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

3/29/16 Report - Report On A Recent Hunt and Some Of The Surface Finds.

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

I like to eye-ball.  Sometimes I call it surface hunting.

For me, all hunting is first visual.  I look around and try to identify the best places to spend my time. Even while I detect, I use my eyes a lot, looking for clues that might tell the best places to hunt and looking for finds that might be partially or totally exposed.

Today I'm posting pictures of finds that were made during a recent surface hunt that lasted less than an hour.  I did not have a detector with me.  I saw that there might be the possibility of making some interesting surface finds so I decided to take a look.

Piece of Embossed Hutch Bottle Found Exposed

The first find that I found interesting was this piece of a Hutchinson bottle.  It is broke and not worth anything, but it told me that there might be more old things in the area.  It provided good information.

I can see part of the embossed label, which reads "Haller."  A little research will tell me more about the bottle and therefore possibly the site.

Here are two great web sites on Hutch bottles that you might want to check out.

http://www.hutchbook.com/Collecting%20Hutchinson%20Bottle%20Sales%20Guide/Default.htm

http://www.hutchbook.com/

Embossed Hutch bottles usually sell quickly.

The next find was the cork-top bottle shown below.

Cork-Top Bottle Find.

This bottle is in good condition but has no label or markings.  It confirmed that the area no only holds some old things, but that at least some of them have been exposed and are now available.

Next came this small cobalt blue cup.

The bottom reads, "THIS CUP HOLDS A HEAPING DESSERT SPOONFUL."

The cup is in good condition but was a bit puzzling.  A little research soon gave me the answer.

You see it on the top of the bottle in the picture.  It is a John Wyeth and Brothers Effervescent Sodium Phosphate bottle.

The bottom of the bottle is marked, "PAT MAY 16 1899."

I've seen many examples of the cup for sale for a few dollars - usually around five or six dollars.

The patent date suggests that the bottle is probably from the early 20th century, which also would be close to the time period for the Hutch bottle and the cork-top bottle.





Below is the link to the web site that provided the above picture.

http://www.bottlebooks.com/questions/august2001/august%202001%20questions.htm

Even though none of these finds are rare or valuable, they do suggest that the area is associated with early 20th century activities and items.

I didn't show all the things I picked up on this walk.  There were a lot of more recent items that I didn't bother to pick up.

Later I found what appears to me to be a brick made out of coral.  Although the brick (if that is what it is) is incomplete.

Here are the pictures of the item.  See if you think it is a brick.

I haven't learned anything about this item yet.  I'd really like to hear what you think.

And here is the last item I'll post from the outing.  What do you think it might be?

It has a key shaped opening between what appears to be two screw holes.

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We have a calm surf today.  Very early the wind is from the west but turns north.

I'm watching the predictions for the first week in April.

Happy hunting,
TreasureGuide@comcast.net