Written by the Treasureguide for the exclusive use of treasurebeachesreport.blogspot.com.
I recently published a post showing some old bottles. As a result I received some emails asking more about bottles. As a result I decided to talk a little more about the type of bottles that are commonly found on the Treasure Coast.
The photo above shows some of the kinds of bottles that might be found on the Treasure Coast. They are not the oldest bottles and not the most valuable, but they all can be sold for a few bucks. They are all twentieth century bottles. The oldest bottles are not always the most valuable.
The 7-UP bottle is not old but is the type of thing many people collect. Vintage soda bottles are popular, most especially Coca Cola items. The most valuable bottle that I've sold was a West Palm straight-side Coca Cola bottle.
A lot of people collect vintage soda bottles from the fifties and sixties rather than the older embossed bottles that do not have the graphics.
The bottle to the right of the 7-UP bottle is a Coca Cola soda water bottle, embossed Fort Pierce on the bottom. I've found a few of them on the Treasure Coast.
The bottle to the left of the 7-UP bottle is a a "Hutch" or "Hutchinson" bottle, so named because of the stopper, which you can see inside the bottle. Hutch bottles date to around 1880 to 1910.
To the left of that is a Gordon's Dry Gin bottle. They are pretty common, yet can be sold for a small price. One of the first old bottles that I ever found and which got me interested in bottles, was a bottle like this that I found in the mangroves after Hurricane Andrew.
The little greenish bottle in the front is called depression glass or Vaseline glass. That type of glass was popular in the twenties. You might be surprised to learn that it contains uranium. Under a black light it will fluoresce. Due to the demand for uranium during the cold war, it went out of style.
I included the salt shaker simply because it still has part of the metal top and would therefore be easily detected with a metal detector.
The Hutch bottle of course would also give a signal because of the presence of the iron and rubber stopper.
Another reason for mentioning bottles in a metal detecting blog is that if you know something about bottles, it will help you to identify the date of a site and give you a clue about what else you might expect to find there.
One of the first clues you will often get about a historic site is the glass that you see laying on the ground.
Of course you can occasionally find bottles that are a lot older, but I decided to stick with more common finds today.
There are a lot of bottle collecting sites. Too many for me to wade through.
Here is one very good site for learning more about bottles.
http://www.sha.org/bottle/bases.htm
One archaeologist acknowledges the contributions of detectorists in an article about the Viking Hoard. The article has a lot of nice photos of the detecting finds too.
http://www.gadling.com/2011/12/17/viking-horde-highlights-the-value-of-responsible-metal-detectori/
The predictions say that the seas will be decreasing for the next few days. That means a chance to get out a little further in the low tide zone. Otherwise, not much hope for improvement.
The wind is from the south. That might mean shells and things piling up.
Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net
