# Oldest whole Ball jar I've found



## Newtothiss (Feb 15, 2022)

Not "old" to lots of you, but it's neat and pretty. It's really rough/crude and has tons of bubbles and an uneven base (factory).


----------



## ROBBYBOBBY64 (Feb 15, 2022)

Newtothiss said:


> Not "old" to lots of you, but it's neat and pretty. It's really rough/crude and has tons of bubbles and an uneven base (factory).View attachment 234873View attachment 234874


Nice color on that one.
ROBBYBOBBY64.


----------



## jarsnstuff (Feb 15, 2022)

It may not be all that rare, but it is over 100 years old, making it officially an antique - Enjoy!


----------



## Newtothiss (Feb 15, 2022)

jarsnstuff said:


> It may not be all that rare, but it is over 100 years old, making it officially an antique - Enjoy!


No. Not rare (at all), or overly unique, but it is beautiful and in great condition considering the life it's had.

Takes a tough jar to spend a century washing down a ravine and still be in such great shape. Plus, how imperfect it is makes me like it more!

I can't believe how huge and raised the font still is.


----------



## willong (Feb 16, 2022)

Newtothiss said:


> No. Not rare (at all), or overly unique, but it is beautiful and in great condition considering the life it's had.
> 
> Takes a tough jar to spend a century washing down a ravine and still be in such great shape. Plus, how imperfect it is makes me like it more!
> 
> I can't believe how huge and raised the font still is.


I am enjoying following your adventures and progress.

The imperfections, including bubbles, streaks and striations, a crooked neck, were what caught my interest in the first antique bottle I found, a chance encounter while deer hunting. It was a turn-mold whiskey, but I didn't know that at the time. I couldn't see any mold marks at all, so I assumed it had to have been handmade.

As soon as I learned a little bit from an antiques dealer, I bought a couple bottle books from him and began searching deliberately in wooded areas like you are doing. Finding some machine made but embossed "Old Quaker" whiskey bottles among other Depression-era discards in a little swale in old second-growth timber near Lake Riley (Snohomish County) maintained my enthusiasm until I found my first handmade items in a small homestead dump in the same general region. You wouldn't believe how excited I was to pull a square bitters slick out of the moss and duff covered hump of crumbled tin cans on the forest floor. When a "Kilmer's Swamp Root, Kidney, Liver and Bladder Cure, Specific" with its debossed kidney-shaped panel followed, I was hooked!

Looking forward to your further finds.

PS: Once, while making a long, circuitous trek to avoid occupied private properties on my way to an area where I wanted to search for a large logging camp up near Bryant, I encountered an abandoned house. It retained some paint and was still standing in what would have been a small clearing decades previously. The whole flat was thickly overgrown with alder and a few holly trees. I poked around a little, but figured the place only dated to about the 1920's, looking like it might have been abandoned during the Great Depression, when many people lost their homes. Leaving, I encountered an isolated cedar tree whose boughs spread wide and drooped near to the ground. Under those boughs were dozens of canning jars like your find. In fact, most were Ball Mason's as I recall, and were aqua colored. They were not what I was looking for at the time. I continued my search for the logging camp site, but planned to return for the canning jars another day (they looked to be in good, usable condition). Regrettably, I never made the return trip, and Google Earth reveals that area as built up with multiple homes today.


----------



## william crosson sr. (Feb 24, 2022)

Based on the embossing Ball Design dates your bottle from 1910 to 1923.  Yours looks like new.  Nice find.


----------

