it for 30 I found it on the creek, that how I started was walking the creeks picking up old bottle, then I did a little digging and walking around in old dums now I have a collection of about 50 decent 5 to 30 dollar bottles and about 500 old dollar bottles that are mostly medicine, whiskey, pop, clorox and so on, but my girlfriends dad and my dads friend have huge collections of high dollar bottles, inluding may Oklahoma Territory bottles.

 

[TheDiggerBoy91]

Nice....Very Nice. Pat, diving for bottles must be SO awesome!!! I never have, the closest I get to diving for bottles is wading in the creek near my house. Now what would be REALLY awesome is finding a girl who collects bottles too. That would be the koolest!!! Den, I wish they would teach bottles in school. Bottleology!!! That would probably be the only class that I would actually get a 100% average in!!! Justin, that musta been a good start, first bottle a rare bottle!!!! Too bad mine wasn't. At least it was BIM.....[]

 

[Aerated]

What an Interesting thread!!.
I guess I was lucky in having my late Grandfather start collecting bottles in the late 60's.
He in turn introduced my father to collecting in the 70's.Coming from a Historically rich part of New Zealand we were spoiled for choice with long forgotten goldmining towns to explore.
My parents have pictures of me as a toddler armed with a plastic shovel digging away on one of our many "family picnics".It just so happens that these "picnic" spots would coincide with an early goldfield settlement!.Ive grown up with bottles all my life and I have never stopped collecting them, to the point of "missing" school!.I guess I would have had to dug 10,000+ bottles over the years (mainly ring seal beers!, Australians will know what im talking about HA!)
but that has never stopped me from digging.
The first bottle I can remember finding was a 6oz F Blackmore Codd bottle(Melbourne made)
when I was 6.
These days I collect Marble bottles, Ive got 140 different ones, mainly from the South Island of New Zealand.
Over the years Ive dug a lot of bottles that Americans would be familiar with ie: Hotstetters,Townsends,St Drakes Plantation bitters,Dr Soules and HEAPS of Medical bottles(Chamberlains,Kickapoo,St Jacobs & Frdk Stearns Detroit MICH).
Ive tried to collect stamps,millitaria & coins but I found this to be to boring, nothing can reproduce the thrill of a dig, where you can personaly hold in your hand a REAL peice of history, something that has a direct link to the past.
Quite often my friends have thought that I was a "nutter", but take them on a dig and start pulling out bottles, see how quickly there perceptions change on this "bottle hunting" hobby.

Thanks for reading my post.

Aerated

 

[digdug]

My Grandfather got me started collecting bottles when I was 8 years old. That was 34 years ago AND I still collect them. My first bottle, that my grandfather found and gave to me was an amber wine bottle. It has flakes of light tan clay or pottery in it. Lower part was made in a mold, upper neck hand made with a crude looking lip. Still have that bottle too! Now-I mostly collect Soda bottles. Trying to finish a room to display them in. And there are women out there who like bottle collecting. My wife and I on our past 4 wedding anniversaries have went digging for bottles! She seems to find all the best stuff though!

 

[bigkitty53]

NICE display,AERATED! I really like the torpedo bottle stand on the right side,middle shelf!Did you dig that too?

KAT