How it all started

[Skelch]

Digging in the dirt, mud, sand, and trash.. well it all happend one summer when I was 15
and I was on my way to the swimming hole to get to the other side of the river(200 yrds) I had to run across a highway bridge with no sidewalks for people so one day trying to run over the bridge I was stoped by a OPP cop who told me to get back off the bridge, I did. It was hot out and I wanted to go swimming were all my freinds were so I said screw it and swam across. 20 mins later I was on the other side and had a great day swimming, I had to go back the same way so 20 min later I was on the other side lol.... AND thats when I steped on somthing in the water I reached down and pulled it up, it was an old case gin bottle black glass, and today erdog and myself still dig the same place and still find history!!!and as you have seen we also found a new dump we just started digging..

I lost that case gin bottle and I still wake up in a cold sweat


SKELCH

 

[pabottles]

I've been a bottle digger forever.Well I'm 43 now and found my first bottle dump when I was a kid .When we were kids our parents would throw us out of the house on saturday mornings,you know how it goes"Get outta the house and play or I'll find some yard work for ya" thing.So 9 times out of 10 we'd wind up in the woods down the street and play army or do something to kill time.So anyway here we were down in this patch we called "the dump" we'd go there and se what we could break or roll down the hill .We found this one patch with lotsa bottles and such and started to bust them and stuff when one of the fellers said wait a second, they might be old and worth something.
Well being the young entrepeneurs that we were we figured we'd save the best looking ones with writing on them and take them down to the antique shop and see if they were worth anything.
Come to find out most of them were common beer bottles and old turn of the century medicines and food botles.(fletchers castoria,listerine,davis OK baking soda,etc.)
That's when I got interested and started digging and got into some of the older less comon stuff.It was an ecclectic mix of ages ,anything from as recent as 1930's to as old as pontiled bottles.
Oh BTW that was in Baltimore,Md where I lived as a kid.I'm sure there are plenty of other old dumping areas around town like that.Now I live in Glen Rock ,Pa and man you should see some of the old farm houses and areas around here.I know there's gotta be some bottles to be found!

 

[warith]

Yea, I started with bottles in a very similar way! I've been a keen diver for many years and one day while diving on the south coast of NSW (Australia) I found a purple coloured "IXL" sauce (circa ~1910) which I thought was amazing! On my very next dive I had a poke at a few bottles wich looked old and came out with a beer bottle dated to 1916 and an old "codd" bottle (the ones with marbles in the top). Since then I've been quite hooked!

Also a mate (who was a bottle collector since he was a young kid) was walking with his dad across a neighbourhood stream in the early 1970's. He kicked a bottle and assumed that it was just another 1960's beer bottle (which are amazingly common in Australia). He reached down and picked it up anyhow and it turned out to be a local-area codd bottle, they have since found 20 or 30 codds in the same little stream.

 

[Skelch]

thats great!! Im 28 years of age now so I still have alot to find and alot to learn from you guys, even the storys are great help and when I have kids im going to tell them the storys I get from you guys and put jack and the been stock on the shelf lol..

thanks guys




SKELCH