# Vick's Vaporub



## Jeranimo

I found this with my other items. Its a cobalt blue Vick's Vaporub jar. Was wondering if there is a way to date this? All it has on the bottom is the vick's symbol and name with the letter N to the left and the number 07 to the right. I found it in the old burn pit where I have been finding a bunch of stuff from the 40's.


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## agbkyle

I found one of those recently. My guess would be 40's - 50's.


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## cpackjr

I have often wondered if they could be dated by the color? I now have three different shades of blue in them; the common dark cobolt blue; a very, very light blue one and one in between. Other than the color, there is no difference. The medium color one came from a dump that was very easily dated to the early 50's due to other bottles.


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## cpackjr

I actually just bought one at a yardsale with lid and label in great shape for 50 cents. Also found a website which I've missed somehow. It has a great timeline of Vicks history using print advertising from early last century. http://www.vicks.com/about/


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## Jeranimo

I am trying to load that page you posted. I hate dial-up, but its all I can afford. Anyway it will take about a half hour to load, does it help with the dating thing, or just an interesting thing to check out?


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## pyshodoodle

I think I remember reading somewhere on this forum that the lighter blue bottles were from the 70's when cobalt got too expensive and they used a different coloring agent. Not sure if that applied to Vicks - Maybe Noxema, but that's my guess on the light blue bottles, anyway.


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## cpackjr

Many of the ads show pictures of the various products. You can tell that the vicks jars from the 30's were a differnt shape. I hope to find somthing difenitive about the colors, it seems that the lighter blue Milk of Mag bottles are older than the darker ones, but I'm not real sure. Here is an interesting article about the Vcks plant site 

 http://www.newsrecord.com/content/2008/10/12/article/construction_unearths_scores_of_medicine_bottles_on_old_vicks_site 

 The bottles in the article look dark blue but the factory was there from 1910 until the 60's.
 Clues, clues, clues; there has to be an answer out there somewhere.


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## madman

vicks vapo rub bottles are very common, that stuff works! i use it today! id  say they started getting cheap on the dark glass in the mid 40s, so the darker the older, theres other vicks bottles that r more desirable, i say keep diggin !  mike


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## Jeranimo

The jar I found, as the pic I posted earlier, is pretty dark. And since what you are saying is that they got cheaper on the glass in the later years. So my guess on age was pretty close then. The 40's. (not sure if any of that made sense, I am also texting right now.)


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## madman

yes ive found dark jars in the early 40s dumps and if youre digging 40s bottles that would make sense


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## Jeranimo

Good to know!


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## MrArcher

I dug what I would classify as a darker, cobalt blue jar in an old dump that I've been pulling 20's to 60's jars out of. I see the general consensus is that the darker bottles are from the 40's and prior. I did find this site, which I'm sure many of you use. https://www.glassbottlemarks.com/bottlemarks-5/ which says that the maker's mark of a triangle inside another triangle dates the bottles between the 1910's and 1930's, then the single triangle with Vicks/Vapo Rub encircling it being produced from the 1940's on. My jar has the latter, so the 1940's is a good guess. I think determining exact date is going to be far harder to accomplish. If anyone finds anything more, please feel free to update... even though this hasn't been updated since 2009...


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