The So Obvious Dig.

[Oldihtractor]

No the green on is missing a piece in the back and the neck is reattatched..

Still looks good from the front. And a well represented local piece of History.. As those that know and dig with me.. I will pick broken harder to find exaples over perfect stuff. I look at it as it's old it was thrown down a hole... sombody could have ben 3 sheets to the wind when drinking it. dirt and bricks were thrown down on it. the cleaners buckets smashed and swirled them around.. the kids took target practice with rocks and matbles down the ol shute. Some how they managed to stay in the hole in the first palce.. my take is perect examples pulled from the ground or privy are a huge bonus..

 

[KBbottles]

Absolutely perfect way of describing it. Regardless its a beautiful old mineral water that you now have!

 

[Oldihtractor]

The best part of digging it was. I told Tom If we find a CAttell's I will just push the dirt on you and haul butt.. So I am looking down th hole and see the base poking out Tom says it looks whole!!! It was burried base up.. then the big #$%^&& it's headless.. A sken has stated many have ben found but almost all are with the tops knocked off.

Still nice to dig a local bottle just blocks from where it was sold and filled for that matter also made. and almost in the shadow of the glass works that is there today!!

 

[KBbottles]

Wow! no kidding. what a thrill!!

 

[Alaska]

i found a dr pierces favorite prescription last week, cool! wish i could get into mineral waters though[]

 

[diggermeister]

Great dig guys! Don't you love it when the privies yell, "here I am"! [8D]

 

[andy g]

Uniformly headless is a shame and accurate -- those are beautiful mineral waters and I still covet finding an intact one out of the ground. Here are a few headless horsemen that we got out of a shallow, woodlined pit in Salem right on Broadway a couple of years ago. There were about a dozen more green and cobalt examples smashed to pieces. Also typical is that the only intact soda was from Philadelphia -- here a nice example of a "Riddle" with a script "R". Nice digs and cool historic town.

 

[KBbottles]

I think they are cursed!! Are those some variations in color Andy? Here's the example on bottle den too...

http://bottleden.com/APS2/images/856.jpg

Such a shame but hey there's hope! Did you recover any heads or were they all sacrificed to the dippers?

 

[cyberdigger]

It's almost like people couldn't figure out how to open them, so they just decapitated them instead.. or maybe it was a macho thing back then.. [8|]

 

[andy g]

The one in green is a "Superior Mineral Waters". There were a fair number of them broken in the privy and nearby trash pit. Tom and others can probably speak to the fact that these green examples show up with fair regularity in South Jersey, and there are some theories of a particular South Jersey soda manufacturer but I do not recall the story (whether real or myth).

As to the the bottles breaking just below the lip, I suspect -- and this is without any basis for my opinion -- that this is either because of a weak point or the type of closure damaged the bottle/was difficult to remove without breaking. Based on my limited experience, it just seems that too many of these two examples from South Jersey are broken in this way compared to other sided sodas that I have dug from other places.