The bottle gods were smiling on me! HOLY GRAIL FOUND

[GACDIG]

Love it, Just love it......

 

[myersdiggers1998]

Great blob Conner!will ya just (LOOK AT IT!!!!)

 

[old.s.bottles]

Awesome bottle, I have managed to only dig up one whole bottle from my town when I first started, it was in the winter and it cracked by the time I got home, luckily it was one of the "commons"

 

[Rockhounder55]

Great find!! Can't wait to see it cleaned up. ~Mike

 

[Wheelah23]

Thanks guys. I got Tod von Mechow (Sodasandbeers) to do a little research about the company, and he confirmed what I already thought about it. Here's what he found about T.P. Meyers...

"Thomas P. Meyers was born in New Jersey in May of 1866 He was married to a Matilda. In 1895 Yost & Meyers were real estate agents at 483 Bloomfield av in Montclair. By 1895 & in 1896, Thomas P. Meyers & Co. (Meyers and Yost) were liquor dealers and beer bottlers at 345 Bloomfield av. By 1897, Greason & Strahan were beer bottlers at Meyers' old address and Meyers was a warden in the Caldwell penitentiary. "

He also showed me the directory in which he found this info. This confirms that T.P. Meyers was in the beer bottling business for around a year. Additionally, it gives me a good bit of info about George Greason, the most prolific Montclair bottler I know of. Strahan left the "Greason & Strahan" partnership in 1900, so all bottles embossed "George Greason" probably date after that year.

To be sure, the bottle could be worse. It has a small lip chip whose piece I miraculously have (it was being held in place by a chunk of rust), and it also has a small base edge chip. But these are both minor, and on a bottle as rare as this, I don't really care. The sickness can obviously be fixed with a good tumble. So all in all, I'm quite pleased with this bottle.

 

[Wheelah23]

Lip chip [][:'(][:'(][:'(][:'(][:'(]

 

[Wheelah23]

Base chip (there's also a very small crack coming from it)

Any idea on how to fix these chips? While I'm at it, how would you restore this bottle?

 

[Wheelah23]

Closeup of slug plate

 

[Wheelah23]

I'm amazed at the detail that went into this engraving. The engraver spent more time engraving the thing than T.P. Meyers spent in the beer business! []

You can see the lines in each feather, and each toe is drawn. There are even specks below the chicken to show the ground!

 

[Wheelah23]

It's the strongest embossing I've ever seen. The text is great, but the chicken is almost 3-D.