# Large Geo. Frye Co. Druggist Portland, ME



## ACLbottles (Jul 28, 2016)

I picked up this nice druggist bottle yesterday. Not really my area of collecting, but it was cheap, so I went ahead and got it. It's a large, 8 3/8" tall, pint sized bottle. It's a nice amethyst color and it has a tooled top. It seems really fragile because of its size and thin glass! It's quite a bit larger than most other similar druggist type bottles I've seen. Are these large druggist bottles harder to find? This one is embossed with Geo. C. Frye Co. / Portland, ME. No other embossing on the bottle, not even on the base. I've been able to find quite a few other bottles from this same druggist, but none like this at all. His smaller bottles with the embossed mortar and pestle appear to be quite common, but I haven't been able to find any like this. Anyone know how hard to find these are? Any idea what to expect on value? Thanks!


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## CanadianBottles (Jul 28, 2016)

Those druggist bottles sure do feel fragile, don't they?  I don't often see any that large, I think the large sizes often got broken, although I did find a dump full of large druggist bottles of that style intact - all without embossing, of course.  You'd have to find someone from Portland or the surrounding area to ask about rarity, but even then it might be hard to know.  These bottles generally aren't very well documented and it's often very difficult to know how many are out there.


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## andy volkerts (Jul 29, 2016)

There is a book about pharmacy/prescription bottles, and it is quite thorough. There is a collector on here that has said the title several times, but I don't remember it. The larger sizes are more difficult to collect as they did get broken a lot more than the smaller sizes, also they tended to get a lot of damage, and when we were digging them by the hundreds back in the 1960s and 70s if they were even nicked or extremely dirty/stained they were left in the holes, as they were almost worthless at that time. I have a whole boxful of Stockton druggist bottles and they are hardly worth anything, even now, but none of them are as large as yours, mostly 6 inches or less.....Andy


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## botlguy (Jul 29, 2016)

In my experience, the larger the better collectors like them. Anything over 8 ounces is BIG. In my case I want smaller, 1/4, 1/2 or 1 ounce except for the Santa Ana, California and Coeur d' Alene, Idaho collections. I have a 32 ounce THE OWL DRUG CO I like and when I had a large Orange County, California bottle collection years ago (1960s) I had only 5 or 6 32 ounce. So yes, the larger bottles are scarcer and usually more valuable.
Jim


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## CanadianBottles (Jul 30, 2016)

I'd be interested in hearing if you ever remember the name of that book, although I imagine it probably doesn't include Canadian druggist bottles.  Researching those is so hard, even before you get into the endless numbers of unique labeled pharmacy bottles.

And haha, the pharmacy bottles being worth so little is why I like collecting them so much, they're local and they don't cost me very much!  I don't know of many available dump sites and don't know any active diggers in the area, so I don't get many opportunities to actually dig for local bottles.


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## ACLbottles (Aug 1, 2016)

Thank you all for the help!


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## Lordbud (Aug 4, 2016)

I've been collecting pharmacy/druggist bottles for a few decades. I only collect local examples. I agree with AndyV as far as Stockton bottles being worth very little. The Stockton River dump was huge and dug by numerous diggers including club digs back in the day. Stockton pharmacies are a dime a dozen, with a few exceptions. San Jose was another city that had a massive series of 1970s digs. The right of way for the 280 Freeway consisted of dozens of Victorian houses which were "publicly domained" and left vacant long enough for the entire San Jose Bottle Club to completely dig the whole area out. 

The larger the size pharmacy bottle the rarer. Many druggists had only one size of bottles blown with their own embossed slug plate. The smaller town pharmacies might only have one batch of personally embossed bottles blown in generally one or two sizes. There is much speculation to be added -- the old Whitall-Tatum catalogue reprints are generally the only clues as to sizes/bottle shapes and minimum orders.


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