Newbie help

[dkwayman]

I have a couple of verrrry new digger questions.

I will be selling whatever I find as I have no place to keep it...no shed, garage, or outbuilding so I don't want to waste my time (and VERY minimal storage space) if it's just garbage. I am finding TONS of broken bottles of all different kinds on this old homestead. A lot of soda bottles, small jars, canning jars, Clorox bottles, etc. 95% of what I find is often just shards. What am I to do with some much broken glass? Do I collect it and take it to the recycle or....?
If I find a whole one but it's cracked, is that worth anything or does that go in the discard pile, too?
How do you determine if the damage makes it worthless?

 

[coreya]

pictures will help us help you. bits and pieces usually not worth keeping, cracked ones only if rare.

 

[CanadianBottles]

If you're in the Clorox bottle era, you aren't likely to find a lot of bottles which are worth selling (unless you want to set up at a flea market and sell a bunch of blue bottles for a dollar each). The sodas and milks could be an exception, if they're in very good condition and aren't too common. The canning jars could be good too if they were used for decades prior to being thrown out, but in my experience usually aren't. It's very rare to find anything in the Clorox bottle era which is worth keeping if it's cracked, that would have to be an extremely rare and desirable bottle or a late throw from decades earlier than the others (which does happen from time to time). In terms of monetary value, the best finds from the Clorox bottle era are usually enamel advertising signs.

You'll also be dealing with so much broken glass that it's not worth collecting any of it for disposal unless it's your property and you want to clean the area up. Even then it'll be a massive undertaking.

 

[willong]

If you're in the Clorox bottle era, you aren't likely to find a lot of bottles which are worth selling (unless you want to set up at a flea market and sell a bunch of blue bottles for a dollar each).

I still have the first embossed, cork-closure Clorox bottles that I found, but that is only because I find it difficult to discard of anything that reminds me of good times prowling through forests half-a-century ago. Additionally, when I found those bottles in 1970 or '71, I was into film-based photography and thought it would be cool to store my photo-processing chemicals in those containers.

My personal nostalgia aside, I have to agree with CanadianBottles assessment of meager potential existing on the site that dkwayman describes. I still would not advise discarding perfectly intact Clorox examples, for it seems that a new generation of bottle collectors are quite intrigued by them, though I've not bothered researching to see if it is just eBay and Etsy sellers' advertising hype or if the items are actually moving.