How many have already been found?

[surfaceone]

Hey Charlie,

A very interesting, unfathomable question.

Here's some starting production figures for one well known firm:

"The struggle for national dominance had begun and in the lead was St. Louis firm of E. Anheiser & Company,. In 1872, they trademarked their “A†and “eagle†and about 1876 began putting up beer in aqua glass bottles. The New York Times, September 7, 1878 noted, “the St. Louis form was the first in America to come out with lager beer in bottles, and that their bottling business exceeded 200,000 per diem.†It was the first time an American company supplied more bottles to the American market than the European brewers. Their beer took the gold medal at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, and at the Paris Exposition in 1878 Anheiser-Busch took the first premium over all other brewers in the World. By 1883, their sales of bottled beer rose to 15,000,000 hand-finished bottles, the largest in either Europe or America. In 1911, they produced 173,184,600 bottles."

From.

 

[old.s.bottles]

accidents happen[]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiBpuGY6lQs

 

[BillinMo]

Interesting... I'd guess that only a small fraction of the ones made have survived and been recovered by collectors. Probably the vast majority ended up broken or in cullet piles, especially the ones used in urban areas.

 

[appliedlips]

I'd say less than 1% of those manufactured are intact and out of the ground.

 

[cyberdigger]

I think I've had 4 or 5 of the 173,184,600 Anheuser Busch bottles made in 1911 in my collection at some point.. and I used to think they were special! [&:]
It's great to read all of your opinions about this "question" which I realize is unanswerable.. just fun to think about though.. []

Hey Cord.. what do YOU think??

 

[AntiqueMeds]

Cullet collecting was big business so a lot met their demise that way.

The numbers produced were huge , even for bottles considered fairly rare now days.

The number recovered intact has to be a very small percentage.

 

[deep digger]

I agree with appliedlips probably less than 1%. We have dug thousands of pontiled sodas, but only between ten and fifteen Heiss sodas. Now this may not make sense until I tell you that at any time of the year in 1855 Heiss had 250000 bottles on hand ready to fill for sale. So really WE AINT SEEN NOTHIN YET. Last year we dug two new sodas that were not known to exist. How many more new names are out there?? Dont know, but we will keep lookin.there are so many bottles in the ground and under the water its mind blowing. DEEP

 

[rockbot]

ORIGINAL: deep digger

I agree with appliedlips probably less than 1%. We have dug thousands of pontiled sodas, but only between ten and fifteen Heiss sodas. Now this may not make sense until I tell you that at any time of the year in 1855 Heiss had 250000 bottles  on hand ready to fill for sale. So really WE AINT SEEN NOTHIN YET. Last year we dug two new sodas that were not known to exist. How many more new names are out there?? Dont know, but we will keep lookin.there are so many bottles in the ground and under the water its mind blowing. DEEP

Darn, 250000 bottles.

We had several local soda bottling company's that ran only a few cases and changed names or corrected misspelled wording. A lot of Hawaiian names got easily messed up. Not to mention some were made with sick glass that never held up. The population in some of these towns were less then a few hundred and most people were to poor to buy soda. If any money was spent on a beverage it would have been a cold beer.[]
It becomes obvious after digging for awhile around here.
Other factors like citron specimens or lime greens are even more rare. Sorry guys but those figures you have may pertain to heavily populated areas or large company's but no way reflects the small towns of America and local merchants.

 

[deep digger]

The number I quoted is correct and he is not evev the biggest bottler in Philly. I cant even imagine what Twitch had on hand because we have found over 50 of his pontiled sodas in one hole. DEEP

 

[zanes_antiques]

One thing is for sure. Nobody will ever find the "Last" unlisted bottle.