Any one ever dig for old bottles?

16 years ago

Last year my brother came and tilled some garden

space for me. All season long we picked shards

of glass out of the dirt. This year we have had

plenty of rain so my husband turned my whole garden

by hand, there is still lots of glass and this

year it seems like the pieces are much bigger.

I had seen a show on the Discovery Channel where

they were digging for old bottles and decided to

give it a try in my own back yard. I dug all last

Saturday and found lots of just broken glass and

what I could identify as bottle pieces and finally

three unbroken bottles! I had a blast! LOL I have

plans to move over several feet and try again just

to see what I come up with.

Has anyone ever dug for old bottles?

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Comments (8)

Marilyn Sue
16 years ago
Yes, I have done the same as you. Not in my garden but on my back hillside, I think many, many years ago they used it for a dump. However all the soil down several inches is really nice and black and of course there are trees on it now too. It really is fun to find glass and also pieces of pottery. I have another place Amber and I have dug and it is near our creek. At one time it must have been a small ravine and they wanted to get rid of all the glass milk bottles. Too bad it seemed most were broken. Many, many years ago I am told the club house we now have was a milk house and they sold milk and delivered it around the countryside. The name of the milk company was Brock's We never did finish digging there, but I know the location. It is like a little hidden treasure from the past when you find something.

Sue
tobygirl
16 years ago
Yes, we used to back in the 70's, when bottle collecting was very popular around here. We found a lot of really nice old bottles, some hand blown, many cobalt and medicine bottles. We had a lot of fun bottle digging with my siblings and their spouses when we were all young. Thanks for the memory.
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oldgardener_2009
16 years ago
My husband used to dig bottles all over the state, found many, had a large collection and sold them for pretty good money. It's amazing how much you can sell them for to collectors.
jemdandy
16 years ago
I haven't dug for bottles, but I've heard of two places that have netted finds: old trash heaps and Pit Toilets -Ewww! At old abandoned or rotted down dwellings, locate the pit toilet and dig. Common bottles in toilets are whiskey flasks.

Pioneer homes often had an outbuilding a few steps from the main house that was used for storage or summer kitchen. These likely contained bottles of many sizes and canning jars.
marilyn_c
16 years ago
Yes, I've dug for bottles. I've always wanted to dig here...there are several old house sites on my property, going back well over 100 years. Some people dug before we got the place...and heard they found a lot of bottles. The ground here though, is very hard clay, and too hard to dig in. The one time I found a good place to dig, turned out to be a dump from just the '50's and it was mostly old hair dye bottles.

However, when they were digging the holes for the piers for my house addition, they dug up an old soda bottle. It says
Houston Bottling Company. When my husband was digging fence posts, he dug up an old thing...can't remember what you call it now...was for putting pleats in clothes...you heated it like an iron. It was dated 1863. He didn't even tell me until the end of the day...probably because he knew I'd want to dig up all around there. He also found an old clay marble one day in the same area when walking out to feed the horses.
socks
16 years ago
How interesting!
bulldinkie
16 years ago
I never dug for bottles but we found a cute perfume bottle complete with stopper lid, pink..Some other bottles
User
16 years ago
My dad inherited my great grandmother's place a few years back. She died in 1960. I found an old bottle there several years back. I need to ask about where the garbage was.

Any one ever dig for old bottles?

Comments (8)

Marilyn Sue

tobygirl

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