11/26/16 Report - An Excellent Aid For Dating Sites From The Late 19th Century.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Vintage Coca Cola Bottle Found On Recent Walk

One thing I recommend to most treasure hunters is to watch for non-metallic items.  They are often good clues as well as treasures.  Non-metallic items can sometimes be worth just as much as gold or silver.

Coca Cola bottles are common, but some of them can be worth a pretty penny.  Even more common ones can be worth a few dollars.  I sold one that I found for over one hundred dollars.  It was in poor condition.  It had big chips and cracks, but it was rare.  If it was in excellent condition, I could have sold it for about four hundred dollars.

Above is a Coke bottle that I found on a little walk just the other day.  It isn't worth much of anything, but will serve as an example.

I found an excellent 2010 article from the Society for Historical Archaeology entitled The Dating Game: Tracking the Hobble-Skirt Coca-Cola Bottle by Bill Lockhart and Bill Porter.  It is the best article on dating Coke bottles that I have seen.  You can find tons of excellent but less detailed web sites.

Using information from the article such as the table shown immediately below, I was able to date the bottle shown above to 1956.

Two Older Found Fort Pierce Coca Cola Bottles

The bottle on the left is marked PAT'D  NOV 16, 1915.  If you look at the table above you'll see that those bottles date from 1917 - 1930.

The bottle on the right is an older style straight side Coke bottle.  Those two bottles would sell for more than the bottle at the top of this post even though they are not in very good condition.

 The following illustration shows the difference between bottles marked as patented in 1915 and those patented in 1923.  I've found that I can easily sell both of those types of bottles.

The bottle shown at the top of the post is marked STARKE FLA on the bottom.  Some people try to collect bottles from all of the cities that bottled Coke, so if you find a collector that needs that particular city, you might get a couple of dollars for the bottle.

Below is the link to the article that I've been talking about.  It has tons of good information on dating Coke bottles.

https://sha.org/bottle/pdffiles/coca-cola.pdf

The earliest Coca Cola bottles were "Hutch" bottles.  I've shown some of them before.

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Broken Glass and Pottery At The Waters Edge

Junky areas like the one above can be worth looking through.  You can find broken pieces of glass and pottery and other things that will help you date a site.  You can find pottery marks and other marks on broken pieces and occassionally some nice little treasure to keep.  I love looking through junky areas like this for clues.

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The surf will be modest for a few days, increasing a bit next week.  Not much too exciting there.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net

7/13/15 Report - Explanation Of Flip-Ups. Dating A Coca Cola Bottle. Palm Beach Island Detecting.

Written by the TreasureGuide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.

Straight Side Fort Pierce Coca Cola Bottle.

Yesterday I gave you a link to a web site that lists the start dates of various Coca Cola Bottling Companies.

Here is an old straight-side Fort Pierce Coca Cola bottle that I found over a year ago.  I just cleaned it up a bit.

Unfortunately the top is badly damaged.

A few years ago I found and sold a West Palm Beach straight-side Coca Cola bottle that was more damaged than this one, and it sold for over $100.

The reason I am showing this one today is to show you the relevance of the link I gave you yesterday.

That site says the Fort Pierce bottling company began in 1914.

KovelsKomments says, Straight-sided glass bottles were used by Coke bottlers from about 1903 to 1916-17, when the now-standard Coca-Cola bottle was introduced.

That narrows the date of this bottle down pretty well.

It would be 1914 - 1917.

That is pretty good for a bottle that doesn't have much else that would give you the date.








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I was thinking about what Clint L called flip-ups.  Those are coins or other objects that get flipped up and over a cut and settle just behind the cut.

There are times, when I think it appears that objects have flipped up but when there might be another explanation.  There are times when a layer of shells is deposited, and a few other things might be in with the shells.  The beach then cuts through that deposited layer leaving some of the layer behind the cut.  That happens with some frequency.

I know one detectorist who has found most of his cobs by hunting a thin layer of shells laying right behind a cut.  He thoroughly hunted one such area daily and found a good number of heavily worn half reales.  I found a few in the same location.  These were small half reales about the same size as some of the shell pieces.

Actual flip-ups do happen though.  Clint described one case, as did Bill P., and I've seen it myself.  In the case I recall best, a coin was resting on a slanted slab of sand that had just been separated from the face of a small cut.  It appeared to me that the coin had been in the sand that was being eroded.  That could have left the coin in a very peculiar vulnerable position on a slanting and very irregular surface.  It was definitely not settled into the sand.  I can't recall it in any more detail than that.

The illustration above shows what I think probably happens.  An object is laying on or in loose sand in front of the cut.  A wave crashes at the foot of the cut and splashes forcefully up, throwing any vulnerable objects.

When beaches are cutting a lot, water will be crashing right on the cut.  Waves can hit a cut very forcefully, splashing up.  I'm sure you've seen it.  The loose sand near the foot of the cut will direct the water and force up and back.

I've decided to make a distinction between flip-ups, like those I'm talking about today in which an object must jump up at least a short distance, and coins or objects that flip over but do not really jump - not much more than the length of the object itself.

Flipping coins are very common, but most of the time they do not flip very far at once  I remember watching a coin flip the last time I was on the beach.  In that case, I had just dropped the coin.  Before it had settled into the sand a rush of water came by and it flipped over.  Immediately after that rush of water went by, it settled.  The next couple of very small waves put a thin layer of sand over the coin, after which it did not move.

Anyhow, I wanted to distinguish between flip-ups, which flip good distances (I might start calling them jumps or something like that) from flips, which are much more common and less surprising.

I think flip-ups, or jumps, might happen

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Photos by Penzfan.

Tony (penzfan) got this nice photo while hunting on the Palm Beach island the other day.

He found, One .925 ring, One Copper Bracelet, One Snake Ring, One Russian Ruble and some clad.

Below is a photo of his finds.

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I need to update my treasure site link list.  If you find a link that no longer works, please let me know.

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No significant change in beach conditions on the Treasure Coast again.  Expect very smooth surf towards the end of this week.

We've been having some nice low tides.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.ent